These days, describing records as world-class is commonplace – and, more often than not, it all turns out to be unwarranted hype. But to avoid using the term when talking about Prime Circle’s latest would do the 12-track album a real disservice.
The fact is that the five-piece’s ‘”Jekyll & Hyde” is easily as good as the top modern rock records impacting the Billboard or UK charts right now – and it’s no wonder that the group is looking to the album as the strongest chance Prime Circle has of breaking new territories (a process already started early this year with a series of dates in India).
Given the creative work done by Bellville (Cape Town) based Producer Theo Crous, LA based Mix Engineer, Kevin “The Cave Man” Shirley and George Marino, Senior Mastering Engineer at Sterling Sound, New York, it’s tempting to attribute the global polish that defines “Jekyll & Hyde” to the touch of outside hands.
There’s no doubt that Shirley (Led Zeppelin; Aroesmith) and Marino (Guns ‘N Roses, Ozzy Osbourne) add substantially to the album’s overall sound, lifting it into arena-sized moments and adding a subtle, but potent sheen to the material. But the real work comes from the band itself.
“Our mantra during the recording process was that good is not good enough,” confides singer Ross Learmonth.
This meant that a batch of potential songs on the album were picked over and some even discarded in the search by Learmonth, Dirk Bisschoff, Marco Gomes, Dale Schnettler and Neil Breytenbach to deliver the perfect mix to their fans.
What was thrilling to the band was the collaborative process that drove the songs on “Jekyll & Hyde” with Schnettler and Breytenbach – the band’s two newest members – now playing a role in the songwriting process. “There was no restriction on who brought what to the songs – it was very, very cool in that way,” says Learmonth. Adds Gomes, “We put a lot of pressure on ourselves after we had written the first three songs – ‘Breathing’, ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ and ‘Closure’ – because they set the benchmark for us and gave us something to aim for with the rest of the material.”
Prime Circle’s acclaimed live shows have also impacted “Jekyll & Hyde”: widely acknowledged as the tightest rock outfit in South Africa, the visceral energy that Prime Circle gives off on stage is evident in songs like “Closure” - as confident an opening number as the band has ever put on an album and a surefire showcase for the clean direction of the material. The latter sees Schnettler’s powerhouse drumming lead the way for Gomes’ bass and Bisschoff’s quite spectacular guitar playing to follow, with all other elements slotting easily in. The band also used a different technique with “Jekyll
