punk

Alli Logout of NOLA punk band Special Interest on their forthcoming LP The Passion Of…: “Moving forward with love is what the album is all about”

| gimmiezine
Original photo by Alex Kress. Handmade collage by B.

Punk rock is something that is always evolving, it’s exciting and foundation shaking, and its next evolution is here now, in the form of band Special Interest. Combining elements of no-wave, glam and industrial their forthcoming sophomore record The Passion Of… is electrifying! Vocalist Alli Logout is on fire, delivering an impassioned and at times vulnerable performance; when Alli sings and screams, vocally struts and huh huhs—you believe it! The sentiments and attitude hit straight to the heart. You can’t help but want to shimmy and shake to the angular yet danceable tracks, the band is sounding as focused and tight as ever. We spoke to Alli to find out more.

How are you feeling today?

ALLI: [Laughs] I’m feeling all sorts of things today. I’m currently in the woods. We were in the UK whenever the border closures were happening so we had to get out of there. We flew into New York and New York was closing, somebody was in my room in New Orleans so I decided to go to a land project in Tennessee and I’ve been stuck here with my tour bag; it’s the best place that I could be. I’m doing fine. I had to go to Walmart today and buy an extra pair of panties and socks [laughs].

Nice!

ALLI: My tour bag just has clothes in it, leather and latex and plastic. I’m literally in the woods now [laughs] and can’t go home, it’s funny.

How did you first come to performance?

ALLI: I had a little friend in high school, his name is Patrick, I loved him; he got me into punk. He was trying to start bands, he wanted to front bands and was really bad. One day I would watch them practice, whenever he went to the bathroom I would play. I did the thing and they were like, “Whoa!” I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to do this! I need to beat Patrick at something’ [laughs].

I saw a kid with a Bad Brains t-shirt at a Waffle House and said ‘I want to be in a band!’ He was like “I have boys that want to be in a band”. I was like, cool, then I bragged to Patrick that I had a band now and he was like, “Fine. I have a show for you in a week”. I started my first band and we played that show in Austin, Texas; it was really funny.

How did you discover your voice? When did you start singing?

ALLI: I grew up really religious. I grew up in a religion that only believes in using your voice to glorify the Lord. The ceremonies were very vocally influenced, church hymns. I liked signing in church, so I guess that’s where I started singing. I like a lot of gospel hymns. I like the way they’re composed and the vocal structures of them. That’s where I first started singing.

What helped you develop your confidence?

ALLI: I’m just kind of a bitch. Especially when I was younger, I just thought everybody was stupid all the time because I was around really stupid white punks all the time. They were stupid and I was like, I’m just better at everything! [laughs]. I know it’s awful but, I was just around really awful white teen punk boys for a very long time. I spent a good majority of my life really wanting to fit in and finally I just came to a point that, there’s nothing I can do ‘cause y’all are trash. That’s pretty much how all of my musical projects started [laughs].

What was it like for you growing up as a POC in Texas? I ask because for me growing up here in Australia, I also felt that no matter what I was involved in, or even just school, I was pretty much the only brown person, which was really hard; racism, not seeing yourself represented anywhere, being treated differently to the white kids, stuff like that.

ALLI: Yeah. Also being Aboriginal in Australia, that has such a wild history! Growing up in Texas was really hard, very, very racist, very blatant racism everywhere, constantly rebel flags everywhere, getting moved to places in a restaurant where people can’t see you. I had a white mother, she’s half-Indigenous, we found that out all recently ‘cause she was adopted. It was really, really rough. Things were still pretty segregated, all the places I grew up, because they were just small Texas towns. It was really rough, very deeply segregated. I went to a mixture of predominately black schools and predominately white schools. I’ve always been pretty bad at reading and spelling. I was thinking about the very first time that someone called me ignorant and it was a white teacher that called me ignorant, I was the only black kid in that class. I don’t remember what it was for but, I just remember crying and being like; what does that mean? School was always hard for me, especially because of racial segregation stuff. It’s funny because reading was so hard for me they put me in an English as a second language class, there was a lot of kids from Mexico.

Wow!

ALLI: Yeah. It’s so cuckoo, my whole education experience was miserable and teachers consistently called me stupid. It just made me so insecure with myself constantly, that’s still something that I very much carry, it’s still playing out today; it’s been on my mind a lot lately. White authority figures are always really, really miserable to me, and every black kid and every Hispanic kid in our school. It was really, really awful. I’ll leave it at—awful! [laughs].

In my experience I was always not black enough to hang out with the black kids and not white enough to hang out with the white kids – my mother is white and part Chinese, she was adopted too – so I’m kind of caught in the middle of everything.

ALLI: Yeah, that’s an evil mixed-kid nuances that we float in and it’s a really weird place to be ‘cause – I think that is an experience of anyone that’s mixed race – you don’t really fit in anywhere. That definitely was a big part of my life, of definitely feeling like I don’t fit in anywhere, specifically the white side, it was so violent and miserable what they did to kids. It was really awful.

Through doing creative things and through creativity, do you kind of in a way then get to make yourself, to be whoever you are or want to be? You create your own world.

ALLI: I guess so. I feel like the way that my creativity works is, I’ve been very influenced a lot of my life because of my awful life experiences and experiences in school. I’ve been very influenced by spite, wanting to prove people wrong, that has worked out in really good ways but also in really bad ways. Like, the only reason that I went to school was to prove people wrong, everybody I know came from shit and I always knew that I was going to be shit! That’s the same way that I got into punk, wanting to prove my friend wrong, that I could be better at it than him [laughs]. I create because I literally have to, because the world that I live in is not a world that I want to live in. I tried to create so that we can all figure out how to be together. And… to just have fun!

Special Interest have a new album coming out?

ALLI: Mhhmm. We just literally had a meeting on Houseparty and figured out the date we’re going to release it, so that’s exciting!

Yaaaayyyyyy!!

ALLI: Yeah! I’m really, really excited about it. I think it’s my personal best work in music thus far in my life. We put a lot of time and effort into this album. It’s been almost two years since our last album [Spiraling] came out. We all just have really ridiculous lives and everybody works a bunch, but whenever we come together to create, it’s unlike any musical collaboration that I have ever had in my life—that’s why I love the band so much. It’s so much fun and it’s so easy, that’s what’s great about us, it’s so easy for us to be together and make stuff, it comes out really well.

The first album was kind of predominately improv in the studio with a lot of my lyrics. ‘Young, Gifted…’ was improv’d, I wrote some other things that day of. I only did this once with the new album but, I spent a lot of time writing the lyrics and thinking about them and describing what was going on around me and how I’m feeling. It was very cathartic. I’m very happy that it’s going to come out soon too.

I can’t wait! I’m so excited. What kind of moods and emotions were you writing from?

ALLI: Oh my god! I have so many moods and emotions [laughs]. A lot of this album is very much based on the nuances, in the in-betweens, of feeling and knowing that we need to be better but also being consumed by queer party culture [laughs]. A lot of my lyrics are kind of satirical but not as much this album, they’re a lot more straight forward. I wanted this album to be urgent and to be towards something, to be something that can propel us forward in a way that makes us seen and heard. But, also fun and also knowing that we want everything to blow up in the process and know that our people are being taken care of. I wrote a lot from that place, from the fun times to the intense times, to questioning everything around me in my own reality that consistently plays tricks on me. Also, the relationships I’ve been in and the ways that I learning about myself and my own obsessive behaviour. Writing about co-dependency and how consuming it is; how much it hurts to be in those patterns consistently. I wanted the album to have that emotion to it but, also moving us forward. Moving forward with love is what the album is all about.

