"Be Still. The Hanging Gardens Were a Dream"

The 10th Anniversary of The Hanging Gardens of Beatenberg

Words: Dan Charles

The Hanging Gardens of Beatenberg is an impeccably crafted album. Lyrically, the songs balance irreverence and poignancy in poetic musings of moments from everyday life, incorporating parallels between tennis players and Renaissance painters, as well as quoting T.S. Eliot while visiting different shopping malls with a lover who will eventually have to leave you. The rich sonic tapestry of the musical arrangements immaculately weaves together threads of pop, indie, bubblegum, mbaqanga, jazz, reggae, as well as elements of classical music into a sound that is both tasteful and transformative, whilst nostalgically reverent of iconic South African acts such as Bright Blue, who also explored the same expansive musical terrain. The incorporation of Robin Brink and Ross Dorkins’ affinity for local house and electronic music into the album’s menagerie of influences led to their immensely successful collaboration with DJ Clock on "Pluto (Remember You)," which became the longest-running South African number-one single ever (with seventeen weeks on the local radio charts) and solidified Beatenberg’s status as one of the country’s most successful cultural crossover acts, perhaps since the days of Johnny Clegg and Savuka. It is an album of significant standing within the pantheon of great South African albums, which is an impeccable feat for an artist’s debut. This is why its legacy continues to endure ten years after its release.

In 2014, Beatenberg’s career was defined almost as soon as it began, with the critical acclaim that came with releasing The Hanging Gardens. However, the problem with the immediate achievement of a milestone that most artists strive toward throughout their entire career is the pressure of having to meet the colossal expectations they’ve set for themselves for the rest of their career.

While speaking with singer and guitarist Matthew Field, he admits that it has been very difficult for him to write new music without constantly thinking about what people expect or want to hear from him. He expresses a sense of self-consciousness, feeling confused about what to put out and whether it will deviate from the "true path" of Beatenberg. He explains that this struggle is not necessarily with the songs themselves, as he believes the band has continued to produce good work. However, the process of collecting the songs, finishing them, and preparing them for release has become fraught with internal doubts and uncertainty.

“The beauty of doing The Hanging Gardens was that there was nothing,” says Matthew Field, the vocalist and guitarist for Beatenberg, while discussing the tenth anniversary of their debut album. “There was nothing, and we were creating for the first time. You know, everyone has a version of this story. I think anyone who's had any degree of success has gone through something resembling this kind of contour, but the way they handle it is different. Some handle it better than others. I think I haven't handled it nearly as well as I thought I would. There are still many things that I want to do and to do things that are true to the way that I felt 10 years ago. It's not like that's been lost to me entirely, but I think it's been difficult to be as confident in my own compass since then.”

In the years between 1975 and 1978, Bruce Springsteen languished under a similar kind of creative anguish. The release of Born to Run in 1975 saw Springsteen finally achieving the promise set by music journalist and eventual-manager Jon Landau when he famously claimed to have seen the future of rock ’n roll and that its name was Bruce Springsteen. The album was met with triumphant praise and critical acclaim and brought upon the success and recognition that he had mercilessly sought out. However, what followed was the pressure. As well as dealing with legal disputes between him and his former manager in the wake of his great success, Springsteen toiled over writing what was said to be between 50 and 70 songs during recording sessions that were gruelling and often extended late into the night. Springsteen's perfectionism led to exhaustive revisions of lyrics and arrangements, with some sessions dragging on for months without ever being satisfied. His greatest accomplishment had turned into his greatest torment.

“There is a certain frightening aspect to having things you dreamed were going to happen, happen, because it’s always more – and in some ways always less – than what you expected,” said Springsteen in an interview that recalled this period, which would lead to the genesis of the 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town—an album that embodies the lesson that your dreams might not come true and, even if they do, life will seldom turn out the way you hoped it would. “I think when people dream of things, they dream of them without the complications. The real dream is not the dream, it’s life without complications. And that doesn’t exist.”

Following the success of Hanging Gardens, Beatenberg went on to release their follow-up album 12 Views of Beatenberg, as well as join Senegalese singer Baaba Maal and Malawian British singer-producer combo The Very Best on British folk rock band Mumford & Sons’ collaborative EP Johannesburg. These releases saw Beatenberg begin to reach international acclaim, but not quite to the extent that their debut album reached back home in South Africa. So, they decided to take a break. Bassist and lead producer Ross Dorkin went to London to earn a graduate degree and produce for other artists; drummer Robin Brink moved to Berlin to further expand his interest and love for dance music; and lead singer and guitarist Matthew Field bounced between London and Cape Town while working on his own solo material under the name M.Field. This period of separating into their own new artistic lanes allowed them to explore their creative pursuits in a way that did not feel permissible in a band that rose to immediate prominence.

“If I do something that means a lot to me and someone listens to it and they're like, 'Okay, that's cool, but I don't really get it'—like that's kind of permissible, and that doesn't feel like it's permissible with Beatenberg. It's like if you send a kid to the wrong school, like if you send a kid who's a really good chess player to a sports academy—you know, they get bullied or whatever and they're not popular, but they actually have a real gift for something else. I kind of feel like a bit like that about a song. Some songs I have, if I'm going to put them in the Beatenberg thing and release them, and then they'll get like no real reception, maybe some people say it's cool, but you know, it's not, it's not going to resonate to the extent that the stuff we did at the beginning did. That's hurtful for all of us and for my feeling toward the song.”

Of course, he acknowledges that this difficulty is his own personal issue, and it has also created challenges for the other members of the band, who have had to navigate his creative struggles. He feels that this professional context has made it hard for him to separate his personal identity from the band's work, as it is so intrinsically a part of who he is. But after spending 5 years cultivating an artistic identity outside of the immense legacy of Beatenberg, the band was ready to reunite and announce their return with a stellar EP titled “On the Road to Beatenberg,” perhaps signifying the band finding a way to continue moving forward together again.

Entering the year that marks the 10th anniversary of the band’s debut album, Beatenberg released their long-awaited third full-length album The Great Fire of Beatenberg, which is an album that demonstrates the noticeable growth shown by each of the members during their break from the path of Beatenberg and is arguably the best work yet. The band is also readying themselves to perform a series of shows to commemorate an album that, after ten years, they can see as something worth commemorating.

“I think since then, as I got older, I have gotten better at just focusing more on the present and the future and keeping the past as this kind of nurturing thing, rather than something that feels like a source of pain or loss. There might have been a time in these 10 years that, if I look back on the album, I would have felt much more conflicted and sort of upset about what I wanted to have done since then and hadn't done or whatever. I do have some of those feelings, but I think I'm much more able now to just see that time as something great and that album that we did is something I'm very happy to have done. I’m very proud and grateful to everyone else who is around who helped make it happen, and the other guys in the band, obviously, but also for that whole time and the friendship that we had, and the energy that was going around. It does feel like something quite special, and it's nice to have the distance to see that without sort of being too clouded by ways in which I would have wanted it to go afterward, or what it should have meant.”

The legend of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is that King Nebuchadnezzar II constructed the fabled structure for the homesick Queen Amytis, who longed for the cool temperatures, mountainous terrain, and beautiful scenery of her homeland of Media. In a way, The Hanging Gardens of Beatenberg have come to serve a similar purpose. Like all great albums, it has a transportive quality—an album that reaches out to you and guides you toward a place that you otherwise could not have touched. Perhaps, for the band, it is a monument to the friendship and desire of three musicians who each wanted to preserve all of the things that they found beautiful in a sonic amber that can be revisited for years and years to come.

BEATENBERG

@beatenberg_band