OudioAltaar

Skadu Oor My

Over the last few years there has been a plethora of local worship releases aimed at younger audiences, (well maybe not quite a plethora, but more than before), and here are the "new kids" on the block if you will. Given that the average trend only lasts a year or so you may be forgiven for thinking that the local worship ship has already sailed and OudioAltaar are left behind. However they've jumped on a 1000 hp power boat and caught up and in fact it could well be that the local worship revolution is here to stay. And that is a good thing, considering that for many years Afrikaans worship music was not really producing songs that would appeal to a younger generation. Now it's a case of being spoilt for choice, so let's see what these guys have to offer.

The project started out as an idea at the beginning of last year and months of preparation culminated in this live recording in Bloemfontein last August. Johan Steenkamp acts as the lead singer and songwriter but this is certainly not a one man show and the rest of the band do a great job in keeping their side of things tight. Also impressive is the string quartet, something that is very hard to incorporate successfully into a live recording, (a lot of other bands would just "overdub" strings in later), so full credit to them for that something special they add. I could go on talking about the technical prowess of the musicians but of course the main purpose of a worship recording is to honour God so I'll take the pipe out of their mouths and stop pumping up their heads.

Typical of all great worship songs, things are kept simple and congregational, there are even chords included with all the lyrics so it's obvious the heart is for these songs to be sung. They are all God focussed but vary nicely in tempo between the upbeat praise of songs like "Sy woorde" and "Skadu oor my" and the slower worship numbers like "Daar hoort ek" and "Verlosser vir My" (both led by the ladies in the band). As an added bonus to the whole package is also the DVD which shows the whole recording as well as some behind the scenes footage to give you an idea of what went down. If you beam it up on your projector at church maybe you could pretend that they were there but you'll need a big sound system and decent sized crowd of worshippers to get the atmosphere the same.

And so another new Afrikaans worship recording, another worthwhile listen, all the worship leaders at churches which sing in "die taal" must be finding it increasingly hard to choose songs every meeting. But I doubt many of them would have time to complain since from the looks of things they've more than likely also got an album full of new songs that they're waiting to unleash. Whoot whoot.

PREVIOUS ALBUMS: Ehhh, none.

SIMILAR ARTISTS: Retief Burger, Jan Hoogendyk, Stass

RANDOM FACT: Umm... Ooohhh here's one: You can see a better picture of the cross they used on they cover by going to www.flickr.com/photos/59987629@N00/2147019158