Was there a song on the new record that was hard for you to write?

ALLI: Oh my god! Two of them… a few of them… actually they all were! The very last song called ‘With Love’ it took me weeks to write. I went my friend’s house and there’s people coming in and out of there all day, they’re all the people that I love and that are consistently inspiring me. I worked in a room in my friend’s house while everybody was hanging out. I’d drink a lot of matcha and write what was coming to me, it ended up being really beautiful, but it’s very wordy, very much a poem. Whenever I hear that song, I look back and feel what I was feeling, that feeling of being around people that you love.

‘All Tomorrow’s Carry’ was… easy to write.

‘A Depravity Such As This’ was the only one I wrote in the studio with Maria [Elena Delgado; bassist]. Maria was like, “what’s this song about?” I’m like, a girl. And she’s like “uhh… they’re always about a girl!” [laughs]. She’s like, “we don’t have a song about the city” and I’m like; what if I write a song about the city that sounds like it’s about a girl? [laughs]. That was improv’d in the studio and it’s one of my favourite on the album.

‘Street Pulse Beat’ was the last one I wrote and I couldn’t figure out a vocal pattern for it, it was really hard, but we needed another song on the album. We were like, this one is slow and really glam but, I couldn’t think of anything. I went in and did a take and it was just awful! It was so embarrassing, what I was trying to do. I told the band from the second that we jammed it out that I feel like I need to sing on this track, use my voice and not scream. They were like “no, no, no, don’t sing, maybe try a slow wordy thing”. It was just bad. I went in there one day without everybody else and did a take like, ok, I’m going to try to sing this. I put some time and intention into the lyrics, it was really hard to write because I was in the middle of a breakup, that didn’t need to go as bad as it did; it was just me holding on to something that I shouldn’t. Also, being deeply incompatible with somebody but loving them regardless.

Sometimes the way that I have learned to love has been out of a really awful need of survival and it’s really bad whenever those things play out in a way that ends up hurting you and the other person. I finally figured out what I wanted to write and went in and sung it and they were like “we love it!” I said, I told y’all I need to sing it from the jump! That one was hard and it’s really hard to listen to for me. It’s really glam ad cheesy and fun. I hope that it translates to folks; who knows? That’s just all of my feelings [laughs].

What’s the album going to be called?

ALLI: The Passion Of…

Where’s that come from?

ALLI: I don’t know? We were just like “The Passion Of…” and it just kind of stuck [laughs]. We were having a hard time naming it for a moment but The Passion Of… just stuck. It’s really simple.

As well as making music you also make film?

ALLI: Mhhmm, I do.

Where did your interest in that spark from?

ALLI: I’ve always been really interested in film making. I remember from being very, very little realising the power of being visually moved by something and just knowing that it’s something that has been used from evil that could be used for good; that can really affirm who you are. Cinema changes lives! I’ve always been interested in making films, I’ve always had a lust for life whenever I’m on the upside of a manic episode. I’ve loved to record videos with my friends since I was younger. I realised how much it meant to me to be able to identify with the characters. I wanted to start making my own to show the beautiful world of folks I am around all the time—there’s so many different ways to live. Cinema is what got me around to being a punk and being gay.

You were saying that cinema changes lives; was there a particular thing you saw that changed yours?

ALLI: Yeah. The only thing I really remember from being a kid – I was five – where I watched something that hit me… I watched Schindler’s List.

Wow!

ALLI: Yes, wow! It really obviously set up my perspective of the world really quickly. I didn’t really understand the genocide that happened via slavery and via colonialisation; I didn’t have any context to how that was in my blood as well. I remember being wow! This is how the world works. They want to kill us all for no reason!

There are so many things that have inspired me. One of my favourite films is Amarcord by [Federico] Fellini. The way that he satirises his town of people is something I have always wanted to do about rednecks and the place where I grew up [laughs]. I really loved a lot of the Rocky films when I was younger. I think Nowhere in the Teen Apocalypse Trilogy introduced me to polyamory and also, I knew the concept of being bi, but everyone is very fluid sexually, or dating each other. I was like, oh my god! That’s what I want to be doing. I always struggle when I’m on the spot with this question, I need to write about it more, that’s one of my plans over this quarantine.

Do you do any other types of writing?

ALLI: Just film stuff. I was just inspired by someone that I love recently to start writing, she really encouraged me to start doing poetry. I’ve written a million poems but I have never thought of them as that, or thought of myself as a poet or anything. I did a reading and wrote all these poems specifically for this reading, I chose a thing out of my phone and wrote up what that meant to me. It’s been a really wild and healing process. It’s been a way of processing lots of life events, that’s what I’m using writing for now. It feels really good. I’ve been writing a lot of poetry recently. I started a Signal group of friends because I wanted to read other people’s and get feedback on mine. It’s a really fun group and once a week we submit a poem, that’s trying to keep us a bit creative during the crisis… one of many.

It’s cool how far you’ve come with words, at the beginning of this chat you told me you used to have trouble reading as a kid and now you’re writing all these different things!

ALLI: Yeah. It really does just take your friends to love and encourage you to start doing a thing. That person that helped encouraged me with poetry also encouraged me to start working on parts of myself that I’ve been too afraid to confront. Also, gave me that gift of being like “you should write, you’re good at this and… la, la, la” it’s something that I’ve realised is something that is important for me. I have come a long way, I need to start giving myself credit for that shit! I’m constantly in a self-deprecating spiral but, I’m really trying not to be that person anymore.

The world can be such a negative, hard, tough place; what things do you do to stay positive or hopeful?

ALLI: You have caught me in one of the most depressed periods of my life. I’m depressed because I’m working on things, on character flaws, that need to be confronted; shit that has needed to be processed and it’s really hard to do that work and bring up all the ways that you have been hurt and abused. To talk about how you have normalised really awful things. I’m in that weird point in my life where I feel I am on the cusp of where I’m about to breakthrough into something healing and feel more deep and ok in myself. I’m extremely depressed, everything just feels so intense. I’m constantly watching my friends get hurt and constantly not being able to pay for things, it’s hard but the things that do keep me positive are the people in my life ‘cause we just have fun! We’re really funny. That’s what keeps me going, being able to talk in here and listen to people and their experiences and what they’re thinking and freaking out about and what they think is funny and how they think about this situation to get through. How you live and take care of each other is by listening, that’s a big lesson that I am learning in my life right now. I need to listen a lot more and think of everybody as a teacher. Hanging out with friends is something that I’m doing to stay positive.

I just started picking up boxing and that’s been really nice. I haven’t been able to do it much in the crisis. I stay positive because I do have a lot of great people in my life who have really brilliant and talented minds. I feel so honoured to know so many people that I do know. Everybody in my life are brilliant and revolutionaries! It’s cool to be in such proximity to people that brilliant.

