Melbourne

Traffik Island, ORB and Hierophants’ Zak Olsen: “If it’s not memorable, it’s just not going to have a connection with anyone”

| gimmiezine
Handmade mixed-media collage by B.

Melbourne-based musician Zak Olsen is one of those musical wizards. He has a natural talent for songwriting, doesn’t tie himself to one genre, and somehow magically has a knack for them all. He works his magic in heavy psych power-trio ORB, with new wavers Hierophants and as Traffik Island, a project that jumps style from one album to the next. He’s one of our favourite songwriters. We spoke with him last week to get an insight into his world.

ZAK OLSEN: I’m just at the studio right now, saying studio is a bit of a stretch but, I have a room that’s not my house that has some of my music gear in it [laughs]. It’s really close to my house so I just come here most days. I spend all day and all night in here usually.

Where did you grow up?

ZO: I grew up in New Zealand, I grew up in a few places because we moved every year. I mainly grew up on farms in New Zealand and moved to Australia in the year 2000.

What were you like growing up?

ZO: Most of my youth I grew up on a farm, which was really good. My parents had that school of parenting where they just let you go and make your own mistakes. We had lots of space which was good, my dad would say “Just go and do whatever you want just be back before its dark”. I spent heaps of time outside by myself when I was younger. My dad also played in a few heavy metal bands so he would always have huge parties and there’d be all these metalheads around. That was the first music that I got into when I was really young, like five years old. Its’ pretty appealing to a five year old. My dad would have all these heavy metal VHS tapes, I particularly remember the Megadeath one! I loved it so much.

How did you discover music for yourself?

ZO: I’ve always had an interest in it because my dad did. In high school I heard the Sex Pistols and had one of those light bulb moments! Megadeth also did a Sex Pistols’ cover. I remember watching SBS one night and the Sex Pistols being on there and they played ‘Anarchy In The UK’ and I remember the Megadeth song of it from back when I was a kid and it sort of all came back around again. I got into it from there, I decided that I wanted to play guitar and that was that.

Why is music important to you?

ZO: Just the actual act of making it, is the most fun I could ever have. Once it’s made it’s never quite as good, I still love playing live and all that stuff but for me personally the most fun that I can have in music is writing things—making noises! [laughs].

Is there a particular album or albums that’s helped shape your ideas on music?

ZO: Yes. Besides the obvious stuff like ‘60s pop – I got really into that in high school – just the simple things that are catchy that still have an effect that aren’t intimidating; stuff that involves everyone, simple music like The Beatles and The Kinks. That stuff is always with me. I remember the first time I heard R. Stevie Moore, that was a big influence because he didn’t stick to any genre. I know a lot of people claim they don’t stick to one genre but he really, really pushed that, he really went for it. I remember seeing an interview with him and he said that you can just make any noise, it’s still a song, not every song has to be your magnum opus. That allowed me to open up and make any noise.

I really like with him too that people go “you’re the king of lo-fi!” and he tells them something like “It doesn’t matter if it’s lo-fi or hi-fi or whatever-fi, I’m DIY-fi”.

ZO: Yeah, exactly! I’m definitely not going for a lo-fi thing, it’s just out of necessity. If I could make big grand exotica Martin Denny kind of albums I would. I don’t have that kind of money or resources though [laughs].

How did you first start making music yourself? You were in The Frowning Clouds; were you making stuff before that?

ZO: Nah, no. I was barely playing guitar before that, we just decided to start a band. I couldn’t really play at the time, we learnt as we went. I was a really slow learner with music but we all just kept going and here we are [laughs]. I’m still a slow learner!

When you make music then, is it mostly through feeling and intuition for you?

ZO: Absolutely. I don’t read music or know any of that kind of stuff. It’s 100% intuition for me.

The first Traffik Island LP Nature Strip that you put out – I know there was a split tape before that too – sounded kind of Beatles-y and Kinks-y and a little Bonzo Dog Band-ish and Syd Barrett-esque now with your new release Sweat Kollecta’s Peanut Butter Traffik Jam it’s kind of like a DJ Shadow beat tape, they’re such different sounds…

ZO: It goes back to the doing different things like R. Stevie Moore doing whatever you want. I wanted to do that to the max! I just wanted to make something as different from the first one. I was worried about it once it was made and I thought, oh shit, people that liked the first one probably aren’t going to like the new one. Nature Strip is the album that I always wanted to make ever since I was really young, being an obvious Syd Barrett fan, I just wanted to make an album on an acoustic guitar—that was the mission statement.

For the next one I wanted to do the total opposite and make it more computer-based and not write anything before; every one of those songs are made up just as I’m making it, it wasn’t prewritten.

So when you play them live you’ll have to teach yourself how to play them again?

ZO: Well, yeah. The band haven’t learnt any of those live yet, whether I’ll play them in front of an audience is yet to be seen [laughs].

I really hope you do!

ZO: There’s so many ways to do it that I’m just not sure yet. Hopefully one day… if venues open up again!

I really liked the Button Pusher live stream you did the other night!

ZO: Yeah, that was a test of maybe how we can do it live.

Dude, that test went really well, we super impressed. Just how you walked into the room rolled the tape machine and then started playing was so cool! The lighting and mood really added to it all too.

ZO: That’s good! That’s something I’m working on with a couple of other people at the studio too, we’ve started a YouTube channel live stream for performances and sorts of things. We have a few more coming up soon.

On your first release the split tape Sleepy Head/Traffic Island I noticed there’s Hierophants and Sweat Kollecta’s songs on that from back in 2012.

ZO: Yeah, my friend Danny who ran that label Moontown was doing a split with Nick, another Frowning Clouds member, he was doing the A-side. Danny called me asked me if I had any demos laying around to fill up the B-side of the tape. I said, yes, but I didn’t have any at the time. Lucky it was around the time I heard R. Stevie Moore so I had a real jolt of inspiration and just went out the back for two weeks and did all those songs for the tape. Some of them ended up going into Frowning Clouds or Hierophants after the fact.

I really love Hierophants! Spitting Out Moonlight was one of our favourite LPs of last year! We’re big fans of your other releases last year too, it’s so cool when you can find an artist that makes such different things but they’re all incredible. That’s not an easy thing to pull off.

ZO: That’s nice to hear. Thank you. It all has to do with collaboration with people and letting things just happen the way they do between people. You’re not really pushing an aesthetic or an agenda when you’re collaborating, that’s hopefully when more interesting things come out. I think Hierophants lean into that, we purposely do things that maybe sound ugly or we think we shouldn’t do. That’s the most collaborative band, especially in the sense that no idea gets rejected, we do everything. It’s really warts and all, sometimes good, sometimes bad [laughs].

I wanted to ask you about the Hierophants song ‘Everything In Order’; what inspired that one?

ZO: That was nearly going to be a Traffik Island song. That was inspired by, I broke my arm quite badly and had surgery. I spent a couple of weeks doing demos one-handed, that song was one of the one-handed songs [laughs]. Jake [Robertson] heard it and asked if Hierophants could do it. I was trying to do a show tune-y kind of thing [laughs]. Someone told me that the hook is the same from a song from a Disney movie [laughs]. I was trying to do something Robyn Hitchcock-y, when he does these ridiculous sounding show tunes.

I love the lyrics in it: you don’t need friendship anyway / you don’t need family anyway.

ZO: [Laughs] Don’t quote me on that one, it’s a character who is wrong, because you do need family and friends.

What about the song ‘Limousine’?

ZO: It’s about the obvious, but the funny thing about it is that I think I subconsciously took that from watching a Paul Simon interview. He was on the Dick Cavett Show from back in the ‘70s and he was talking about writing a song about someone that’s trapped by fame and they’re riding around in their limousine. Subconsciously years down the track I just wrote that! I re-watched that interview recently and realised I took it [laughs]. The song is original, I promise! The seed of the song maybe I took from Paul Simon.

Do you have a favourite track on the new Traffik Island Sweat Kollecta’s LP?

ZO: I like ‘Rubber Stamps’ it’s the least beats/DJ Shadow-y one. It’s a short instrumental, sort of exotica, ‘60s kind of sounding, crappy Beach Boys instrumental one. It came out the easiest.

I notice though different lyrics or song titles there’s a humour and lightness to your music.

ZO: Humour is always good, it takes the edge off. Frank Zappa had a humorous side or Devo did too, they had a real sense of humour and both had been big influences on me. It’s not too conscious for me. It is a bit easier if you put a sense of humour on things, it’s easier to put it out into the world because… I’m kind of lost for words…

Because it’s too personal? And you’re not overtly putting yourself out there?

ZO: Yeah. I think if people put irony in their music it protects them from criticism. People don’t criticise things, they just say that I’m being ironic. That’s not why I’m trying to be funny in the songs though, I guess it just makes it more enjoyable. I don’t think anyone wants to be yelled at [laughs].

I wanted to ask you about one of my favourite ORB songs, ‘Space Between The Planets’…

ZO: Oh nice! That’s mainly Daff’s song, it took us ages to do that one, we got a bit lost in the riffage [laughs]. It turned out well in the end. There’s no secret with the ORB songs, everyone brings riffs and we smash ‘em together and hope they turn out good—it’s that boneheaded! [laughs].

It’s fun to have that too.

ZO: Yeah, the goal was just to have a fun band and just turn it up! We wanted to make it fun live and be nice and loud, because a lot of our stuff was never like that.

Do you write every day?

ZO: Yeah, in some sense. I haven’t done any acoustic guitar writing in ages. I come to the studio every day I can. I make noises in some sense but I’m not like Randy Newman on the piano every day, as much as I wish I was!

Do you have a particular way you go about writing songs?

ZO: At the moment, because I’m working on remixes and I’m trying to do a hip-hop thing with a friend from America, all the stuff is very beat-based. I’ll start that by just finding cool drum loops. It’s totally different from writing song songs on the guitar, proper songs I guess, is that I usually try to hum a melody first in the shower or something, the catchiest bit, the bit everyone usually remembers about the song. If I can come up with a line or a chorus without any instruments first and then I’ll go to the guitar or the piano and work out what the chords are and go from there. That usually works.

Where did your interest in hip-hop come from?

ZO: It’s always been a faint interest. I grew up skateboarding so there’s lots of great songs in skateboarding videos…

Like A Tribe Called Quest!

ZO: Yeah, heaps of that and even stuff like DJ Shadow. A lot of new release hip-hop came out last year that I really liked.

What kind of stuff?

