ZACAS

Sometimes it takes an epic journey to gather up the life experience to make an album that is at once timeless and beautiful.



This is precisely what transpired with ZACAS whose debut album, Corner House, marks a significant moment for South Africa’s folk-pop scene – and introduces a sublimely talented duo to the international music arena.



Luigi and Salva Zaca have undoubtedly endured a marathon expedition that provides the raw material for a set of original songs about some of life’s big themes. The brothers grew up in Pretoria, a city more known for being South Africa’s capital than providing the irresistible impulse for exploring the wider world (in the case of Luigi and Salva, sometimes against some hefty odds). And, dial back seven or so years, the brothers were comfortably starting to gain a reputation for musical excellence by performing for punters in local restaurants and watering holes. They even had a band called Filly Lilly that had, in 2012, recorded (but not officially released) an EP.



But there came a moment when Luigi could no longer stay put and, within the space of a single week, had sold all he owned and made plans to leave. “I had to leave,” he says of this decision. “There was nothing in Pretoria for me. I could not sit outside a restaurant playing for one more Sunday. It just wasn’t what I wanted anymore. The band had been a good experience but one member was on the verge of getting married and it struck me that Salva and I could make our music as just the two of us. And I knew that only in leaving would we be able to unlock the songs and the music needed to make the album that we had held in our minds for so long. So I said to my brother, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to go’ – and I left.”



That was in 2012 and Luigi headed for the USA where the brothers’ parents were living in Hartford City, Indiana. It took some time because he was studying music, but two years later Salva also headed out, working first in Spain before finally being reunited with his brother after a physical absence of two years.



“I know that things happen for a reason but those two years we spent apart, those two years of not being able to make music together, was the worst time,” Salva says with an honesty that is also visible in ZACAS’ songwriting. The brothers had been sending each other musical sketches, ideas and partially formed songs over the time they were apart but even when they were reunited, it took some time before they could comfortably get back to songwriting and create.



“We needed to make a living,” Luigi says of this time. He had already been working on boats around the coast of America, working up to the position of boat engineer, and Salva soon joined him in this business. Moving from job to job, Salva encountered some situations that provided material for songs, including a nerve-racking trek to America’s oldest city, St Augustine, in a houseboat captained by a fairly intimidating individual. “Crazy Dave just appeared on the doorstep of the dodgy crew house I was staying in, with my friend Nicole, in Fort Lauderdale,” recalls Salva. “We soon found ourselves in a houseboat, cruising slowly up the Florida coast, not feeling sure about anything that was going on.”



That particular trip is detailed in “Shoebox”, a track off Corner House that stunningly spotlights the unity of guitar and vocals that’s a signature of ZACAS’ sound – and is also an example of the poetically descriptive narratives that define the album’s original material (“Dreams wild like winds/Trapped in a shoebox, it seems daunting/Everything I hoped for is dead/ Being alive is a trip to the end/My mind a howling wind.”)



A shoebox is also how Luigi describes growing up in South Africa, and the need to breakout in pursuit of making the album that’s now being released by Just Music. “I felt strongly that we had been living in this shoebox called South Africa and that no-one was looking outside and I wanted that outside so badly.”



Corner House is confirmation of Luigi’s sense that the very process of embarking on a journey would result in an album that they are now proud to present to the world. Savings from a year of working in West Palm Beach (in a shipyard on a motor yacht called “Carolina”) gave them time away from boat work to write the album. The space and energy provided by their parents during the songwriting period mean Corner House is also a tribute to them.



The album’s title track impeccably captures the experience of creating music in a place of cold white snow and an “overwhelming orchestra of silence”(“In the golden fields of a little place called Hartford/Where dreams are made of cedar and pine/In the fort it burns red/This corner house my homestead/Weary traveller meets end/Awaiting trial at worlds end.”)



Corner House is brimming with songs that reflect the life path of two exceptionally close brothers. “Do you remember our hideouts?/Created from sticks and stones/Whatever we built reflected/Wherever we cramped in protected us,” sings Luigi on album standout, “Journey”. “Journey” reflects the brothers’ gift for matching Salva’s lyrical classical and acoustic guitar work with Luigi’s warm and heartfelt voice. It’s no surprise that it was one of the songs that ZACAS chose to perform for the Just Music team when they were asked by Debbi Lonmon (ex-Little Sister and now a music teacher) to take part in a singer-songwriter project that she was working on with the label. The other was “Feather Lady”, a song about living life with a light and pure heart that evokes the hushed presence of the likes of José González and the troubadour sensibilities of Vance Joy. Immaculately conceived and timeless, it’s no surprise that “Feather Lady” helped secure ZACAS a record deal.



Luigi and Salva had returned to South Africa, obliged to leave the USA while applying to stay permanently. That was three years ago and, happily for South African music fans, the brothers are settled here for a while. Luigi is close to qualifying as a mechanical designer – a career move that even he’s taken aback at. “When we returned home, I had to find a way of earning money so we could focus on our music and the only job that I could quickly get was building firetrucks. It’s from that start that I began studying to be a mechanical designer and I’m nearly done, which is something I would never have imagined.”



Factory working gave Luigi newfound respect for South Africa’s working class, which is reflected in the lyrics of “Keep the Chain”. The song brings to the light the invisibleness of blue-collar workers who are deemed as making no valuable contribution to society. It’s an unexpectedly potent social commentary, but, like all ZACAS’ writing, it reflects the experience of two brothers whose journey has taken them into sometimes severe discomfort (a hair-raising detour into the mountains around Perugia with a particularly scary Englishman being one) and who’ve had to work hard to make the space for the beauty of music to properly surface.



Helping capture the simplicity yet high musicianship of ZACAS was Rob O'Brien who produced the album with ZACAS. Recorded by JP de Stefani (another South African of Italian extraction) at B Sharp Studios in Johannesburg, the album has been produced with a sensitivity to the timelessness of the music and the organic feel that the brothers’ constantly strive for.



Salva plays the electric guitar, classical guitars, bass (“Slave For Company”) and synth (“Remember When”) throughout the album, while Luigi handles all lead vocals. Adding to the distinctive ZACAS sound is the Berg acoustic that Salva also plays, which is made by the brothers’ uncle, renowned luthier Hans van den Berg (he’s not the only well-known South African linked to ZACAS by family – they are also distant relatives of Ingrid Jonker and Gé Korsten but those are stories for another album). The recording also features Mashadi Mokoena whose haunting trumpet opens “Derailed In The Rain” (a song about the duality of modern life) as well as Shaun Joynt and Peter Auret on drums. Franco Schoeman professionally known as FRANX contributes bass arrangements and plays the electric bass for the majority of the album, while Rob O’Brien plays the fretless bass on a lovely rearrangement of Chris Isaak’s “ Wicked Game” – one of only two covers on the album. The other is The Beatles’ “Blackbird”. “We wanted to include those songs because they are songs that describe the loss of love and its aftermath, which is something that both Luigi and I went through within a week of each other,” says Salva with a rueful smile.



Salva describes the journey to Corner House as “epic”. It’s one that has resulted in an album that’s about “inspiration, reconciliation, reinventing yourself, and dealing with a lot of emotions,” adds Luigi. Concludes his brother: “ZACAS is a commitment. I am committed to Luigi, giving him the opportunity to say what he wants to say through music and he gives me the same thing. Being in this band is about putting everything aside for the sound, for the music that joins us.”