I feel that way about the people around me too. It’s been said that the people you hang out with are a reflection of yourself so that means you’re pretty brilliant and revolutionary too!

ALLI: [Laughs]. I’m not going to self-deprecat. I’m going to say, yeah, you’re right!

I’ve been through a lot myself in the last year and I’ve had to deal with my own flaws and mental illness and different things, normalising different behaviours and things like what you were talking about earlier, I can really identify with where you’re at. I can say that since I faced everything… the truth of things, which is not always pretty…

ALLI: It is never pretty!

It really sucks! But, when you really do it, it is a breakthrough and my whole life has been changed because of that… sorry I’m getting all teary.

ALLI: Yeah, I’m literally surprised that I haven’t cried this whole time [laughs]. I was crying actually before you called. It’s really painful to be truthful with yourself. It’s hard, I’ve told myself so many lies and normalised so many things because they have been things that have happened to me. It’s really not ok, I have been in such an awful… I feel like I’m about to come to the place where I can accept these things that have happened and try to figure out how to live a life I want to live and to be more honest and to apologise, to not be selfish. It’s really hard to do all of these things. It’s really hard work. I’m trying my best to try to attempt to do that right now.

If I have learned any lesson, it’s that we absolutely need every single one of us here, we actually do, because we’re not going to get through what is happening in his world if we don’t have each other because it’s so small and things are so fucked! We’re constantly in fear of our lives. There was just a really bad drive-by outside of my house a few weeks ago. I watched my neighbour get killed, it was intense. I had been in a spiral but then it sent me into a whole other spiral because I’m just like, this is crazy that I have normalised gun violence! I didn’t think I was affected until I had friends that were like “no, you’re affected” and I was like oh my god, I’m freaking out, I am! This has been my whole life, that was a lesson that I learned very early on, I learned to stay below the widows. That’s something I was taught as a little kid, it’s been normal my whole life. We need all of us! Even the people that I can’t stand, I need them too. We really do need all of us. We have to figure out a way to survive—that’s my main mission right now. A lot of my feelings have been going into the music lately. I’m a ball of emotions right now.

I’m always a ball of emotions! I’m a very sensitive person.

ALL: Yeah dude, me too! [laughs].

Please check out: SPECIAL INTEREST. Alli Logout on Instagram. SIQ FLICKS NOLA – Punk cinema and discussion series uplifting marginalized voices. studiolalalanola – A Black and Trans production studio in New Orleans LA that aims to create space for those who don’t have space. The Passion Of will be out on Thrilling Living and Night School.

Maq of Melbourne punk band The Faculty: “All snappy dressers… just people with a lot of heart and soul and warmth and love to give”

| gimmiezine
Photo courtesy of The Faculty. Handmade collage by B.

We love The Faculty! Punchy and fun, and punk and fun, and explosive and fun, and cheeky and fun, and really rock n roll and FUN!; did we mentioned fun enough yet?! Next month the Melbourne punks are set to release new EP, Here’s To Fun. We spoke to Maq from The Faculty to get the low down!

You’re currently laid up recovering from back surgery; how are you doing? How have you been passing your recovery time?

MAQ: I’m doing really well thank you for asking! I collapsed on a walk to A1 bakery and ended up having an emergency discectomy on my spine, crazy shit but feeling all the better for it! Recuperating at my mum’s house on the coast and getting there slowly but surely. I had my staples taken out yesterday so I’m no longer a cyborg but I’m able to go for very middle age style strolls along the beach and take photos of the sunset. To pass the time I’ve been watching Tik Toks, reading about celebrity scandals (Heidi Fleiss & yachters) and giving the Stan account a good rinse haha.

What first got you interested in music?

MAQ: My parents had me and my brother when they were fairly young and they were avid RRR listeners. When mum was pregnant with me she went and saw Fugazi play in Geelong, nothing could stop her. On our yearly holiday to Cactus Beach in SA we’d listen to a selection of tapes over and over that were really eclectic and reflect both my parents all-over-the-shop taste to this day – Supergrass, Kraftwerk, Smashing Pumpkins, The The – all big favourites in the car. I think I gained musical sentience when I discovered The Ramones though. That was when everything changed.

Growing up in Torquay for the first part of my life, my brother and I were into skateboarding and we got into a lot of music through skate videos. There was one skate video Sorry that had John Lydon as the narrator and it was the first time I heard The Stooges and it set off a firecracker in my ass. From there on I met a bunch of skaters in Geelong who shared a lot of music with me. When I was about 13 my first boyfriend was Zak from Traffik Island and he had the coolest music taste I’d ever heard. He still does now I reckon. I knocked around with that crew with my best friend Hanna and every party was soundtracked by Johnny Thunders and The Sonics and shit. Basically thankyou to my young horny-for-skaters self ‘cause that got me into the good shit.

What was the first show you ever went to? What do you remember about it?

MAQ: I don’t know what came first – Robbie Williams at Vodaphone Arena or Area 7 at St Kilda Fest. I remember Robbie covering Kiss or Nirvana or something and all the old birds really getting hot for him – I remember just thinking he was a bit “bad” and I wanted to be like that myself. Like he’s naughty but he’s still a bit of a dork, I can relate to that. Area 7 was the first time I’d ever been in a moshpit. Watching people skank and stuff really tripped me out and set me on a little ska phase. We’ve all had a ska phase. Embrace your ska phase.

Photo : Jamie Wdziekonski

What was it that drew you to making music yourself?

MAQ: When I was a kid I had a drumkit and I’d practice along to punk and try and emulate it. My dad’s mate who was in a cover band was my drum teacher and he’d teach me like paradiddles and stuff and I’d be like “ok Elvis Costello when are we gonna learn the good shit? I wanna know how to play like I’m in the Ramones” – I was never any good. I kind of let it go for a long time and got into DJing and doing radio. It was only with The Faculty that I decided to finally fulfil a lifelong fantasy of being in a band. A real Riff Randall complex.

What inspired The Faculty to get together?

MAQ: All the other members of The Faculty are incredible musicians and have been in some absolutely unreal bands – Meter Men, Franco Cozzo, and Whitney Houston’s Crypt. I’d never been in a band I was just a wannabe but I think I was feeling bold one day and chucked a status on Facebook “Who wants to start a band”. James who plays guitar and I had known each other since we were about 13 and used to DJ underage at Streetparty events haha, Tommy I’d known vaguely from going to gigs, Lorrae and I worked together. They were the people who replied. A total motley crew. After our first practice I asked the gang if we could add a fella in who had really good hair and a cool cross earring and that was Al who then took it up to the next level on second guitar. The band works because it shouldn’t – we are all really different but somehow that makes us, us. There’s something for everyone in The Faculty.

What’s something you can tell me about each member of the band?

MAQ: Lorrae (bass) is a legit witch and powerhouse of a woman. She is the most inspiring, strong and badass woman I’ve ever met. She runs the label Our Golden Friend amongst a myriad of other things and she has next level psychic energy. James (guitar) is in like 1 billion bands and is an absolute workhorse both physically and spiritually. I think he is powering half of Melbourne on his rock n roll energy. Tommy (drums) loves WWE and being naughty but in the best way like teehee naughty, he also looks better than any of the fellas who take their top off when he takes his top off. Fellas love taking off their top don’t they?  Al (guitar) is a superstar. He is training to be a hairdresser and is like one of those freakish people who can pick up any instrument and be like rreeeeoooowdiddleydooo. All snappy dressers too and just people with a lot of heart and soul and warmth and love to give. For a punk band were all quite sensitive and in tune to each other’s needs and vibe.