ZO: Quelle Chris had this album called Guns. There’s another guy I like too called Billy Woods he did an album called Hiding Places. They don’t give into the tropes of hip-hop and the beats are a lot weirder, psychedelic is the only way that I could describe it. There’s FX on the vocals and lots of echo. It’s not focusing on the tropes of gangsta stuff, they’re not rapping about cash or cars, it’s more introverted and weird. It kicked off my interest in it more. Obviously things like Madlib and MF Doom; I was late to the MF Doom thing but when I got into it, it was all I listened to for a year.

I love his Danger Doom project and the song ‘Benzie Box’ is an all-time favourite.

ZO: Hell yeah!

My brother and I owned a skateboard shop in the late ‘90s, he had one in the ‘80s too, and I loved all the skate vids with the hip-hop and punk soundtracks.

ZO: That’s cool. It’s such a good way to get into stuff. I’m very thankful for all those movies they really got me into stuff that I still listen to now.

Do you have a song of yours that stands out as one of the quickest ones to write?

ZO: ‘Looking Up’ it’s a song on Nature Strip. I never write songs in one sitting but that one was written in an hour, the whole thing; that’s never ever happened to me before. I said, ok, I’m going to sit down and write a song and then that came out really quickly.

What do you find challenging about songwriting?

ZO: Trying to be too tricky! It’s really a problem that you can get lost in that. I’ve been trying to make songs for around ten years now and you think that progressing with songwriting, you should have more complex melodies and complex chords, but it’s not necessarily the case. You have to try to remind yourself of that all of the time. There’s been times where I try to make the craziest song that I can and have weird chords and a fancy melody but it just turns out shit! If it’s not memorable, it’s just not going to have a connection with anyone. Instinct and when it comes out naturally and quickly, that usually resonates with people more and is more memorable.

When you’re working on things and they’re not working do you try and push through that or do you give up and move on to something else?

ZO: Usually I move on to something else. Sometimes I do just sit there banging my head against the wall for aaaaaages! That never works usually.

Is there anything you do in those times like go for a walk or something?

ZO: I should! [laughs]. But, nah. I really fucking just try to get something out of it. The only other thing that does work is before I go to sleep, when I’m lying in bed; that’s usually the best time for it. You’ll be thinking about your songs and that’s usually when things happen.

Do you think it’s because you’re more relaxed?

ZO: It must be, it has to be.

Do you do anything else creative outside of music?

ZO: Not really. I do some painting every now and then. My dad is a really good drawer and tattoo artist, so I kind of did that before I was doing music. I used to make poems all the time as a kid and that turned into songs. Making music is my main creative outlet, unless you count cooking! I try and cook more frequently now. My girlfriend is a really good cook.

What’s one of your favourite things to cook?

ZO: Lately I’ve just been going for all the different kinds of roasts and trying to master each one [laughs]. Cooking is just really good in general though, especially if you put aside the whole night and take your time. I love doing that!

I love cooking too, I find it really relaxing.

ZO: Yeah, totally.

You mentioned before that you’re working a hip-hop project; are you working on anything else?

ZO: I’m just trying to collaborate as much as I can this year. Because of the situation in the world right now, a lot of my friends that make music are staying inside right now and we’re all just sending music between each other right now and making things together. I was starting another Traffik Island one but I just ended up sending all of those ideas to friends to put stuff over the top. I’m working on things right now but I don’t know exactly what it is right now. I definitely just want to get into doing more collaborative stuff.

Why do you like working collaboratively so much?

ZO: Them bringing something to it that I could never possibly conceive. Just them adding something to it, some of my friends can come up with melodies that I would never imagine! Some people are just better at certain things.

What’s a song you’ve collaborated on that you were totally surprised where someone took it?

ZO: The first song on Peanut Butter… [Bits and Peace (Bullant Remix)] it was remixed by my friend Joe [Walker]. That one is basically the only song on the record made up of samples. I played some of my favourite records into my computer and gave him all the bits, they weren’t in time or anything like that and I told him to make a song out of all those noises—he sent me that! Impressed.

The film clip for your song ‘Ulla Dulla’ is pretty fun.

ZO: My friend John [Angus Stewart] made that, I know everyone says their friend is talented but, he IS insanely talented. He did some other clips, some King Gizzard [And The Lizard Wizard] ones. He asked me if he could make a clip for me. I said, sure. We wanted to try to really go above and beyond and to really try and push through the boundary. We did the clip and it was so tiring, we started at midday and I got home at one in the morning. We were driving all around the city, I think only two or three locations made it into the final clip but there was six. I had to do that dance to that song hundreds of times, I reckon [laughs]. Then it sat around for a couple of months because the album got pushed and of course in that time I started freaking out about it and got real paranoid. I was just so scared of being so open and vulnerable like that. I saw him at a party a few weeks before it came out and went up to him and told him that I don’t think I could go through with the video. He was not having a bar of it. He was like, “Don’t give me that stoner bullshit! It’s coming out.” [laughs].

What was it about it that made you freak out?

ZO: It was just so much of me! I didn’t want it to be The Zak Olsen Show… that kind of shot started getting to me. In the end I’m glad it came out. It definitely elevates the song a bit more. I’m really glad.

You did a lot of touring with ORB last year, right?

ZO: We did an Australian tour with Thee Oh Sees, then we went to America and Europe, so lots of moving around.

How do you find travelling so much?

ZO: Personally, I love it. There’s this weird thing about touring this feeling that… where people can feel like bands are running from responsibility… we were touring with King Gizzard and those guys work, it’s like seven James Browns! …it’s not the case with them, they work way harder than any other band I’ve ever met! If you’re into the second month of touring and you haven’t really made much and there’s not much time to make songs you can kind of get in a weird limbo mode where you think; what am I doing every day? I’m just playing the same songs!

It’s sort of like the movie Groundhog Day?

ZO: Yeah. But it’s still better than any other job you could have. You have to be careful of getting into the bad habits of drinking every day and eating shit food all the time.

Where do you get your hard work ethic from?

ZO: Probably my dad, he’s a little bit of a hard arse [laughs]. I can’t stand the feeling of not thinking I’m doing enough or giving enough. Having said that though, I do love staying in bed all day on Sunday! For me the guilt of not doing enough is way worse than just getting up and doing it.

Please check out: Traffik Island. ORB. Hierophants. @traffik_islanda on Instagram. Button Pusher.

Primo! on New Record Sogni: “Break ups, moving homes, starting new jobs and other life decisions. We focused on the theme of decision making”

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Handmade mixed-media collage by B.

Violetta Del Conte-Race and Xanthe Waite of Melbourne band Primo! gave us an insight into new LP Sogni. This record feels fresh and finds Primo! building on their post-punk sensibilities, experimenting more – the record features saxophone, violin and sound created by dry beans being poured in a bowl. Listening to a Primo! album is like having a conversation with your best friend, you walk away feeling like you can face anything and that you’ve totally got this! Life’s a bunch of choices, make the right decision and buy this record.

Something I’ve always really loved in Primo’s music is the clean guitar; what inspired you towards this sound?

VIO: We enjoy experimenting with different guitar sounds including distortion, pitch shift and chorus, but the clean guitar is great because it contrasts with those harsher or stranger guitar sounds and provides a grounding for the song, particularly a clean rhythm guitar. 

What got you writing for your new record Sogni?

XANTHE: We had a burst of writing over the summer of 2018/19… from memory we kind of set a challenge to try and come up with some new songs because we had been tinkering away for a while without having anything particularly concrete. Most of the songs are really of a time for this reason. There were a lot of changes going on for all of us – break ups, moving homes, starting new jobs and other life decisions. We focused on the theme of decision making as a starting point for the songs … like how do people make decisions and why, acknowledging that there is not always a choice and external factors force change as well. Not all of the demos made it onto the album and it’s a loose theme but that is what got us writing.

Sogni is an Italian word and translates to “dreams”; where did the album’s title come from?

VIO: I was researching Italian words, looking up what certain English words translate to and the idea of dreams came up because of our song ‘Reverie’. When I saw the word ‘sogni’ I liked it because it also kind of looked like the word ‘song’ and I thought dreams really related to a lot of the themes on the record like decision making and matters of the heart because they are things you imagine, dream of or hope for.

This record was collectively written during rehearsals and developed further in a live setting; is there a particular song on the record that took an unexpected turn during that process from where it began that you can tell us about?

VIO: The song ‘Rolling Stone’ took a bit of an unexpected turn during recording. Towards the end of the song we hadn’t quite finalised what we would do, so Amy added the layers of saxophone and I think it really takes the song to a different place than where it starts. Love Amy’s saxophone playing! 

The vocal harmonies in Primo are always so frickin’ cool; how do you approach harmonising in your songs?

VIO: We all really like singing together and have a lot of fun trying out different harmonies or ideas for vocals. Often we sing the same thing in unison with slight differences but on this record we tried to work out harmonies in a bit more of a concrete way, which the recording process helped with as we could listen back to things to hear what worked.

What’s your favourite song on Sogni; can you tell us a little bit about it please?

XANTHE: I think ‘Comedy Show’ and ‘1000 Words’ are two of my faves, I like how they turned out. I like the composition of these songs especially the way the saxophone, keys/synths weave into Primo!’s normal instrumentation. 

Photos courtesy of Primo! Insta.

The final track on your album “Reverie” feels really intimate; what did you tap into to create that mood?

VIO: ‘Reverie’ does have a different mood than our other songs, I think we tapped into the moment of all being there together. From memory, it was the last song we recorded on the day, and I don’t think we had rehearsed it prior to the recording, it was just an idea I had demoed at home. We worked out our approach to playing it while we were in the studio, sitting around in a circle. Later on I added some keys and Xanthe overdubbed some beautiful violin. 

One of the themes that are broached on the record is practicalities of work and daily life; how do you balance your creative life verses the daily grind?

XANTHE: I find the tension of being busy with work and stuff is weirdly conducive to being productive creatively. If I’m working hard at a job or study I tend to value the free time I have more when and know what I want to do with it, which is usually to play, write or record music. Having said that I’ve never really done it any other way. It would be interesting to have a full year of just working on music without doing another thing such as work or study. Maybe we would write five albums or maybe we would struggle to write one… We may never know!

What’s one of your biggest challenges in regards to your creativity? 

XANTHE: I’m really missing being able to play music with Vi, Suz and Amy in person.  I am also doing a law degree at the moment which puts a bit more pressure on the balance I talked about in the question above, it’s a lot of work but I’m loving it and have music plans for the next Uni holiday… looking forward to that.

The world is in such a weird and uncertain place right now, it could be easy to feel a little down with everything that’s going on, isolation etc.; what’s something that never fails in cheering you up?

VIO: Going for a walk and seeing nature, even something growing in someone’s garden, really cheers me up.

