Cross Over: Nerds bring Pluto to earth

Many of us imagine male pop stars as buff, dim-witted , wavy-haired robots who make music based on marketing strategies for clearly demarcated markets.

Matthew Field, Ross Dorkin and Robin Brink of the three-man Cape Town pop band Beatenberg contradict this stereotype somewhat.

While none of them is ugly, they are unlikely to win any underwear modelling contracts. More importantly, they happen to be surprisingly well read.

As if to emphasise this point the first piece of text on their website is a quote from a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge that reads: "No sound is dissonant which tells of life."

Field and Dorkin studied music at Cape Town University and so, with Brink as a willing accomplice, they are prone to waxing lyrical.

Field also studied music at Ivy League university Berkley in the US which undoubtedly exacerbates this.

They all share an unashamed love for literary classics and non-English movies, which may explain why their debut album The Hanging Gardens of Beatenberg is laced with references to ancient Greece and renaissance Europe.

"I guess we read a lot of classical stuff and so naturally that bleeds into everything we do, be it the bio or the artwork for the album cover or the album itself," said Dorkin.

In most cases, quoting dead poets who are not Tupac or Jimi Hendrix and plastering Mesopotamian sculptures on your album cover would probably alienate fans.

"But, in April, the band's house-infused single Pluto, with DJ Clock, broke the South African record for the most radio plays over a week-long period.

It reached number one on the 5FM, YFM, Highveld, Kfm, MTV Base, Metro & Heart FM charts while also topping iTunes Botswana and coming in second on iTunes South Africa.

And their latest single, Rafael, is set to go the same way. Not since Mandoza's Nkalakatha has a song appealed to such a broad swathe of South Africans.

"We didn't expect our music to cross over so well but we're so happy because it takes us out of a little bubble.

"What is also great is that it's not just South Africa but in Nigeria, Kenya and Mozambique and basically all our neighbouring countries," said Brink.

Their ability to make the masses shake what their fathers gave them has a lot to do with the heavy house element in their music.

"When we started, we were making more mellow music.

"And when we got booked we would get the crappy slot because when people go to a party no one wants to listen to chilled-out stuff.

"We wanted to make music that people could get into physically. House is what's doing that at the moment," said Field.

With the Hanging Gardens of Beatenberg, three relatively scrawny middle-class kids from Cape Town have managed to break some dearly held misconception namely that not only does one not need to go through a vat of hair gel every week to be a pop star but, more importantly, that good music is not concerned with demographics.

• 'The Hanging Gardens of Beatenberg' launches in Johannesburg on August 29, September 4 and 5 in Cape Town and Stellenbosch and in Durban on September 12. Their album is also available on iTunes.