In June The Faculty are getting set to release new EP Here’s To Fun, in the spirit of the title; can you tell us about one of the most fun The Faculty-related times you have ever had?

MAQ: I think every time we hangout is pretty funny. We do chip reviews on our Instagram and we all love memes a lot. But the funniest Faculty moment was when we were recording, Tommy took off his clothes and James hosed him down in the backyard. I think we got it on some kind of camcorder. I think Al Montfort who recorded us was probably like…. Dr Evil voice: Riiiiiiiiiiight.

The first single from the EP is called ‘Chrissy Moltisanti’ is inspired by the character from The Sorpranos, right? What sparked the idea to write this track?

MAQ Sure is! Christopher is my love-hate character from the show. You wanna root for him but he is an orboros. The song is about having someone in your life who wants to be a “made man” like Chrissy, someone super aspirational to the point where it’s kind of endearing but they just keep getting in their own way and behaving like a derro. A lot of the EP is lyrically related to a breakup but I wrote that before that even happened so maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think men should really consider ethical non monogamy before they go and fuck people’s shit up. There’s also vague themes of the Moreland Hotel because I like the decor and I wanted to put Metallica lyrics in a song and try and get away with it. I also wanted an opportunity to really yell at fellas who are total dickheads and stare them dead in the eye and pretend I’m just singing a fun little ditty about The Sopranos. It’s nice to have the protection of being in a band to be a bitch although I did tell a fella I hope his dick falls off recently ‘cause I heard he’d been a drongo so maybe I’m just a regular bitch haha

When did you start writing for the EP—how did it come about?

MAQ: It’s funny because the songs are quite old now – a couple of them have been in our set since day dot (P2P, The Locks) so the stuff I was writing then I have probably either dealt with those emotions or forgotten about whatever was pissing me off. We have a nice process I reckon.  We all kind of collaborate together at practice, people will bring riffs and ideas musically. Often I’l have a bunch of fragmented ideas in notebooks and my phone and then the band will jam out the song and I’ll just fill in the blanks with the lyrical themes and jigsaw the themes or little bits of writing I have to fit the patina of the song were writing. The way I write songs is usually to have two themes going at once, one might be something personal and the other just some bullshit I fancied in an action movie. We are all pretty busy in our day to day so the EP was pretty much the only songs we had going so it was quite easy to put it together ‘cause it’s all we had haha.

Can you tell us a little bit about the recording of your new EP? I know it was recorded and mixed by Al Montfort and mastered by Mikey Young.

MAQ: We were so lucky to have Al record the EP for us. That man is worth the lore. He set up his gear at Tommy’s house in Coburg and we recorded it live in the room we always practice in. Al made us all feel really comfortable and had a few tips but was never overbearing or like that producer from 24 Hour Party People, he was a gentleman. We also introduced him to bubble tea and got him in on a chip review.  It was pretty special for us that he agreed to doing it, I’ve been a fan of basically everything he’s ever done. I went to a Lower Plenty show on my own once when I was like 19 and he and his partner Amy chatted to me for ages and were such rippers and I think so many of your heroes you can meet and be like disappointed but those two were the most warm and beautiful people and that extended to Al’s process as an engineer. Mikey did a fantastic job as always and put up with our daggy old questions and made the EP sound even better than we thought possible. There’s a reason these blokes are the Kings.

Is song ‘Alexis Texas’ about the porn actress? How’d this song get started?

MAQ: HAHAHA. Kind of. Its only when someone holds a mirror up to you that you realise some of the stuff you spout off is so silly haha. I was really obsessed with this other porn star’s Instagram where she would post herself getting these like skin treatments where they’d cryogenically freeze her in a tank thing and I wanted to write a song about that but her name didn’t sound as good as Alexis Texas’. It’s a good litmus test that song, shows you who in your audience is a horny bugger. One of my good friends like blushes whenever we play that song which has become a running joke. #Teamtexass

What’s the song ‘Mr. Sardonicus’ about?

MAQ: Ooh, it’s about this really unreal movie Mr Sardonicus which was directed by this legend William Castle. Castle was like a kind of Kmart version of Hitchcock but made films that I think are just as compelling. It’s about a man who becomes a ghoul and I wanted to write about it and when I was trying to beef up the lyrics I just kept thinking ghoul…Misfits…Danzig!! So I then turned it into a song about how I wanted to see Danzig and Nick Cave have a death match. Like Celebrity Death Match. Remember that show? I remember watching that on Foxtel at nanna’s and loving the Gallagher brothers episode. And it’s also about how I didn’t want to clean my room. Slice of life, y’know? LOL!

What music/bands/songs have you been loving lately?

MAQ: Contrary to the music I play, I don’t listen to a lot of punk outside of the fabulous gigs my peers play. I am usually listening to country music or something I found on a YouTube vortex. I reckon I have the music taste of a Mojo Magazine reader, always waiting for a new Roxy Music bootleg or B sides ahha. But lately I’ve been gagging for Mink Deville, Levon Helm’s solo albums, this song On The Road Again by Rockets, Amanda Lear, Spotify playlists my friend Charlie makes me that jump from like Yes to Killing Joke and the Delta Goodrem Megamix on Youtube from her Mardi Gras performance. I think a lot of what I listen to is symbiotic, whoever I’m around and what they like fascinates me. My housemate loves that Delta Megamix and at first it shit me how much he wanted to chuck it on now I’m like mouthing the bits where she’s like “How am I guys” along with him.  Locally my favourite band is Bitumen. They are the sexiest, coolest and most interesting band in the world. Pure sex magic. I’m gagged for that new band Shove I think they are formidable and I always listen to Constant Mongrel like over and over again and love seeing Future Suck live. Parsnip rock too – virtuosos, we’re so lucky to have them! Moth rip and anything and everything Union Jerk records. I keep up with the Lulus-wave stuff with fellas singing songs about men in companies and shit like every man and his dog but amongst the mix there’s some real standouts that are mostly hot chicks making hot shit.

Outside of music what are some things important to you?

MAQ: I love movies big time. I have a film night ‘Top Of The Heap’ which is on hiatus at the moment due to the current situation but the energy of that is being kept alive in a movie group chat I’m in Movie Magic with some nears and dears and most of my life is consumed by watching De Palma movies and screenshotting hot dudes in blue jeans in neo noirs. I’d like to think I have two lives. One as a big mouthed psycho fronting me band and wearing latex and mouthing off about horny shit and then my truer self which is a celibate straight edge nerd who is a meme farmer and obsessed with videos of people stepping on cakes in TNs and shit.

Why don’t The Faculty put out?

MAQ: You’ll have to watch the movie Ladies and Gentleman, The Fabulous Stains to find out.

Please check out: THE FACULTY. The Faculty on Instagram.

Los Angeles band P22 make “Protest tunes sung in punk’s tomb”

| gimmiezine
Mixed media collage by B.