Please check out: PRIMO! Primo! on Instagram. Sogni available now via Anti Fade Records.

Program’s Jonno Ross-Brewin: “We’re all about jamming in as many riffs and melody as possible”

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Handmade mixed-media collage by B.

Melbourne’s Program play catchy as fuck power pop. The songs off their debut album Show Me get stuck in your head, so much so that later in your day after listening to them you’ll find yourself humming the melodies to yourself. We spoke to Program co-founder Jonno Ross-Brewin.

Program released their debut album Show Me in October last year; have you been working on anything new?

JR-B: Rory [Heane] and I have been working on stuff for quite a while now. We’re constantly working on stuff. We’re working on the next album, we’re in the early stages.

How long were you working on Show Me for? It took a while, right?

JR-B: It was because it was the first record for the band, we didn’t really mess around with demos or anything. You could say Rory and I were writing songs for a couple of years before it came out. We were in another band before this one for years, we were kind of a mathy-punk-emo-jam band. For a couple of years we started playing guitar, because neither of us played guitar that much. It probably took a year from when we formed the group.

What inspired you towards the sound you have now?

JR-B: How we were feeling about everything. I used to write much more angsty stuff when I was younger because that’s how I felt. Now that I’m older – I’m not sure if it comes across in the music though – there’s a resignation and acceptance and maybe even a slight comedy about stuff. I’m seeing things in a lighter way, I’m being a bit lighter about things. I still feel the same ways I did then but, I’m just better at dealing with stuff. I know what is useful and what to act on and what you can’t really change.

Lyrically Show Me is quite personal.

JR-B: Especially for me. The tracks that I wrote were pretty personal. There’s definitely a mix in writing but the ones that I sung on were ‘Tailwind Blues’, ‘Program’, ‘Unexpected Plans’ and ‘They Know’.

Was there anything in particular that you were going through in your life when you wrote them?

JR-B: Yeah. ‘Unexpected Plans’ and ‘Tailwind Blues’ are basically based on a failed romantic endeavour, where I flew over to the USA for somebody.

Awww man, that sucks, I’m sorry. Why did you decide to kick the record off with ‘Another Day’?

JR-B: That’s what we’re feeling at the moment, there’s elements of repetition and boredom of our lives, that kind of stuff.

I noticed the album has really bright sounding jangly guitars all over it.

JR-B: A lot of that is just from the guitar that I started learning to play guitar on, it’s an old Japanese Fender imitation thing. The stuff that we’ve been writing is definitely inspired by Big Star and more poppy kind of stuff like The Kinks, a lot of Replacements—a lot of heartfelt power pop.

What did you listen to growing up?

JR-B: Neither of us really came from musical families at all. Our parents are the kind of people that would just listen to The Eagles or Bob Marley. When we were kids Rory and I listened to a lot of stuff that I’m probably a bit too embarrassed to mention [laughs]. I was a massive Red Hot Chilli Peppers fan when I was a kid, and that’s what got me into music. Later on there was stuff like The Strokes, stuff like that has massively influenced us.

I’ve seen Red Hot Chilli Peppers live five times and every time they’ve totally sucked. I was so disappointed, because growing up I’d listen to them too.

JR-B: Yeah, I feel exactly the same way too. I only saw them once, when I was eighteen, and that was the last time I listened to them in a non-ironic haha sort of way. They came out for album Stadium Arcadium when they were well after their prime, I was very disappointed. I thought that I was watching little robot ants from a distance.

Pretty much everyone I talk to that’s seen them says they are boring live. You hear them recorded, see their videos and live footage of them overseas and I think, they might be great to see live, then you do and it’s boring! I actually fell asleep at one of their shows.

JR-B: Where was it?

At an Entertainment Centre like a big arena.

JR-B: That’s probably why, because the place was too big. I don’t really rate big venues. All my favourite moments of live music have always been pretty intimate, in bars and smaller settings… except The Pixies, they’re always amazing no matter where they are. I saw them at Golden Plains recently and I saw them ten years ago at Festival Hall, both times amazing!

What’s been one of your favourite musical moments in an intimate setting?

JR-B: Probably my favourite band, who we’re all mates with too, is Possible Humans—I LOVE seeing those guys. We played their launch at The Tote. Every time I see them I love it. They’re really lovely dudes, amazingly lovely dudes!

You and Rory started Program around 2016 but have known each other since the first week of primary school…

JR-B: Yeah, since we were five!

That’s pretty amazing to have a friendship for that long.

JR-B: It’s wild! We live together as well. It helps us make music, we understand what each other wants.

Can you tell us a little bit about the recording of Show Me?

JR-B: We recorded most of it live except the vocals and a few overdubs. We did that in a day down in Geelong, in Billy [Gardner]’s warehouse. Billy from Anti Fade has this little rehearsal studio down in these old army barracks in Geelong. We drove down to Geelong for the day.

What made you want to do it live?

JR-B: We just heard his Civic recordings and we thought that sounded amazing! I’m pretty sure they did most of it live as well, so we were really happy for him to do it. There wasn’t too much thought actually, we were like, let’s just do this! We weren’t even sure about it all to be honest until we heard it.

We would have officially formed the band in 2018, Rory and I had songs we were doing but we hadn’t officially got anyone together. We were probably just jamming for about a year because we didn’t even know what we were going to sound like and it took a while. We started playing a few shows, mainly house parties. Not long after that Rory bumped into Billy at a party and Billy said “I’d like to record you guys”. We were lucky. When Billy was mixing it, he got an idea of it and just asked if he could put it out. He seemed to really like it. Things just really worked out.

I love that there’s so much melody on the album.

JR-B: There’s a lot of that. We’re all about jamming in as many riffs and melody as possible.

What was the thought behind the album art?

JR-B: The idea was Rory’s but it was a group effort. We went through a lot of ideas of me trying to draw up stuff and it was getting close to the release date and Rory was like “What about kids playing Four Square?” I found a cool image of it and the album is called Show Me and the vibe is the idea of having a young view of the world, not knowing what to do. I did the little squiggly bits then our bassist James Kane came in – he does a lot of posters and stuff so he’s really good on the design perspective – we put it together. I did the drawings and James put it together on Photoshop and did the font.

It sounds like everything just happens really organically for you guys?

JR-B: Yeah, I think it’s because we’re all really old friends. Jessie [Fernandez] and the two James’ we’ve all known each other for ten years. It was all very low-key, let’s just get these dudes because we like them. Jessie saw our first show and told us she’d been playing keys and asked if she could play keys for us, and after six months we said, let’s do it! She’s not on the album because we recorded it before she joined. Hopefully keys are going to be really prominent on the next recording.

What kind of direction are you headed in now sound-wise?

JR-B: With the songs we’ve done we’ve set it up so there’s kind of different genres in each song – some songs are more punky, others are more poppy, some are even folky – I think we’re going to still run with that for a bit. We’ll keep doing this until it sounds shit and then we’ll probably try something else.

What’s the part of songwriting you find challenging?

JR-B: I find the details challenging [laughs]. I’m better at coming up with chords and a vocal melody. Rory is a much better musician than I am, he’s really good at all the technical stuff and riffs.

My lyrics are very direct and personal. I don’t like them to be too overthought. I like them being accessible and easy to hear but upon more analysis they mean more. I try to do that, I don’t know if that actually happens though [laughs].

I really like the track ‘Memory’ on the record I think it’s a good blend of Rory and I as writers. There’s not much effort put into it but I really like the result, it sees effortless.

Do you edit yourself much?

JR-B: Definitely. Usually I’ll write on my phone and then go over it and fine tune it over a period of months. It never ends up being anywhere near what I initially write. I always reduce it to all that’s needed. We definitely spend a lot of time on the tracks.

Who are the songwriters you admire?

JR-B: My gods are David Bowie and Neil Young. I like how epic Bowie is and how heartfelt Young is. There’s a lot I like though. Maybe Ray Davies as well, I like his tongue-in-cheek and catchiness.

What’s been influencing the songs you’ve been writing lately?

JR-B: The same everyday stuff and personal things.

What do you do outside of music?

JR-B: I work full-time as an Operating Theatre Technician. I set up for surgery. Most of my music just takes up everything around that.

What an interesting job.

JR-B: It is at the start. I work in a smallish hospital with the same surgeons, so you get to know each surgeon and what they’re like then it becomes pretty repetitive and dull. But in some ways it’s good because I’ll be sitting there and in my head can be coming up with lyrics. Rory does the same thing, we both work in the same place.

Wow! You guys are so linked.

JR-B: Yep, that’s it!

It’s pretty special to share so many things in life with someone.

JR-B: Yeah, I’m pretty grateful. It’s pretty amazing!

Anything else you want to tell me?

JR-B: I think at the end of all this isolation period there’s going to be so many people coming out with stuff. Rory and I are working on demos. We’re just trying to make good songs, nice songs. We’re on to the next one and excited about that!

Please check out: PROGRAM. Show Me out on Anti Fade Records. Program on Facebook. Program on Instagram.

Nellie Pearson From Melbourne Brat-beat Punk Band Ubik: “We’re all sitting at home getting weird because of the global pandemic. Instead of being at all productive… I wear soft pants and play video games”

| gimmiezine
Handmade mixed-media collage by B.

We love Melbourne’s Ubik with their brat-beat anarcho-punk stylings. They’re inspired by sci-fi & horror films as well as politics; who can tell the difference between the two right now though, with politics in Australia feeling like a sci-fi dystopian horror movie. We interviewed bassist-vocalist Nellie Pearson.

How did you discover music?

NELLIE PEARSON: I grew up with my parents being obsessed with classical music, and being forced/being privileged to learn classical instruments. As soon as I had any independence I started obsessing about modern music, reading old Q magazines at the library as a tween, buying Oasis cassingles etc.

How did you first get into making your own music?

NP: My first band was over a decade ago in Wellington; me and some other young women decided to all give it a go for the first time since we were a bit sick of seeing a heavily cis-dude hardcore scene. Thought it couldn’t be that fucking hard. It wasn’t! mostly.

What’s a record that had a really big impact on you; what was it about it?

NP: Honestly I’m a bit of a song magpie; I listen to my personal greatest hits of every band so often don’t go deep into a full album anymore (since it became an Online Streaming World). I refuse to apologise for this. The two DiE 7”s I was obsessed with for ages. I’m also a huge fan of ’90s British sort of stuff, so the Stone Roses self-titled has certainly had a huge impact on me. Definitely honed my ears for how a rhythm section can work together.

When you first started Ubik everyone had other bands – Masses, Red Red Krovvy and Faceless Burial + more; what inspired you to start Ubik?

