Thomas Krane is Durban’s best-kept secret.
Formed a few years ago by Dan Hampton when he bought a two-track to record musical ideas that kept popping into his head, the one-man band soon developed into a two-piece when his old University of Cape Town flatmate Gary Jennings joined him.
‘We decided to make an album,” says Hampton. ‘Then some other guys and my sister joined us so we wouldn’t be so lonely on stage. It’s a boring story really. We’ve considered making a more exciting one up.”
So work on the debut album began. ‘Home recordings are getting to be a much better option than going to a studio,” says Hampton. ‘Equipment is getting cheaper and easier to use and you get to spend as much time as you want crafting a song to sound exactly how you want it to. Go to a studio and you pay some douche 500 bucks an hour to do a rushed, half-hearted job using the same equipment you can put in your bedroom. It’s becoming a bit of a scam.”
No surprise then that when listening to Thomas Krane’s self-titled debut album one hears the influence of seminal lo-fi artists such as Moldy Peaches and Daniel Johnston. Other influences that spring to mind are Modest Mouse and Iron & Wine. Hampton says that ultimately the band likes music with ‘distinct personality that manages to retain its pop sensibility”. ‘You could easily add Regina Spektor, Cold War Kids, Andrew Bird and Sufjan Stevens to that list,” says Hampton. ‘Gary listens to a lot of old blues too.”
Hampton says the band has already begun work on its new album but that it’s difficult to say when it will be finished. ‘The band has got louder with the new members and so we are going to have to pay a bit more attention to production as we add more noise. It has the potential to get very messy [but] fortunately our bassist Tyrin Hale is a proper sound geek, so he’s looking after that.”
You can download the band’s self-titled debut album for free from www.reverbnation.com/thomaskrane or you can get more information from www.myspace.com/thomaskrane and www.facebook.com/thomaskrane.