Californian band P22’s latest release Human Snake is an exciting, offbeat, underground post-punk offering, a collection of songs written between 2017 and 2019. The band – Sofia Arreguin, drums; Nicole-Antonia Spagnola, vocals; Justin Tenney, guitar and Taylor Thompson, bass – collectively answered our questions in isolation.

P22 are from Los Angeles; tell us about where you live? Did you grow up there?

P22: We all grew up scattered across Los Angeles County. Now we each live at the foot of different mountains around the city, Glassell Park, Hollywood, and Mt. Washington.

How did you first come to punk rock?

P22: As adolescents. We’re all around the same age but occupied different spaces in different scenes prior to this band, so there’s a real mix of histories that are somewhat unique to LA—the power-violence contingency of the early to late 00’s, the Smell, bands at Calarts, East 7th, etc.

Why is it important for you to create?

P22: Everyone’s always making things in one way or another. This project is probably more invested in thinking about how things are created or how certain methods, like punk, can be worked through differently.

Who or what inspired you to make music?

P22: We are united by an interest in creative practices that operate communally. The band’s namesake is a mountain lion that gained notoriety for his dispersal across the major freeways of LA. He survived a bad bout of mange and is always ending up in inopportune places. Animal liberation remains the main underlying incentive.

How did P22 come together? You started in 2015, right?

P22: We (Justin and Nikki) started the band as a recording project in 2015, during some sweltering months in a garage in Val Verde. At that point, we were still working up the courage to ask Sofia if she wanted to play drums. Sofia introduced us to Taylor, who had just moved back to LA, and we commenced in a practice space in Vernon, next to the infamous Farmer Johns slaughterhouse. The pungent odour helped drive the song-writing sentiments. We played our first show as P22 in 2016.

What inspired you to call your latest release Human Snake?

The title was lifted from a painting titled Human Snake, by the German artist Sigmar Polke.

How would you describe it?

P22: Protest tunes sung in punk’s tomb.

The EP is a compilation of materials written between 2017 and 2019; can you tell us a bit about what was inspiring your writing for this collection of songs?

P22: We often work at a glacial pace because there’s not one person guiding the writing. There are instances where it takes months for a song to come together, even though it’s like 80 seconds long. There are some songs that yield more hastily. We really adore each other’s company which feels integral to the songwriting structure. This collection of songs wasn’t produced with any overarching thematics in mind; it was more of an opportunity to assemble something with sensitivity to each of our different perspectives while playing with the limits of a genre.

What do you feel was one of the most experimental things you tried musically while recording the EP?

P22: Sofia and Taylor’s harmony at the end of the EP.

The artwork for Human Snake reminds me of when I was a kid and I’d find interesting coins or embossed things and I’d take a piece of paper and rub a crayon or pencil over it to replicate the pattern/image/object on the paper; what’s the story behind the art?

P22: Exactly, it’s a rubbing of an etched block. Justin made the album art, the rubbing on the front, and the drawings on the back. The design riffs on the sanctity of different punk emblems and their homespun means of distribution.

Who are your creative heroes?

P22: Japanese pufferfish. Unfortunately, they are also a delicacy.

What are you working on now?

TAYLOR: Writing new music with a different project, sitting on an unmixed album, and working on my new bicycle.

NICOLE: A dissertation, making some videos, and spending more time with inter-species companions.

JUSTIN: Making cyanotypes in the garden.

SOFIA: My physical health.

Please check out: P22. Human Snake is available from Post Present Medium.

Billy From Sydney Weirdo-Punk Band Research Reactor Corp: “A theme we talk about is nuclear war, without us being a fucking crust band”

| gimmiezine
Original photo by Timothy Williams. Handmade collage by B.

Research Reactor Corp. play super fun, goofy, cartoonish, weirdo-punk. We spoke with the Reactor’s Billy and he gave us the goss on a new RRC record, a new band called Mainframe, his new label, a new G.T.R.R.C release and more.  

BILLY: I’m just playing with two naughty kittens in my lounge room right now.

What are their names?

BILLY: We got them two weeks ago, we thought it would be a good time to adopt them. One looks like a sweet potato so we just call him Sweetie or Spudboy. The other one we called Dee Dee, lil’ Dee Dee Ramone.

That’s my favourite Ramone.

BILLY: Mine too, he was bad arse! He’s the only one that had an offshoot hip-hop record. He’s the coolest Ramone, which is a big call. Johnny is a big Conservative and I’m not too into that.

We got that Dee Dee King record as a wedding present. I walked down the aisle at our wedding to the Ramones.

BILLY: That’s awesome! I just love how his vocals are just so rat shit on it [does a Dee Dee impression] I’m Dee Dee Ramone! [laughs]. He sounds like a frog or something.

What have you been up to today?

BILLY: I am lucky enough to still have a fulltime job. I’m a screen printer and in a team of three people. I’ve been printing hi-vis vests for a supermarket all day that say: stand 1.5 meters back. Exciting stuff! [laughs]. Apart from not being able to go to shows, which is driving me insane, because of all this COVID stuff… I’m ADHD, I don’t really like sitting around too much and I’m going a little bit stir-crazy in my house. I have two little cute kittens running around and a girlfriend I live with so things are good. It would be a real lonely time for a lot of people, it’s a weird time to be alive!

We’ve been doing the Zoom thing, which is pretty funny. We’ve been playing this game called Quiplash which is kind of like Cards Against Humanity. Kel who does Gee Tee lives on my block and he has been the guy organising that and streaming it off his computer, it’s pretty funny. I’ve just been checking in with everyone. It was my thirtieth birthday on the 10th of April. R.M.F.C. and Gee Tee were going to play in my lounge room but we had to call it off. I had an ice-cream cake delivered, that was pretty bad arse. Other than that I didn’t do too much.

All live photos by Timothy Williams; courtesy of RRC.

How’s it feel to be thirty?

BILLY: Kind of exactly the same! I feel like a big giant baby! I feel like I’m fifteen. It’s not the end of the world [laughs]. In the two days leading up to it I was like, oh cool, I’m a real adult now! I said that when I turned twenty as well though [laughs]. I still feel like a big kid.

Totally know them feels dude! I’m still sitting on my floor listening to records, doing interviews and making zines, the same thing I was doing when I was fifteen.

BILLY: That’s bad arse! My friend Sam just moved house and he found a skate punk zine we did when we were fifteen called, World Up My Arse. We interviewed some power-violence bands off MySpace [laughs]. We only printed like ten copies and gave a couple away. It was pretty fucking cool, I can’t believe he kept it.

Nice! I have boxes of zines, I’ve been collecting them for around twenty years.

BILLY: I have a lot as well. I’ve just moved into a bigger place than I was in, I live in Petersham in Sydney’s Inner West. My zines are all in boxes too, some are at my parents’ house. I have every one of those Distort zines that DX does periodically. I have a lot of graffiti ones as well, I was into that for a bit.

Same! I was really into graffiti and hip-hop as a kid. You were born in Sydney?

BILLY: I was born in Manly Hospital in Sydney in 1990. I grew up on the north side of Sydney in a place called Narrabeen. When I was eight, I moved to the Gold Coast of all places for my stepdad’s work and was there for a couple of years and then came back to Sydney. No matter where I’ve visited in the world, I always say that Sydney is my home and it’s great to come back to. I have lots of time for Sydney! I don’t know why grumps in Melbourne always go “Yuck! You’re from Sydney?!” It’s weird. I was born and bred in Sydney.