NP: Tessa and Ash had plans to do like… an oi band I think? Then I inserted myself and suggested my friend Chris as a drummer. It was his first time in a band and Tessa’s first time playing guitar/writing. We sort of just went from there, had fun and ran with it.

You’ve had a couple of line-up changes; what’s something you can tell me about each person in your current line-up?

NP: Only one line-up change; Max has been the drummer for over 3 years, and we’ve been a band for less than 4. Ash and Tessa own two fluffy weird cats each. Max has a giant young dog and I have a tiny old dog. 

What’s your favourite song you’ve written? What’s it about?

NP: My favourite is ‘Sleep’. It has equal doses of dumb head bang and fiddly fun bits for me to play, personally. And good dynamics within the structure. I think it’s just about anxiety induced insomnia, which is something most people can identify with. 

Vid by PBS 106.7fm.

On the Ubik/Cold Meat split release each of you have a homage to amazing women in punk, Siouxsie Sioux and Exene Cervenka of X; why did you chose to cover X’s “Nausea”?

NP: We supported Cold Meat when they visited Melbourne (the first time but not the last time that happened, I think?), and we were all fans of each other. The singers of both bands are redheaded childcare workers called Ash so we were drunk and like hurhurhur Ash and Bizarro Ash (I still don’t know which is which). The split idea happened, and they had done their Banshees cover that night so we thought we’d get matchy-matchy.

Last year Ubik released Next Phase MLP; what sparked the idea to write the songs ‘John Wayne (Is A Cowboy (And Is On Twitter)’?

NP: This is one of my favourites, Ash-lyrics-wise. I believe it’s directed at internet right-wingers, trolls, MRAs, and other general digital filth. Skewering the misunderstanding of “free speech”, and pointing out how “free thinking” doesn’t often overlap with critical thinking.

What about “Peter Dutton Is A Terrorist”?

NP: Peter Dutton IS a terrorist. Music-wise, Tessa wanted to do another very anarcho song, so I always picture myself in a ‘80s squat playing this one. The lyrics that Ash wrote do a great job of expressing the shame and sadness regarding Australia’s offshore concentration camps, and the horrifying treatment that Peter Dutton and other potato-headed fascist stool samples think is justified in regards to refugees and asylum seekers. Just an utter lack of the basics of humanity.

Mikey Young recorded and mixed Next Phase MLP and your self-titled EP and mixed and mastered the Cold Meat split; how did you come to working with him?

NP: The self-titled EP was actually recorded by Adam Ritchie in the same session as the Cold Meat split. Max and Mikey go way back both personally and musically, so it was a great choice. It was very quiet and laid-back, and we were doing it all in one day (minus box) so we all just put our heads down and worked. He was, as usual, impeccable.

Who in the band has a love for sci-fi and horror films? You had song “The Fly” and one of your shirts featured Debbie Harry when she was in Videodrome; can you recommend anything else cool we should check out?

NP: I’m pretty sure all of us are sci-fi and horror fans. Genre stuff definitely goes with the punk territory in general. Me and Ash in particular are big on Cronenberg. Most of it has naturally stemmed from the name (evidently the Phillip K Dick book), and Ash’s specific interests, since she writes all the lyrics. I’ve been watching a lot of ‘90s movies with their visions of futuristic virtual reality; very pretty, very silly, very fun. Apart from the obvious Johnny Mnemonic, recently I really liked Virtuosity, where Russell Crowe plays a virtual reality murderer who crosses over into the real world. 

Have you been working on new music?

NP: Both me and Tessa have scraps of stuff, and we had one or two songs almost ready by the end of the Next Phase recording session. However we’ve all been madly busy, then we toured Japan, and now we’re all sitting at home getting weird because of the global pandemic. Instead of being at all productive while staying at home, I wear soft pants and play video games.

Other than making music do you do anything else creative?

NP: Most of my time is taken up with bands. I used to write but I realised I hate it.  Give me two more weeks of social distancing/isolation and I’ll probably start a podcast, just to make 2020 even worse.

Please check out: UBIK. Ubik demo on Lost In Fog Records/Distro. Ubik’s self-titled EP via Aarght Records. Next Phase MLP via Iron Lung Records. Ubik/Cold Meat split via Helta Skelta Records.

Shepparton Airplane’s Matt Duffy on new LP Sharks: “People are often ‘sharks’… it touches on the darker side of humanity… particularly men are the worst sharks of all”

| gimmiezine
Handmade mixed-media collage by B.

Melbourne’s Shepparton Airplane are about to unleash their best album yet into the world. Sharks sees the band stride confidently into a more noisy and in moments more punky and shoegaze-y territory than previous efforts that were rooted firmly in ’90s post-punk and ’80s oz-rock. This is a mature evolution garnered from years of playing together and the synthesises of true mateship. We spoke to guitarist-vocalist Matt Duffy to dive deep into the making of Sharks, and we also discovered his deep seated love for band, Fuagzi.

We’ve been listening to your new record Sharks a lot since we got the sneak peek a week or so ago, it’s almost time for it to be released into the world; how are you feeling?

MATT DUFFY: We’re really happy with it. We went to a bit more effort than we have with the last two [Self-titled and Almurta]. We’re happy with how it sounds, especially since we got the test pressings back and can actually listen to it on vinyl—it sounds awesome!

Did you have an idea for what you wanted it to sound like from the beginning?

MD: Yeah, we did. We recorded a lot of stuff. Before we recorded that album we had twenty-something songs, some were finished, some not. We went through all of our recordings from rehearsals and the ten that we picked for the record just seemed to work together really well as a full experience rather than a bunch of songs just slapped together.

The record seems a lot more shoegaze-y and noisy and punky as well compared to previous releases.

MD: Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff going on. In one way it’s all over the shop but somehow it all makes sense. The two albums before have certain feels throughout them and didn’t jump around a lot like this one. We jam a lot and come up with all kinds of things.

I think I like this one the best out of all of your albums.

MD: [Laughs] I think we do too! I know the band always likes their latest thing the most though! [laughs]. The first two albums we did all ourselves but this time we thought we should go to a really nice studio [Sing Sing Recording Studios] and get some cool sounds, record on tape and put it in someone else’s hands to get an outside perspective. I think that helped a lot doing something different.

You worked with producer Anna Laverty.

MD: Yeah, she’s awesome! Most of us have worked with her before, half the band is in The Peep Tempel and she’s recorded all of their albums. I did some stuff with them too even though I’m not in that band. We’ve got a good working relationship with her, she’s great to bounce ideas off and tell us when we’ve done something good or not good [laughs]. She’s really, really, really good at what she does and she’s a good friend. It made sense to do it with her.

I love album opener ‘Citrus’ it’s a beautiful song.

MD: That song came out of nowhere. Most of our songs come from the four of us bashing it out in the rehearsal room. We work on things on our own too though, that was one that Steve [Carter] our drummer brought in. He had it half-formed, he did a recording at home on this electronic drum kit and a bunch of synths and we just added guitars to it. Once the whole band gets into a song it usually changes into something even better. That song took on a few different forms, it morphed from a weird electro thing to a shoegaze-y thing. When we recorded with Anna she said it had an indigenous-feel to it, she said it sounded like percussion with sticks. We never had really thought of it that way. It had an English ‘90s shoegaze-feel to an Australian desert touch to it.

I put it on first thing this morning and it’s actually a really nice song to start your day.

MD: I think so too. It does get a bit chaotic though [laughs]. It was always going to be the first song on the album, it’s a cruisy instrumental.

What were the songs that you worked on by yourself and brought into everyone?

MD: The second one [‘Say What Again’] was one that I had started about a year ago just messing around. When I record something on my own I don’t necessarily think it’s going to be a Shepparton Airplane song, I just do stuff for fun. I had all the music done and thought it could work well with the band; someone always brings something new to stuff and it really brings it to life! It’s quite exciting when that happens. There’s been a few on the album that was someone’s throw away song but together we’ve moulded it into something cool. The lyric ideas sometimes come from one of us just shouting things freeform and then someone else might get an idea for the lyrics. It’s great having freedom in the band where no one is calling the shots, we’re all in together.

Another track I really loved on the album is ‘No Stars’.

MD: That was an epic jam that came out of nowhere. At one point it was 16 minutes long, we kept chopping it down. Longer it was a little bit too self-indulgent [laughs]. We eventually got it down to eight and a half minutes.

What’s the song ‘Fear’ about?

MD: That just came together from jamming it out. Myself and Stu the bass player were both at the time talking about a bunch of documentaries we’d been watching on cults. We both had written a bunch of lyrics on that topic, we put them together and realised we’d written the same song! Music-wise it came together so organically, we didn’t labour over it too much. There’s bits in it… though it may not totally sound like it but, to us we can hear influences in it, there’s a Slayer bit, a guitar part that sounds like it, or an AC/DC part. Lyrically you may be talking about cults but you may as well be talking about government. We never try to write too topical though because stuff can often become dated. We don’t want to do what everyone else is doing too.

What kind of feeling do you get when you play?

MD: That’s a good question. There’s a lot of adrenalin, even in the quieter moments. The way we feed off each other works well. There’s a really good chemistry between us and I feel that’s infectious with the punters too, we all feed of each other. We have a party but it’s also dark and joyous too.

The new album is very much a journey.

MD: I’m glad that you said that, I’ve been trying to write bios and stuff and I started writing and used that word but thought it sounded naff coming from me but, I’m so glad you’ve said that because we truly do feel that! [laughs].

It so is! You put it on and your start with ‘Citrus’ and then you go through the rollercoaster of emotions in each song before ending with ‘Fleeting’.

MD: I’ve felt it too. We really made sure we captured that when we chose the songs, put them together – there’s three short, loud punk songs we chucked in the middle – to take you places. We thought the two instrumentals were perfect to bookend it all. It’s all really beautiful. We didn’t want to take things too far though and put on it everything we’ve ever liked; we all love hip hop but were not going to do a hip hop song on this record. We couldn’t pull it off convincingly.

We were just talking about how there’s lots of cool guitar moments throughout the record; what’s your favourite?

MD: ‘No Stars’ because there’s so much going on. We had a scratchy recording of it and we turned it around and created a Yo La Tengo sounding song and turned it into an epic journey. We had to learn it again because we just made it up on the spot. The guitar in that is a highlight of the album for me. It’s probably the cleanest guitar we’ve done too, a lot of our earlier stuff is driven and distorted. We don’t usually use loads of effects too, that song is a guitar plugged straight into an amp.

Until you guys got to this album I don’t think I ever would have used the word beautiful to describe your music.

