Africa covered by The Lounge Kittens
The Lounge Kittens invite you to take a walk on the wild side as they release the second track from debut album ‘Sequins & C-Bombs’ and this time they’ve taken on ‘Africa’ by Toto.
Following the release of a 5 part mini-documentary series, trailing the girls through the recording process of the song, Jen, Timia and Zan couldn’t be more excited to finally be able to share the studio version of the track.
“We’ve been performing ‘Africa’ live for years” says Jen “In fact, it’s one of the very first songs we ever arranged as a band. But we’ve reinvented it for the album so this is a brand new version that no one has heard yet. We really pushed ourselves with this one and it features more layering than we’ve done before. By the end of the song we’re all singing several parts so it was a whole new experience layering the harmonies in the studio.”
The documentary focuses on how the girls break down their arrangements and shows a unique insight into the complexities of their recordings. “It was really daunting having the camera in the studio with us, but not as daunting as it was attacking this song” Zan tells us. “This is a BIG song. We take singing other people’s songs as seriously as if we had written them ourselves and ‘Africa’ is so well-known and loved, there’s a huge responsibility there. We put an enormous amount of pressure on ourselves and it’s actually quite hard to watch the footage back and see us struggle but we’re really pleased with the final track and it’s been a really interesting experience exposing our techniques to our fans.”
Well known for their tongue-in-cheek and often downright ridiculous videos, for this song the girls have stepped away from their usual style, in favour of a studio based video. “We just didn’t think that us dicking about Lion King style would do justice to the magnitude of this song” explains Timia. “It just doesn’t feel right and it would distract the listener from the song itself. We’re really proud of this one and when we play it live, it’s always a big singalong so that’s what we wanted to encourage. Put the track on, close your eyes and sing loud and proud on your mountain top… or wherever your imagination takes you!”
As the girls navigate through their challenge of releasing new video material every month until the end of the year, STOP-EVERYTHING-THE-KITTENS-AR
Pre-order the album: http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/tlk-sequins-and-cbombs
See the girls at Edinburgh Fringe festival: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/everybody-hates-the-lounge-kittens
See TLK on tour in October: http://myticket.co.uk/artists/the-lounge-kittens
Catch them with Status Quo & REO Speedwagon in December:http://www.axs.com/uk/artists/250537/status-quo-tickets