What made you want to play music?

BILLY: It’s a weird one for a kid, but I think the first CD I got was the South Park Chef Aid one. I remember thinking it was so funny because they were singing about balls! [laughs]. My dad has always been into music and goes to gigs, he grew up seeing bands like The Riptides, The Scientists and stuff like that. I was lucky enough to have a dad that had a pretty decent record collection. It’s a bit disappointing that he kind of sold his record collection about fifteen years ago to go on a trip to Europe, so I missed out on that.

I got a Limp Biscuit CD… and the first CD I bought with my own money other than the South Park one was Elvis Costello; my dad drilled stuff like that into me. Then I got into NOFX and things just went from there. Music is the only thing I’ve ever really given a shit about, besides my family, and maybe skateboarding at some points in my life. I just spend all of my money on records and sit in my house listening to them. My friends and I constantly send music to each other too.

Even as a little kid I loved music, my mum always tells this story of when I used to put on ‘Cake’ which is a Crowded House song—I fucking hate Crowded House as an adult!

When did you first start making your own music?

BILLY: I did the whole booking in the music room in high school thing and tried to rip off bad hardcore bands when I was fifteen. My uncle is a professional soloist drummer so I was lucky enough to have the hook up for cheap drum equipment. I started playing drums when I was ten. As soon as I was fifteen I worked out that I don’t want to play drums in a hardcore band or a punk band because it’s too tiring, you have to bring gear!—I know that’s lazy though [laughs]. I played in some really cringe-y garage and hardcore bands in high school that didn’t make it past playing a few shows at youth centres.

I didn’t really play music for a while and then with the Research Reactor stuff… Ishka the other dude that does it, it’s just him and I, we make all the stuff and then do it as a live band. We have an LP coming out E.T.T. [Erste Theke Tontrager] in Europe and Televised Suicide is doing it in Australia soon; we’ve got it all mocked up and the tracks are done… it just depends how long it’s all going to take with all the pressing plants being blocked up because of Coronavirus.

What’s it going to be called?

BILLY: The Collected Findings Of The Research Reactor Corp. It’s basically our first two tapes and then a couple of new songs. Ishka who I make the music with, it’s just us doing it in our bedrooms, all home recording stuff. He’s a wizard at that stuff, I fucking suck at it! He plays in a thousand bands: Set-Top Box, all of the recordings are just him; Satanic Togas, all of the recordings are just him; on the last Gee Tee Chromo-zone record he does half of everything on the recording. Ishka is a big ol’ powerhouse! He’s awesome, he’s such an inspiring dude. It’s so cool that he is one of my best mates and that I get to make music with him.

I saw his band the Satanic Togas play, I had heard them online but didn’t know anything about the guys. They blew my mind and straight after the set I walked right up to Ishka and was like “Hey man, that was awesome! I’d be willing to beat money that you’re into The Gories and The Mummies” and he was like “Whoa! Shit! They’re my favourite bands!” We exchanged numbers and found out that we both wrote graffiti and were familiar with each other’s words and stuff. It turned out that he was living in the same suburb that I was working in, so we just started hanging out together. We just get in the lab, smoke some reefer and see what happens [laughs]. It’s super funny!

The first Research Reactor tape, the first song on it, Ishka just recorded everything and I basically just one-shotted the vocals! It’s good ‘cause we’re into a lot of similar music, we see eye-to-eye. It just works. If Ishka has a day off and feels like making a song, he’ll send me the recording, a demo, while I’m at work and I might duck off to the bathroom and think of a cool line or idea for the song and just jot down notes in my phone. When I get home I’ll write the song and Ishka is a five minute walk away so I’ll go around and record it. He’ll then do some mixing on it and we’ll take it to practice or to the band and put it on our Facebook chat and ask them if they like it and we all just learn to do it as a live band from there. It’s a cool way of doing it. The new LP we have coming out, the two new songs on there are written with everyone playing on it; it takes longer to record that way though.

What are the new songs about?

BILLY: [Laughs] Well, one of them, it’s actually a bit of a debate, I wanted to call the new song ‘Frog Willy’ or ‘Frog Penis’ but it has no relevance to the lyrics whatsoever! I think it’s ended up being called ‘Shock Treatment’ and it’s about eating heaps of eels until you explode and sticking a fork into an electrical outlet and basically zapping your brain.

What inspired that?

BILLY: [Laughs] We’re definitely a goofy band! Which I guess it’s why it’s so fun to write and play the stuff. Obviously we take a lot of influence from Devo and The Screamers. Without trying to be too much of a theme band and flog a dead horse with the same idea all the time, initially we thought we’ll create a story for it and pretend it’s a corporation. A theme we talk about is nuclear war, without us being a fucking crust band, we’re more like ‘The googles do nothing!’ off The Simpsons [laughs]. We’re like a goofy the-world-is-ending-but-who-cares thing. It’s like we’re a cartoon or like Toxic Avenger or [Class Of] Nuke ‘Em High! We’ll see a scene of like a guy’s face melting and think it would be funny and use it like, oh your boss’ face is melting because you threw a chemical on them, and we’ll run with that and write a whole song about it [laughs].

We take little shreds, little elements of bands we like and make it our own. Me and Ishka are big fans of a lot of the goofy stuff coming out of the Midwest of America. The Coneheads are obviously a big one or CCTV or Goldman Sex Batalion, Big Zit, a lot of the bands that Mat Williams and Mark Winter from Coneheads are associated with. We just make music we like and it turns out we like goofy, silly music [laughs].

It’s nice that people come and watch us play but I think we’re more outskirt-ish in comparison to your bigger Sydney punk and hardcore bands. I love cranky punk and hardcore but it all just seems a bit serious, a whole bunch of people standing around in a room with their arms crossed looking pissed off is just really weird! It’s nice that people just come to our shows and just dance and be a goofball. We’re lucky that all of our best friends play in bands and they are all such cool people like Gee Tee and R.M.F.C., ‘Togas, Set-top Box. I find it really flattering when people say we’re all “the weirder Sydney punk bands”. I feel like no one from Sydney ever says that though…

That’s so often the case with a lot of bands, they’re unappreciated in their own town or country but people in other places, people all over the world super dig them! Look at a band like King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, they play sold out huge shows all over the world and then they’ll play somewhere here in Australia and sometimes don’t fill the room.

BILLY: 100%! I didn’t realise how huge they were until recently, it’s mental. Now days you can just get in contact with pretty much anyone, you just DM their Instagram. I try to get a conversation rolling with bands overseas that I’m listening to. It’s cool that a lot of Midwest American goofy bands and the guys from R.I.P. Records and Lumpy Records know who we are.

We were supposed to be touring America, Gee Tee and R.M.F.C. were too, on a touring festival that was meant to happen – I think it still will down the track – in July with a lot of our favourite bands but the big Corona did a big shit on that! I guess it just gives us time to hang at home and record. I have a full band room set up in my house at the moment. I’m trying to teach myself how to play the drums fast again, I’m sloppy as at that right now.