MD: [Laughs] I certainly wouldn’t have either!

The album has a really nice feel.

MD: Yeah. Because we’ve been playing for a few years now we’re able to do a lot more things, we’ve developed and we sincerely mean what we’re playing—we own it and play it convincingly. We really wanted to make the album move around, some of my favourite bits are the most pleasant bits!

Anna has worked with Lady Gaga and Florence and the Machine who are poppy and have a really slick sound; do you think she helped in getting you to the sound on this record too?

MD: Yeah, she’s done all kinds of stuff. One of her biggest qualities is that she gets what we’re doing. She saw us live a few times and always said she’d love to work with us. She worked well in terms of not getting in the way of anything, she let us do everything we wanted. She’s great for positive reinforcement. It was a pleasant experience.

Where did the album title Sharks come from?

MD: Steve threw that out one day, I was immediately “I’m in” because I’m obsessed with sharks [laughs], they’re incredible. There’s so many different ideas you can draw from the word sharks. People are often “sharks”. If there is an underlying theme on the record it’s that it touches on the darker side of humanity. Sharks are seen as big fearsome creatures whereas in real life they’re not. But people sharks, particularly men are the worst sharks of all. The art work plays into that too, people hunting a shark, this is the fucked up things that people do.

How did you first come to playing guitar?

MD: When I was a little kid around eight, my sister who is ten years older than me had a crappy acoustic guitar. She was learning it at school but didn’t do anything with it so I got it and when I was twelve I got my first electric guitar. I really got into it in my teens. I spent about ten years playing bass in bands then came back to the guitar. I’m not a virtuoso but I’m happy with that because it lends itself to more creativity. If you don’t know if things you’re playing is wrong, all you have to do is care if you think it sounds good. You can give yourself nightmares or you can bliss out! [laughs]. I love having the freedom to do whatever.

Anything else to tell me?

MD: A lot early on we were more conscious that we didn’t want to sound like anyone else. We’d come up with something we’d think sounded really cool and then listen back to a song and be like, that sounds exactly like Fugazi! We love Fugazi but we can’t sound exactly like them, otherwise people are going to think we sound like Fugazi [laughs]. This time around we were like, oh, that sounds like Hüsker Dü or that sounds like Sonic Youth and we’re like, fuck it who cares what anyone else thinks! We love those bands, why pretend we’re not influence by them. Freeing ourselves up from that was a real turning point for us.

Did you see Fugazi when they came to Australia?

MD: I did! They’re pretty much my #1 favourite band ever, still to this day! They’re incredible live. I can’t deny their influence on everything I have ever done really [laughs]. They’re one of those bands that are four people playing together that really feed off each other and improvise a lot and there’s a real connection that goes beyond people writing songs. It was in the late ‘90s more than 20 years ago! I saw them twice, two nights in a row. Steve our drummer and I went. I just remember being totally blown away. I have the recordings of those shows, because they recorded all of their shows over their career.

Yeah, you can buy them from Dischord.

MD: Yeah. I have a bunch of those, all the shows I’ve seen, you get to relive it! They were playing songs they hadn’t recorded yet – they played all my favourite songs off of all my favourite albums – I was like, what is all of this?! There was an interlude in the middle of the show and they were playing all this kind of stuff that I’d never heard them do. I was blown away. It was cool with everyone being there to see a band they love and hear all the songs they know but then Fugazi playing all this unheard stuff. I guess they just had the confidence to throw completely new things at us that was a real departure from their other stuff. I remember being completely impressed by that. Everything about them is incredible—there’s very few bands you can say that about.

Please check out: SHEPPARTON AIRPLANE. Sharks out April 17 on Wing Sing Records. SA on Facebook.

New War’s Chris Pugmire: “I get giddy, high, almost hysterical. Then I get obsessed and need to explore it from every possible angle. Then I chase that compulsion again”

| gimmiezine
Original photo by Nathan Howdeshell. Handmade mixed-media collage by B.

New War are one of those special bands: they defy genre; they have voice, keys, bass, guitar and drums yet there feels like there is so much more going on; they push boundaries and most importantly their music has the ability to move you intensely and deeply. Their self-titled LP and follow up Coin are always on high rotation at Gimmie HQ. Latest record Trouble In The Air saw New War take up a new challenge recording in Melbourne Town Hall using it’s four-story high Grand Organ—the resulting collection of songs is haunting and transcendental. We chatted to vocalist Chris Pugmire about the album, the deep side of art, discovering music, being history buff, a transformative year spent in Germany as a teen, anarchism, lyricism and more.

As an artist what are the things that you value the most?

CHRIS PUGMIRE: Art that’s strong and slippery, that refracts meaning in a new way each time you approach it, that has the sense of a truth that isn’t fixed and didactic but introduces you to worlds or ideas you hadn’t considered or been exposed to before – even (or especially) if it comes from you. Art that expands or reflects your own inner and outer worlds, that has a complex emotional core that can take intimidating subjects like politics or history or economics or whomever controls whom and crack them open, make them seem less inevitable. Whether I make it or someone else makes it doesn’t particularly matter, I want to be thrilled. When I make something that ticks those boxes I’m ecstatic.

Same if I discover someone else. I get giddy, high, almost hysterical. Then I get obsessed and need to explore it from every possible angle. Then I chase that compulsion again. I make it or find someone. And so often it has nothing to do with money and what money does to art and people, it is money’s antithesis. It can be any act of creation: music, painting, drawing, literature, film, photography, birth, life, sex, death… etc, etc.

Why is music important to you?

CP: It combines so many senses. Hearing of course. But you physically feel it, bass pushing against your stomach and chest, treble pricking at all your nerve endings, beats making your heart race and whole lower torso to move in time. Vocals making synapses fire and drawing tears and shivering your spine. Sudden changes or silence or spikes or climaxes of emotion that make your head tingle, your cheeks hot. And that’s only physical. It’s so powerful, it can change your whole worldview in a few minutes. It can make you feel just about anything. It’s that alchemy, it makes you something new.

How did you first discover music?

CP: It happened via the radio, talking to friends and sharing mixtapes. Taking a punt on an album or a show because the cover or flyer looked interesting or you vaguely remembered a review. Like going to see Bikini Kill because it was this new kinda secret thing, what’s this all about? and feeling zapped by a zillion watt thunderclap. I read one of the ladies in Huggy Bear looked like a mean supermarket checker so I jumped at Taking the Rough with the Smooch which blew my mind. Swell Maps’ Trip to Marineville had the house on fire which was impossible to resist, there was no way it could sound bad with that cover.

I had (and have) a really cool older friend named Jennifer who I worked at a coffee shop with when I was 17, 18 and she made the best mixtapes with stuff like Opal, Thinking Fellers Union, Scorn, Faust, etc. and took me to see stuff like Tindersticks with a fake ID (most good shows were 21+). Then I volunteered at the Velvet Elvis, a great, slightly lawless all-ages club and it just kept going…

When you were sixteen you spent a year in Germany, previously you’ve mentioned that it was really instrumental for you; how? Could you please share with us a little about that year?

CP: I was raised Mormon and my world was very small. I was a little tuning fork and the church’s instilled fear, patriarchy, homophobia, sexual repression, etc. struck and struck at me and its deeply ugly tones felt like the spiritual death I was supposed to be being indoctrinated against. During the first Gulf War there was a palpable bloodlust both at church and school and it revolted me, so much I refused to speak for its six weeks. But my parents were for the most part not as rigid or cruel as this culture even though they made me be part of it and it was deeply confusing.

So when I went to Germany shortly after it was like the veil was lifted. I still had to go to church but it wasn’t the all-encompassing experience it was at home. In Germany I saw neo-Nazis spring up in the aftermath of reunification. You’d see them at soccer matches abusing African players or occasionally roaming the city, they were terrifying. There were attacks on Turks and Kurds and other immigrants in Mölln and Rostock. Part of a large family were murdered by fascist arson in Solingen. There were quite full-on demonstrations.

My cousin Jonny and I shared a room and we’d talk all night about that stuff, church, the future,  music, everything we could think of. We both had a taste for adventure and got up to a lot of no good. At school we studied Woyzeck (both play and film) and that had a profound impact on me as well, the instability of men’s emotions and how they could slip from desire to violence and how class and its humiliations played such a malign role in that destabilisation. The beginning of a lifelong fascination with the machinations of power and all little steps of experience and tastes of freedom that meant the church lost its grip and in a few years I wriggled free.

Your new record, Trouble In The Air, was recorded live at Melbourne Town Hall using its Grand Organ; what inspired this?

CP: It wasn’t something we considered or imagined until the invitation was extended by the curator. What a fun challenge, how would we pull it off?! We thought it gave us the chance to try a different palette both with the organ (simultaneous new possibilities and limitations) and drums. Our live engineer had done sound there and suggested drum machine might be preferable for the sake of clarity and balance between everyone.

You recorded the record live in 2017 and now in 2020 it’s seeing the light of day; in hindsight what are your feelings about this record?

CP: I like that it happened and it’s not overthought. That it’s a snapshot of freshly written songs the first and possibly only time they’ll be performed.

What mood were you trying to capture on this recording?

There’s a lot of moods. “Emerald Dream Eyes” is a love song. “Purple Heart” and “Cocaine Blue are mourning songs. “I am Position Yellow” is a frustration song. “Bang On” is a mystery song. “Redbeard USA” is an investigation song. And there’s a lot of other little moods in each song as well, and they all exist within the title and that’s the vision and overarching mood. All three records are like that. I mean it sounds dumb, of course they are. But they really are.

I understand that you wrote the record over three months, which is a very short time for New War compared to how you would usually write; how did that influence your song writing?

CP: It was the first time we’d written our parts separately, where we were emailing ideas back and forth and building the songs up at home and then rehearsing solid ideas with a lot of focus. Our other records were written by playing in a room every week for several years and refining initial ideas over a long period of time. And the same lyrically, often starting as a really long stream of consciousness and gradually whittling down to rhymes because I think decent rhymes are really hard! We’ve probably lost about two or three records worth of songs just by being picky. So for this record, because of the time constraint, we had to set all that aside and make all the initial ideas work quickly because there wasn’t time to nitpick. It was refreshing being able to accomplish not only the writing but the performance, it made me only want to think of new ways to approach any future recordings.

Lyrically what kinds of themes do you find yourself drawn to? Are they ever reoccurring?

CP: Just observing the world… what’s happening now, what happened before, how that affects what’s happening now… same with my life, my past, my present, the same thing… And dreams are a big part, whether their own thing or relating to all the aforementioned stuff. There’s a thread through all the songs and albums, there’s recurring images and words just like there are in dreams, history, life…

Who are your favourite lyricists?  

