Fokofpolisiekar has always done things differently. No matter which route they have found themselves taking, from making beer to releasing documentaries, their fans have remained as solid as the vomit caked on their sweater after a night’s performance.

A force to be reckoned with, they are on a mission to release their next album independently – and have called on their fans to help them do so.

Using local crowdfunding platform, Thundafund, the band is on a 60-day mission to raise R500 000.

Within just 48 hours, the band was able to raise a record-breaking R180 000, according to IOL. Here are the deets:

Once the campaign kicked off, Fokofpolisiekar’s fans responded in full force and the band received pledges to the value of R180 000 within 48 hours. Hunter Kennedy’s acoustic guitar (valued at R25 000) was picked up within the first hour of the campaign by a fan from New Zealand.

Thundafund has hosted around 200 campaigns and successfully helped to raise almost R11 million to date. Out of all these campaigns, Fokofpolisiekar has raised the most money in the first 48 hours.

According to Thundafund, Fokofpolisiekar also managed to raise the most funds for a music album in South Africa to date.

Today marks day six of the campaign, with the band raising just under R400 000 at the time of writing. As with every crowdfunding campaign, there’s a video with it.

If you don’t get goosebumps watching it, you’re not a real Fokof fan:

Lead singer Francois van Coke had some things to say about all the love:

The response has been insane. Our plan was to go live a few days before the March payday and we were not expecting much funds to come in until mid-April. Now we are already over halfway. The Spirit of Fokof is alive and well, but the trick is to keep the momentum.

And that momentum is surely there.

But why R500 000? Well, if they can reach that target before May 20, the album will be recorded in June, mixed in July and released in October. The sexiest bassist alive, Wynand Myburgh, explained what’s up:

All-in-all to record an album is expensive, even the crowdfunding campaign has a lot of expenses. Sad thing is that the music in its recorded format does not have much value. People pirate and stream music. The days of making much of a profit on an album or even breaking even is over, but that does not change the fact that we feel we have something to offer. Something that we want to create and share with our fans. By getting our fans involved with helping us fund the project, we have complete freedom to create the album that we want to. We don’t have to worry about ‘breaking even’, etc. We can just focus on writing and recording music.

The list of rewards for donating to the fund is just as awesome as you would think – you can check them out HERE and maybe pop in some $$$.

I mean, why not? Just look at them back in 2003 – come a long way since then:

[source:iol]