We’ve been doing an “email band” like if you know someone that has a home recording set-up, even if it’s someone overseas, you just message and send each other bits of songs for the other to do stuff over. We’ve been doing that and so have some of our friends which is pretty of the time. We just did four songs with this guy Sean Albert from the Midwest who plays in bands like Skull Cult, QQQL and Dummy. We want to put it out as a 7”. We did a new band with that guy with me singing. It’s pretty fun!

Cool. Do you have a name?

BILLY: Yeah, Mainframe. Hackin’ the mainframe! [laughs]. We’ll probably put it online soon. We still have to do synths on one track. It’s just me, Ishka and Sean.

What’s it sounding like?

BILLY: I’ve played it to a couple of people and they said it’s kind of fast Gee Tee, which isn’t much of a stretch. Sean is a fucking drum machine wizard! He’s so good at getting drum fills in, kind of like that guy from Urochromes. He’s a drum machine Don! I don’t know how he does all the crazy shit.

We had a 7” come out on Goodbye Boozy from Italy in February at the start of the year.

That was the split with The Freakees?

BILLY: Yeah! In the same drop of 7”s that he did, Belly Jelly had a 7” we really dug, there’s a Nervous Eaters cover on the 7” that was fucking awesome! I followed him on Instagram and because we can’t really play shows now, I thought let’s just hit him up. He sent us two tracks the next day and then two days later he sent another two. Just on the cusp of all this Covid stuff happening Ishka came over with all this recording stuff. It’s sounding really good. We’ve actually been pretty fucking productive lately.

We do this thing called G.T.R.R.C. where we do all of these goofy covers, it’s half of Gee Tee and half of Research Reactor. We put out a tape about a year ago on Warttmann Inc. and now we’ve just recorded the second one. I’ve done vocals for three covers on it but it’s kind of turned into a comp[ilation] now. Adam Ritchie of Drunk Mums, Grotto and Pissfart Records did a couple of covers, so did Drew Owens from Sick Thoughts, Kel Gee Tee did vocals on some and Jake from Drunk Mums did some too.

What were some of the covers?

BILLY: One of them was ‘Job’ by The Nubs and I did ‘Trapped In The City’ by Bad Times, a band Jay Reatard sung in. I thought they were both appropriate covers to do given the times. It sounds a bit farfetched but I kind of want to cover ‘Karma Chameleon’ by Culture Club at some point. In our live set we used to cover ‘Rock & Roll Don’t Come from New York’ by The Gizmos and ‘I Don’t Know What To Do Do’ by Devo; we had those cover in our set because we didn’t have enough of our own songs at the time. I’d love to cover – sorry for biting this off you Drew Owens, he’s doing in on the G.T.R.R.C comp – ‘Killer On the Loose’ by Thin Lizzy. I love Thin Lizzy a lot, they’re the most bad arse rock n roll band going!

Is there anything else that you’re working on?

BILLY: I’m setting up my own little label at the moment it’s called, Computer Human Records. I’m about to pay for my first vinyl release. I’m putting out a 7” by a band called Snooper that are from Nashville, they’re relatively new but if you like Devo, CCTV or Landline or Pscience you might like them.

That sounds totally up my alley!

BILLY: Cool. They only have a couple of songs online. Blair the singer is a school teacher and she’s really great at video editing. She has a real wild style where she makes everything look like a children’s show or like Pee Wee’s Playhouse!

Also, we’re on a 4-way split 7” with Nick Normal, he recently just toured Europe and Lassie was his backing band. The split is months away though!

Please check out: RESEARCH REACTOR CORP at Warttmann Inc. RRC on Instagram.

Leipzig punk band Lassie live on the “most dangerous street in Germany”

| gimmiezine
Photo: Johann Von Cargo. Handmade collage by B.

Lassie are a punk band from Germany. We LOVE Lassie.  They answered our questions “in a simulated interview environment – an online doc where everyone can write at the same time while seeing what the others write. So might be a bit chaotic but that is maybe close to the real thing!”—perhaps mirroring their chaotic sound. Today Gimmie is premiering their new release the LASSIE/EX WHITE – SPLITTAPE. It’s officially available on May 1st on cassette (it’s a great time to get it because bandcamp are once again waiving their fees so artists receive all your money).

Lassie are from Leipzig, Germany, and one of you are currently in Berlin; what can you tell us about where you live?

MARI: Three of us Kathi, Shreddy and me live in the east of Leipzig (we  actually even live in the same house ) which used to be cheap and still is referred to either as “most dangerous street in Germany” by many (quote from a shitty German TV documentary about the neighbourhood ) or “the new Berlin“ (quote every hip dad).

KATHI: Leipzig is like New York in the ‘80s (quote from some experimental musicians…)

TEUN: …and artists

KATHI: …it’s true except there are less POC and more Nazis.

MARI: You can imagine this neighbourhood as a nice mixture of a never ending variety of Arabian restaurants, meth addicts yelling at you on the street and hip people showing off their vintage Fila trousers. Also the area we live in is officially a “Waffenverbotszone“ which means a zone where weapons are forbidden, haha yeah even like pocket knives etc. and there are these ridiculous signs all around (attached) with crossed baseball bats and knives. Officially they put them up to handle drug criminality but there is really just lot of racial profiling going on. The house we live in is actually really cheap because we have got about the sweetest landlords you can imagine, they are a Christian couple, motorcycle enthusiasts who are dedicated to supporting socially, healthy, community -focused, affordable living – OH MY GOD I SOUND LIKE THE MEMBER OF A CULT! PS: FRITZ lives on another planet.

TEUN: …planet truck stop…

KATHI: …where all you do is camping and riding trucks.

If we came to visit you; where would you take us?

SHREDDY: Flughafen (airport) Halle/Leipzig.

MARI: Shreddy is quite the dedicated aircraft spotter, she has an impressive collection. I‘d take you to RISOCLUB it is the local RISO print shop run by our neighbour and friend Sina, who really is the unofficial mayor of the east. At RISOCLUB a of stuff comes together, we print posters for shows or covers for tapes there, have parties and exhibitions and do a tape compilation called CLUBHITS. It is only 5 minute walking distance from where we live.

 SHREDDY: My favourite place in Leipzig is probably the big cemetery in the south called “Südfriedhof“. It is close to “Völkerschlachtdenkmal” a big war monument.

 MARI: Yes that‘s beautiful (the cemetery).

KATHI: Lindenauer Hafen. It‘s an abandoned building and you can go all the way up and the one side is open and you have a really nice view.

SHREDDY: Kessy and me would go party with you!

Photo : Johann Von Cargo.

How did you head down the path to being a musician?

TEUN: My parents thought it was a good idea to give me drumming classes to train my arms for some reason. They came to regret it quite soon when the neighbours started to complain with increasing regularity. Then I played in some high school bands shredding ACDC covers LOL.

 KATHI: I played the Piano ‘til I started to go out and be a stupid teenager. Later I figured that that if you play synth you can still hang with the cool kids.

 MARI: Then reality hit you hard and you were stuck with us. I started learning guitar when I was 11, my major influence was Nirvana and then Mudhoney which I still love both.  There was a squat in my hometown and my friends and me had a rehearsal space there. A concrete cube filled with high jump mattresses which could only be entered via a fire escape ladder, so we always had to use a pulley to get in and out our stuff for shows. The squat eventually got evicted (with police lowering down on ropes – crazy!) but since then I‘ve always been in bands because I really love it.