CP: I’ve always loved and found new ways to appreciate Kim Gordon. Her new record is conceptually and in its execution the work of a master. Revisiting Dirty and Goo recently, which were two of the first CDs I bought, I’m so struck by her incredible character acting and how wide her emotional range is. And that she’s so funny. And that she writes such complex moods into such accessible language.

I love Bim Sherman, Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail is a total genius lyricist and great essayist as well, Horace Andy, Ari Up and Viv Albertine, Nas, all of Wu Tang, Bahamadia, Guru, Rakim, Mobb Deep, AZ, Ana da Silva, all of Huggy Bear, Jarvis Cocker, Iggy Pop, Mark E Smith… The Sleaford Mods guy is fantastic. I’ve always loved Nisa from Fabulous Diamonds’ lyrics… I could go on forever.

What were the challenges you faced making this record in such a space and using the organ?

CP: That we only got to rehearse once before performing! Jesse got to play the organ a few times late at night (and besides the fact there’s so many keyboards on the organ itself he said it was like playing grandma’s organ), but we only had one full band rehearsal with the organ, using our shitty PA running both vocals and drum machine. So trying to write for such a weird instrument in such a big space and having to basically imagine how it would all sound until the day of the performance was hard.

Aside from music I’ve heard that you’re a history buff; where did this fascination stem from?

CP: Yeah! Mostly because history is so crazy and so much of it gets buried. I’m not into conspiracy but I love secret histories. Like how the Bolshevik and western versions of the Russian Revolution are total bullshit written by the victor or misinterpreted by the enemy.

Voline’s ‘The Unknown Revolution’ and Peter Arshinov’s ‘History of the Makhnovist Movement’ (as well as Nestor Makhno’s own writings) flesh out such a radically different version of the Revolution and the Civil War, where’s Makhno’s (Ukranian Anarchist) Black Army defeated the White (Monarchist) Army on several occasions, only to be double crossed by the Red Army, which as with Kronstadt, didn’t hesitate to eliminate anyone to the left of them in order to consolidate power. It’s where communism in the 20th century first fails as a humanist, revolutionary project and lapses into authoritarianism and portents the Ukranian Holodomor in the 1920s, Spain in the 1930s, Hungary in 1956, Prague in 1968, as well as Maoism in the Cultural Revolution and its variants in Cambodia, North Korea, etc. I think these are lessons the left always has to remind itself of, whether it’s a political or cultural tendency to lapse into Bolshevism. You have to plan for it or every worthy project from the smallest collective to a state eventually falls prey to authoritarians. Which sucks for everybody.

I digress. This fascination stems from stories, which the best histories are. Whether reading Lipstick Traces or Howard Zinn or Robert Fisk in my early 20s or reading Svetlana Alexievich or Ryszard Kapuscinski now, the best history tells everyday – but extraordinary – people’s stories with a novelist’s touch and a journalist’s economy and commitment to the facts. 

In true history nerd style, did you research the space before you performed/recorded there?

CP: All I knew was that the organ had burnt down at some point and had to be rebuilt? Jesse and I went and saw a classical organist perform on an afternoon not long after we got the commission. Watching that gave us the sense it wasn’t going to be easy, ha.

You were also once an Anarchist collective bookstore owner; are there any Anarchist ideas present in your life today?

CP: It wasn’t ownership in the classic sense but I was responsible for a few years. Are there still Anarchist ideas in my life? Absolutely. I might go weasel words and say anarcho-communist or libertarian socialist or whatever. I think mutual aid is the building block, that people innately lean towards cooperation and that hierarchy isn’t necessary for a society to function. That a more central apparatus would work better as a federation made up of worker’s councils or neighbourhood councils or whatever. And you’ve got to prevent that ossification that allows for authoritarians to get a foothold and consolidate power. I wish I was organised enough to be less of a worker and ‘artist’ and more of a proper agitator. I think that’s half the reason we’re in the shit because too many people wanna be artists instead of the hard yards of organising and that’s been the one of the main reasons elites have been able to wind back the clock to the 1920s or even Victorian times. Everyone’s pissed off but we don’t have our eye all the way on the ball. And the right wing always sticks together no matter what. And they don’t give a shit about culture in terms of it getting in the way of doing their job. The left needs to learn from that. Get tight and get organised and stay that way.

I know that New War like to keep moving forward and not repeat themselves; what’s next?

CP: Not sure yet but it’ll have to be interesting and different (to us) or it won’t happen.

Please check out: NEW WAR. Trouble In The Air out on Heavy Machinery Records. Coin available via It Records and New War via All Tomorrow’s Parties. There’s also a Ghostwalking 12″ release featuring Gossip/HTRK mixes on Fast Weapons.

The Stroppies get set to release new LP Look Alive!: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

| gimmiezine
Handmade collage by B.

Melbourne band The Stroppies’ music is the best parts of jangly British C86 and New Zealand’s Flying Nun in its heyday with their own transformative modernisation. There’s a lot of bright moments to be found on forthcoming LP Look Alive! (out May 1 on UK label Tough Love Records), shining moments of poetry and simplicity. We spoke to Stroppies’ guitarist-vocalist Gus Lord to shed light on the new album.

Your new album Look Alive! was written mostly on the road, which I understand is a different process for The Stroppies than what you’d normally do?

GUS LORD: Yeah, I’ve never done anything like that before. Last year was really full throttle. We were in plans to go back to Europe this year, making new music felt just like the right thing to do. It was an interesting process working out of a notebook in a car.

What was the first song you wrote for this LP?

GL: The first one we wrote for the album was “Burning Bright”. We wrote that one before we went on tour actually on a Saturday morning screw around with me and Rory [Heane; drums]. The original demo is quite strange.

We like strange! Strange is good.

GL: Yeah, strange is good! There’s meters of tape in our studio space that would have a lot of stranger things on them that may one day see the light of day.

I hope so. What kinds of things were inspiring the songs?

GL: From my perspective and process, I’m just putting down words and putting threads together; I have to keep follow that, until those threads inform me what the themes are. Once I get an idea of what the themes are going to be, I fishhook that onto a personal experience. With the last record [Whoosh!] I was writing from the perspective of other people, whereas this record is a little more personal. They’re not confessional songs but they’re going a little further under the skin than the last set of songs did.

Did you find it harder to write more personal songs?

GL: I think they’re still very much stories, my definition of what makes a personal song is probably far removed from your Ed Sheeran or whoever is popular right now. Not explicitly really, when you’re doing it right things are relatively unconscious. I think songwriting is just hard full stop, at least it is for me.

What’s the story behind title track “Look Alive!”?

GL: When you frame something in the context of a title for a body of work it subtly re-contextualises it. It seemed like a funny thing to call the record. It insinuates alertness and has those connotations to army lingo. For me, I just thought the two words looked nice together. I had the phrase written in my phone for a little while and when we decided to call the album that, I was looking for a name for the album’s title song; I managed to whittle that into the second verse.

I’ve been looking at all the track names and it’s almost like it’s telling a story as you’re progressing through the album.

GL: Yeah. If you’re thinking of the first two singles that we put out “Holes In Everything” is a sweet affectionate song, the sentiment at least. Whereas “Burning Bright” is more discerning and unsure of itself. Both songs are about relationships, different parts of those relationships.

Where do you write the song “Aisles Of The Supermarket”?

GL: That was one of the other songs that we wrote at home. It was partly written in our front room, we recorded four different demos of it and it wasn’t until the final moment when we went into another person’s studio and ran a bunch of tape loops behind it that the song found its feet. That was a Claudia [Serfaty; bass-vocals] one, she had the poem that we put to the music.

You recorded your album in December last year?

GL: Yeah, it was a pretty quick turnaround.

Your last album Whoosh! was recorded in a studio and your work before that was recorded at home, now you’re back to doing stuff at home again; how’s it feel to be back in the more familiar environment, your own space?

GL: Better! I feel a sense of ease and comfort. A precedent that I wanted to establish with the band was not being locked into any one style of recording or benchmark of production. We’ve always done stuff fifteen instruments on a tiny little cassette player and then big studio affairs. It felt like that this recording was a nice synthesis of the two. We got to track it at home with Alex Macfarlane who put out our first record and has been helping us out with stuff since the band first started. We took the master tapes to the studio where we recorded Whoosh! and mixed it down there. I definitely prefer having space and time and my own house to whittle out ideas. It’s a nice working process for sure.

On Whoosh! you used rain sticks and an old door frame for percussion; did you use anything interesting on Look Alive! to create sounds?

GL: I bought a sampling keyboard from Cash Converters which is pretty much all over the record. It was a crummy, beaten up thing that runs on floppy disks and we just ran a bunch of stuff into that and tracked it in. The good thing about a sampling keyboard is you save a lot of space. There’s nothing too obtuse that went on this record beyond your regular guitar music fanfare.

I love that you picked up something inexpensive at Cash Converters and used that on your new record. Using stuff like that you can get sounds no one else has!

GL: Of course! At a hundred bucks a new piece of gear can stimulate parts of your process or give a certain project and certain sound. When your outgoings are that low it’s worth taking the financial risk and seeing what happens, that was a good one for us.

I’ve read that when you were making Whoosh! you were having a little self-doubt; are you more confident writing this time around?

GL: No, not really [laughs]. It’s just par for the course. The greatest joy I feel in the process is when I’m doing it alone or when we’re actually in the process of working the songs out. Everything after that is a bit overwhelming! We end up getting through it none the less.

You made the song “Entropy” from your last album by yourself didn’t you?

GL: Yeah. I recorded a demo of it which I think is the definitive version of it. The version on the album is cool but… it’s the one song that I guess for lack of time, we hadn’t learnt it so I recorded it. It came out pretty cool, it has a different flavour from everything else.

Totally. That song was one of my standout favourites of last year. The way you sing it, the feeling in it… it’s one of those songs you hear and you’re like, how does something this cool even exist?

GL: That you so much, that’s very kind.

What’s one of your favourite things about your new record?

GL: It’s a little more playful and organic. I feel like every time we write and record we’re moving closer to what this band should be, we’re figuring stuff out. I think with a lot of other bands I’ve been in, generally around this time you start to feel malaise, whereas with this I feel invigorated with this to keep going. There’s still a lot of meat left on the bone as far as songwriting.

What is the vision for where The Stroppies want to be?

GL: It’s really changed in light of what’s happened globally. We had another tour planned, obviously this record was going to get toured but now that we’re bound to home it’s all been reconfigured. I’m really just thinking we should make another record ‘cause—why not?! More broadly speaking I try not to expect too much from it, if any opportunities present themselves grab ‘em by the horns and enjoy the experiencing.

While you’ve been in isolation you made a film clip for “Burning Bright” using candles and paper.

GL: Yes. It was born of economy really. In my head I had a broader more grandiose vision of what it would entail but the reality of the footage wasn’t as such. Me and Claudia are obviously a couple and we have a really good creative relationship. It was just us playing around one isolation weekend with a face mask, Plasticine and candles.

It turned out pretty fun!

GL: Thanks, I thought so. You’re so spoiled for choice and possibility with modern technology, it’s ridiculous! We’ve shot all of our videos on iPhones. This one was shot on a nice camera and edited in iMovie. To my eyes they’re totally fine, passable [laughs].

I’ve always loved what people do with what they have. It fosters and nourishes creativity and imagination.

GL: Yeah. Buying a 4-track recorder was a massive thing for me, it stimulated and unlocked parts of my creativity I hadn’t really facilitated purely because of economy. I tried doing digital recording but I guess it’s because you have access to hundreds of different effects, there’s just so many different options. You can spend months twiddling knobs fine tuning a bass guitar sound when in reality, all you’re doing is creating a smoke screen for parts of the songs you don’t want to develop because you don’t’ feel confident with it. When I got a 4-track it was, ok, drums, bass, guitar and then you have the last track and you’re like, better write some lyrics and put something on that. Economy can be very useful in that regard.

Who did the artwork for Look Alive!?

GL: A guy called Nick Dahlen. I had done the artwork for our previous two EPs the experience of doing that was one I didn’t want to repeat. When we entertained the idea of doing another record and having it ready for this period of time, because it had been such a palaver to get the other two done, we actually got him to do the art work before we finished writing any of the songs or recording. It was a funny way to do it but it ended up working really well. I like the fact that there’s the ants on the cover, you think about an army of ants and obviously the army lingo of Look Alive! In a weird serendipitous moment here are three ants and only three out of the four of us made this record. It worked.

Why was it only the three of you?

GL: We had a pretty aggressively busy year last year, at the end of the second tour that we did that had a myriad of trials and tribulations – it was a tough tour – we all sat down… me and Claudia live together and we know we’re just going write. We said, “This is what we want to do, these are the days; what do you reckon?” And it just ended up being us three. It’s not in any malice or ill will, Adam said he just needed to live a life and that’s totally cool.

What were some of things on the tour that were hard for the band?

GL: We’d been to Europe a month and a half prior and had a really good tour, coming back the second time we’d driven ourselves around. We thought the drives will be longer and we’ll be going through more medieval towns and things will be harder to navigate so we’ll get a tour driver. The guy we got was a real piece of work! It was a massive buzz kill. Slot into that administrative and organisational things that were overlooked, it really put a damper on everything. Bad hotel rooms. Cancelled shows. I had to leave my keyboard in Austria because the airline was going to charge me $800 US to bring it home. There was lots of bits and pieces that added up, it was really relentless. It bore us down a bit. I guess, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

What’s one of the best things you saw while on tour?

GL: It wasn’t so much about what we saw because you rarely get to see anything at all just by nature of the rhythm of that experience—it’s get in the car and drive to show, then you’re in a hotel room. It’s just more about what we felt and what we experienced, there were so really great shows! The fact that you can travel to the Northern Hemisphere and people can turn up, it completely befuddles me. Beyond the thought of annoyances and headaches of the experiences the shows were such a pleasure, which was really cool.

What feelings do you get when you play live?

GL: I get this sort of complete disassociation from myself where I become completely unconscious of what’s going on—that’s when it’s good! When it’s bad it’s the polar opposite, a heightened self-consciousness, an ultra-awareness and my brain will meander off into absurd places; what I ate for breakfast? What am I going to wear tomorrow? That’s the worst end of it.

I always love asking anyone I interview this next question; why is music important to you?

GL: It’s something that I’ve been able to invest myself in and in turn define myself by. It’s afforded me friendships, community, camaraderie and solace. It plays a very important role in my life.

Have you always played music?

GL: No, I didn’t really grow up around much music. My friend Alex who I’ve played in a bunch of bands with and who has been very supportive of everything that I’ve done, his dad and my dad were friends since they were fifteen growing up in Sydney. Alex and I were born two months apart so we’ve been pals since we wore born. When I was around thirteen or fourteen, I’d see him and his dad play music all the time and I started because I got sick of sitting on the couch watching them!

Please check out: THE STROPPIES. Look Alive! LP out May 1 via Tough Love Records. TS on Facebook. TS on Instagram.

Melbourne punks The Snakes are: “An angular vortex of pain but you can dance to it.”

| gimmiezine
Handmade mixed-media collage by B.

The Snakes are one of our editor’s favourite bands. When we recommended their self-titled debut LP (on Anti Fade) on our Albums We Loved in 2019 list we described their music as early ‘80s underground L.A-style new wave punk. The actual underground though… The black market kind. You know, the “under the counter” kind. We interviewed The Snakes and found out they’re working on new music! Stoked much?!

How did you get into music?

LEWIS (vocals): Who has a choice? At some point some cunt’s gonna play some shit and you’re either gonna love it or hate it, I guess I liked it.

What have you been listening to lately?

CHARLOTTE (bass/vocals/harmonica): Ummm… Butch Willis, GG Allin, Roy Orbison, The Byrds, Rupture, Napalm Death, Traffik Island, Plantasia, Anohni, Ariana, X (Aus).

LEWIS: Death (from Florida), Extortion (aaaagain), The Kinks, Obituary.

JIMMY (drums): Jackhammers and my own inner dialogue.

STEPH (guitar/vocals): In the mornings we listen to ambient sounds such as the distant radio and twings and droplets from whatever James puts on the stereo. When we play cards we listen to hardcore and punk. And I like the start of the Exploding Hearts album so I listen to that in the shower. Same with The Loved Ones but that whole album is good. Could be in a musical rut… I like soul and country music a lot.

CHARLOTTE: You like Suzi Quatro, Steph.

STEPH: I like lots of things not mentioned. Loves Suzi but. Gets wild to Suzi!

When did you first know you wanted to make music yourself?

LEWIS: When I realised it was a piece of piss. It’s the socially acceptable way to be the loudest person in the room.

CHARLOTTE: I was in choirs my whole life but guitars were always for boys, I really just wanted the attention.

JIMMY: I didn’t, I was just jealous of my friend’s guitar when I was six.

STEPH: I got into music by being rejected from my family for not being as good a singer as my sister, and not being allowed guitar lessons like my brother cause I’m a girl. So I taught my damn self and now I rule the world!

Tell us the story of how you all got together. What inspired you to start The Snakes?

LEWIS: Three of us had on and off lived together for a while, two of us had planned to do a psychedelic proto-punk band called Giant Door (side note: Giant Door is one of the top three bands that never existed). We are two couples and at some point, Charlotte our bassist moved into a new house and we went over for a kind of house warming. We ended up jamming and writing about six songs that all pretty much ended up on the album. We had some shitty phone recordings and shared them with each other and realised we needed a drummer. It took us about two seconds to find him and that’s it.

STEPH: Jim completes us.

Photo by @sub_lation; courtesy of Snakes.

What do you feel are the key elements that make your sound?

CHARLOTTE: Jim’s drums swing, there’s no one like him.

LEWIS: Clearly the keys stands out, having James on them is a refreshing take. Flange plays a massive factor. It’s a mash of shit we listen to and shit we find fun. It’s an angular vortex of pain but you can dance to it.

How do you go about writing a song?

LEWIS: Charlotte generally comes up with the riffs with a few exceptions and we all just put our parts in from there. We’re natural, baby!

Photo by @sub_lation; courtesy of Snakes.

Last year you released your self-titled debut album on Anti Fade Records; can you tell us about recording it? Billy from Anti Fade recorded it, right?

CHARLOTTE: Yes, he did. We’d spent about a year playing together before our first show and he offered to record and put us out at that first show. Recording in Geelong was great but what was really fun was doing vocals and mixing with Billy. We had a lot of ideas, we had a vision, Bill helped us execute it.

JAMES (keys/vocals): Bully Gardner is our mentor and he wax trax layer to the max.

Cover art by Eve Dadd.

What’s your personal favourite track on the record?

LEWIS: We don’t play this one anymore but I really like singing “Drug Pig”. I came up with the lyrics on the fly and I love screaming “Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, smoke a gram of pure ice”. “Solid Income” too, it just kind of cruises.

CHARLOTTE: I hate “Drug Pig”, even though it makes me feel tough, there’s a part that makes me feel kind of sick. I love playing “Ugly Faces” it’s simple but it’s rude. I know Steph loves “Pop Song”.

When you finished the record; who was the first person you played the songs to?

CHARLOTTE: I think my friend Kieran, they frothed for it!

Eve Dadd did your album’s cover art; what’s the story behind it?

STEPH: Eve does art and is related to James. She is talented and a boisterous bitch that lives on the South Coast of NSW. We love and hate her at the same time.

CHARLOTE: She’s a Scorpio.

LEWIS: Me and Charlotte outright bought it, it’s on our wall.

Launch poster by Eve Dadd.

How do you feel when you’re performing?

LEWIS: Extremely confident and self-conscious at the same time. I just go for it, I don’t really give a shit.

CHARLOTTE: When I play, I’m singing my bass parts in my head. I like watching Steph solo and smiling at James.

What’s been the best and worst gig you’ve played? What made it so?

STEPH: Best show was one at One Year (in Collingwood). I had just discovered the beta blockers and dexie combo and I did not give a fuck and people could tell. Smiling is good when playing fun music. Worst show was that one with Bloodletter. Can’t remember why but I know it was bad.

LEWIS: Last Maggot Fest was great, it actually went off. Supporting The Stroppies was pretty dry, not The Stroppies, I love The Stroppies I just don’t think that that crowd was really down for us. I remember putting on a show and crawling on the floor and screaming but still there was a big gap between us and the crowd. Maybe we’re too high brow.

Photo by @sub_lation; courtest of Snakes.

Have you been working on new music?

LEWIS: Yes.

What would we find you doing when not making music?

LEWIS: Working like a dog.

CHARLOTTE: Watching telly. I just bought a keyboard too, been trying to figure out how to play “Everytime” by Britney [Spears]. Also pretty heavily into Tik Tok at the moment.

JIMMY: Drink, complain, bate.

Vid by VOGELS VIDEO. Check out more of what they do here!

Please check out: THE SNAKES. The Snakes on Instagram. ANTI FADE records.

Cable Ties’ Jenny McKechnie: “I’m more confident to live my life according to the values of this band… existing in the world where you fight for the things that you believe in”

| gimmiezine
Original photo Spike Vincent. Handmade collage by B.

Melbourne band Cable Ties have released a new record, Far Enough. The album is a musical burst of joy while it’s lyrically introspective and vulnerable, reflecting on one’s place in the world. If their explosive debut album were a call to arms full of protest songs, follow up Far Enough is knowing who you are, being OK with that and linking arms on the frontlines of life, standing strong for your beliefs arm-in-arm with your community. We spoke to vocalist-guitarist Jenny McKechnie yesterday as she tried to stop her seven-month-old pup Barry from demolishing all the plant seedlings the household had recently planted in the backyard.

I know that community is very important to Cable Ties, especially the DIY Melbourne music community; when you first came to the music scene, did you know anyone? How did you start to get involved?

JENNY MCKECHNIE: I grew up in Bendigo and I moved to Melbourne for uni when I was nineteen. In uni I met a friend, Grace [Kindellan]. She was really into garage music and we both got into the local scene together and started a band a year later called, Wet Lips. So, just moving to Melbourne about nine years ago and going to The Tote, The Old Bar, got me into it!

How did you start playing guitar?

JM: I started playing guitar when I was twelve, my dad had a nylon string acoustic guitar that I picked up and learnt songs on. When I was a teenager I was in a bunch of bands that were playing Celtic folk music [laughs]. I used to like going to all the folk festivals and writing sweet folk songs on acoustic guitar. When I came to Melbourne I got more into the punk and garage scene; I first picked up the bass to start with and then with Cable Ties moved on to the electric guitar.

With your new record Far Enough, I understand that it came from a place where you were feeling really hopeless.

JM: Yeah, it did. The first record that we wrote is pretty much defiant protest songs. Making the sound we did was really liberating after playing softer folk music, which was all of my songwriting before. By the time we came around to writing this album I was feeling pretty hopeless and despondent about the world and unconvinced that I was able to have a positive impact on anything. I  was coming from a place where I was suffering from anxiety and depression at that time, going through a bit of a spot in my mid-20s where I couldn’t quite work things out and what to do next. In the songwriting process I started in that spot but always wanted to find a way out of it, to find something to cling onto to be hopeful about and keep fighting for.

So writing things songs did help you do that?

JM: Definitely. Songs like “Hope” especially came out of the process of a lot of journaling and a lot of time spent thinking and processing these things. I had a good psychologist too! Some of the songs on the album were really helpful and part of a bigger process that I went through generally about feeling better about myself and the world.

When you posted about the album online you mentioned that it was really challenging to make; in what way?

JM: It was challenging because it was part of that process we just talked about, the album was pretty honest and talks about the things that I was struggling with. A lot of that is turning things in on myself, I was experiencing a lot of self-criticism and a lot of self-hate about stuff like, “oh, you don’t do anything, you just play in a band and wander around playing these protest songs but, what’s the good of it? What have you got to show for it? What’s the point of all of this?” In the process of writing this album I was really doubting myself and really doubting whether I was actually meant to be in a band. I had to come out the other end of it finding some meaning in it—the purpose of my life. By this stage, I’ve dropped out of university postgrad twice, just keeping up with music commitments. I didn’t know what I was doing with my life or if any of this would work out, it was a process!

Why is making music important to you?

JM: That’s a great question. Music is the thing that I just keep coming back to all of the time and from that perspective it’s just something that feels cathartic to me. It’s the only thing that I’ve kept doing in my life, writing songs since I was twelve years old, because it helps me process that way that I’m feeling. It’s something that I can’t get away from, it’s something that I really need. It’s also my entire social community, all of my friends, it’s my entire life! I am so grateful that I have gotten to live out my 20s in this incredible music community in Melbourne. People aren’t just creating really interesting art but they also have a vibrant discussion of political issues and different ways people can live their lives outside of the common norms we’re told. It’s the most nourishing and exciting way to live my life and I’m very thankful that I have done this in the end.

Do you find it hard to open up to write your lyrics and to be so honest?

JM: No, not really. I think that’s one thing that I don’t find that hard. I’m a very earnest songwriter. I find it more hard to not be open and honest about things. Writing songs is the thing I have to do and the challenging thing comes afterwards, I have to put that out there into the world. I have to analyse what I have written down and be like; what does that mean? What is that honesty? And, where do you go from there?

Every member of Cable Ties is integral to your sound; what kind of conversation do you feel you were having musically between one another on the album?

JM: When we write songs we get into a room and someone will have a bass line or a drum beat, we’ll just play and play and play for hours, we really like to jam for a long time. We might not necessarily go many places with the jam, we might just sit in the one spot to see how that feels, and make sure it sits well on your body. That’s where everything starts from. Then we go; what does this song feel like? What is it evoking? The lyrics will come after we’ve written the music and we’ve created a musical emotion as a scaffold to work off. The one thing that we had for this album is that we all committed to doing it; jamming, practising and writing twice a week, and going away for weekend and locking ourselves in. We worked and worked and worked on things until we had it right.

We wrote “Sandcastles” when we went to a house out where Shauna [Boyle; drums] grew up as a kid. We spent the whole weekend trying to put together this song, it didn’t end up making it onto the record, it was not working and a bit convoluted. In the last two and a half hours of the weekend we were frustrated and were like, let’s just have a “hit out”! We started with a simple beat, from there we came up with most of the music for “Sandcastles” in those last hours. We were like, wow! …we felt like we had finally got through the slog of the convoluted song and the payoff was coming up with something simple and to the point.

What inspired the album title, Far Enough?

JM: It’s a lyric at the start of “Hope”. The lyric is: my uncle Pete is complaining about the Greenies, he said that they have gone too far but I say, Pete they don’t go far enough. We took it from that line but we liked it because it is somewhat ambiguous in its meaning. It can have many meanings, it can be a question like; have we gone far enough? Has the world gone too far? We think it spoke to a lot of the questions on the album.

You mentioned that your lyrics came from an introspective, questioning of self and vulnerable place; how did you grow while making the album?

JM: I became a lot more comfortable with being a musician. I became a lot more grateful for the life that I’ve had in the music community. I’m more confident to live my life according to the values of this band and that community and of looking after the people around me—existing in the world where you fight for the things that you believe in. Don’t do stuff because you want the “right” career or anything like that, it made me really, really commit to a life of activism, being in the music community and being a musician.

Photo: Spike Vincent.

On the track “Anger’s Not Enough” it takes over a minute before the drums kick in; what was the idea behind leaving the space at its start?

JM: Nick [Brown; bass] did that at the start. I have this pedal that was made by this guy in Newcastle that has this pedal company called, Beautiful Noise Effects. The pedal is named, When The Sun Explodes. It’s a reverb pedal and a feedback pedal. To make the sound at the start of that song Nick just had all of the pedals on my board on – Overdrive and two boost things that I have and that pedal – he was pressing the buttons on it. That song is quite sonically different to the one that comes before it, we wanted it to sit out on it’s on. By the time it comes in with harsh and loud bass and guitar we wanted people to really be listening after that beginning, that something a little unsettling.

That part gives you a real suspenseful feeling.

JM: Good! That was the idea.

You’ve said that “It’s an album that is supposed to get you out of bed when you don’t feel like you can face it any more”; what helps get you out of bed when life gets overwhelming and you’d rather stay in bed?

JM: My dog, Barry, I’m looking at him right now [laughs]. Apart from the dog, sometimes getting up when you really don’t want to is just putting one foot in front of the other and doing something simple. Some days it’s just get out of bed, make coffee, see what’s next. Often then I’ll see something in my day that I can be thankful for—my friends, the music I have in my life. Those are the things that I live for! They have a really positive influence on me. Also, when things are hard and the world looks like it’s turning to shit, just remember even if you’re an activist and going to protests and doing everything you can and feel like you’re losing the battle, the fight in itself is intrinsically important. The purpose of it is not just to win the battle but fight for the things you believe in, things that you think are important; that’s part of your identity and way of life. Things that can get me out of bed for the day can be different each day.

In the spirit of the album’s main theme; where do you find hope?

JM: Hope on the album is an active emotion, it’s something that you have to find out of necessity to keep going. What gives me hope sometimes is trying to logic my way out of things like, you wake up and there’s another instance of environmental degradation happening and you say, “that’s contributing to climate change and we’re losing this! What the fuck are we going to do? We’re all doomed!” And then just going, it might be true but what good is it for you to be despairing about this, it makes the problem worse and you feel worse as well. Even if you don’t logically think this fight can be won, if you give into that fear then of course it’s never going to be won! Hope for me sometimes comes from a little bit of going, ok this might be hopeless but that’s no good for anyone, so you better believe somewhere that the fight is worth it and you could do something. If you don’t believe it, it never will happen. For me that’s something that I fall back on a lot when I’m in the worst depths of feeling doom and gloom about the world.

What’s your favourite thing about the new record?

JM: I like the conversations that I’ve ended up having about it, they’re so interesting. It is vulnerable… talk about it, face it! The conversations we get to have are personal, interesting and let you connect with other people. My favourite track changes every day but right now it’s “Lani”.

Why that one?

JM: I can really sink into it. You can’t play that track right unless you relax into it. The guitar playing is really emotive and expressive. If I don’t feel those things, the emotions within myself, then I don’t play it properly. Sometimes it’s the scariest song for me to play! When I do it right though, it is so satisfying. It can also really turn around a gig, or when I get on stage and I’m feeling nervous or things aren’t going right.

What are you doing while locked down?

JM: The job I had before I was supposed to go on tour, working for a university, I can do it from working at home. I’m lucky I can still work, and that they took me back after I was “bye! I’m going on tour” [laughs]. Looking after my dog that’s barking at people right now, he’s seven months now so he’s taking up a lot of my time. I’m probably going to go back to uni if I’m being honest, because it’s probably going to be a little while before we get to go anywhere.

Do you write songs all the time or only when you have to write for an album?

JM: Normally I write all the time. I was writing one just before we were leaving for tour. At the moment I’m not playing because after everything that happened with the tour being cancelled – we’d been rehearsing in the lead up to that and doing a lot of playing – after it was cancelled I really felt like I needed a bit of a mental break before I started writing new stuff. I’ve put the guitar down for a few weeks. I’m feeling like picking it up again now. I have a loop pedal now, so the rest of isolation will be me playing with my loop pedal over and over again—I hope my neighbours are ready!

Please checkout: CABLE TIES. CT on Facebook. Far Enough out now via Poison City Records (AUS/ NZ) and Merge Records (Rest Of World).