SHREDDY: I think I started to play acoustic guitar when I was around 13 years old. I liked to sing so pretty fast I wanted to write songs by myself. As a teenager I listened to loads of sad guitar music, probably a bit too much haha. But I also felt influenced by other music somehow. My best friend at that time and me became really huge fans of Sonic Youth, which are still one of the most important bands for me personally (I adored Kim Gordon, of course). Actually Lassie is the first band where I play electric guitar.

Can you tell us a little bit about Lassie’s musical journey?

 KATHI: Why is nobody answering this question?

 MARI: I saw you starting!

 Why did you erase this secret information?

KATHI: Because then I‘d have to write so much and I’m hungry.

SHREDDY: Yes, when can we finally eat?????????????

MARI: Hahaha, so should we meet in the backyard? To say it with the words of the late Gene Simmons: “Our idea was to put together the band we never saw onstage: we wanted to be The Beatles on steroids.” “This ain’t a karaoke act, it’s five warriors standing together: love it or leave it it’s real.” “What we’ve created is perhaps the five most iconic faces on planet earth.” “People think Kiss LASSIE is the same thing as U2 and the Stones, that we get up onstage and play some songs, but they don’t have a fucking clue. The commitment involved to being in KissLASSIE is unmatched by any band in history.” Shreddy and me where playing in our friend Leo‘s (he is in PARKING LOT now) band KNICKERS, he also had another band called THE STACHES and since they were pretty busy at that time, we wanted to have our own band and started writing some stuff. Maybe the others can tell what happened next, it‘s unbelievable!

 KATHI: …..Marian asked me if I want to play in their band and I said yes.

Photo: Andrea Shettler of the great GYM T0NIC.

Why did you call your band Lassie?

MARI: We had a lot of names lined up and where unsure, one who came very close to making it was SEGWAY COP, which eventually became a song since we couldn‘t waste that hahahaha.

SHREDDY: I still have the list with all the name ideas!

MARI: Great let‘s have a look!

TEUN: Mari wanted to call it KKKevin but the rest of us were afraid of attracting an alt-right following.

KATHI: I was away on the final decision day, got a call and it was between Lassie and something else but I don‘t recall what. So I think I chose Lassie. BUT I really liked KKKevin.

MARI: Yes me too but I am glad we didn‘t take that name, it would be awful  for a lot of reasons, took me some time to realize. Unable to decide, we were looking for band names we really liked for their simplicity and one that came up was FLIPPER. Okay I am getting an angry call from Shreddy here because SHE came up with the name!

SHREDDY: Dude that phone call is not angry.

MARI: Okay a lovely call then „DUDE“.

 SHREDDY: Embarrassing (but it is true, I was listening to ‘Get Away’ that evening which is my favourite Flipper song).

 SHREDDY: So other names we had on the list were: Snack, Jessies Girl, German Band, Coochies/Kooties (?), Chemnitz, Chemtrails, + Support, Angelo, Spock, KKKevin, KKKaufland,

The Rod Stewarts, The Wedding Planners, The Rockers, Blink 110, Star Foam, PMS , Los Karachos, De Windhupen, Der Knecht, Foampeace, Telefoam, Telesatan, Worf, Plenum, De Klingonenallianz, De Cheffs.

TEUN: Phil Collins!

SHREDDY: Ahayes- I loved “Phil Collins”!

MARI: Ahh so many good names! In case you, dear reader will use one of them, please let us know! I‘d love to see Jessie‘s Girl or der Knecht come to life!

SHREDDY: We charge good prices!

KATHI: I think I‘ll have a band called Telesatan.

How would you describe Lassie’s style?

 MARI: Flamboyant.

 SHREDDY: What does that mean?

MARI: It‘s French for stupid.

Photo: Johann Von Cargo.

What influences your music and makes your feel inspired?

MARI: Right now during the crisis. I feel inspired often and then again fall into a state of apathy, then I will just watch TV, play games or listen to music. Some of the things that inspire me: other music, Point and Click Adventures, Love and Rockets comics. At the moment I love staying home and reading The Lefthand of Darkness, watching V the Visitors, playing Kings Quest III and listening to Alien Nosejob.

TEUN: I‘ve been reading Vonnegut he‘s very funny. Listening to Les Posters (nice new release on Refry) and the new Cowboys album. Also No Trend. And cooking! I‘m making a lot of traditional Italian stuff but also getting into fermentation lately. Does that make me sound like one of those wannabe food influencers? Anyway I‘ve been also discovering some painting I really like. Very into Rasmus Nilaussen, Jon Pilkington, Katherina Olschbaur.

SHREDDDY At the moment I am feeling inspired by reading Sartre and listening to J.S. Bach and watching movies on VHS directed by Jean Cocteau (French artist).

MARI: Is that how you see me?

SHREDDY: Yes, I see you as a French bohemian.

TEUN: It‘s because of the hat.

MARI: We brought home an 8-track recorder to work on new stuff, I know I don‘t find it inspiring to work with that because it gets frustrating fast, but it‘s still fun, maybe we have to figure it out better.

SHREDDY: I already tried and read a lot but some things just don´t seem to work. I was listening to ‘Nebraska’ by Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen yesterday and a friend told that it is recorded on a 4 track. I nearly cried.

MARI: That is exactly what the Boss wants you to do!

TEUN: Beautiful album tho, my fav by the Boss.

SHREDDY: Definitely.

KATHI: I watch Buffy, play the Sims Medieval Times and got to like practicing power chords ‘cause we all try to record stuff in our flat(s) and the only instrument that we have enough of for everybody are guitars.

SHREDDY: PS: Actually I finally got inspired when we watched Troll 2 last Sunday.

MARI: haha NILBOOOG!!!!

Gimmie is premiering the Ex White/ Lassie – Splittape; what’s your song QT Enhancer about?

TEUN: It‘s about someone who is a dick at the office and thinks he owns his time and that of everyone around him and kisses ass to become an executive someday but then winds down on a company trip with all his colleagues.

MARI: It is a work of fiction though, because none of us have ever worked in an office. It is also about time being a financial asset. Which is horrible.

KATHI: I thought it’s about Fritz.

MARI: PSSSST!

KATHI: I meant another Fritz.

MARI: It came to my attention that there are also ‘Company Man’ by Vintage Crop and ‘Company Time’ by Set Top Box, I see a pattern here!

Art: dima_hlcll.

What’s your favourite Lassie lyrics? Why? What do they mean?

MARI: My favourite is: Born and raised to be depressed and on the radio they play GO WEST / Be yourself but don‘t try too hard, no unemployment cheques, back to the start. It is about East Germany after the fall of the wall, referencing The Pet Shop Boys‘ song ‘Go West’ and the Monopoly game.

TEUN: I like the lyrics to Segway Cop: Getting dressed…pedal to the metal leaning forward I‘m the king of the street. It has the nicest cadence and lyrical build-up to it, culminating in: It‘s gonna be a glorious day. I like that the song is written from the perspective of the cop who‘s feeling great about himself.

KATHI: Still receiving phone calls on my deathbed.

SHREDDY: My favourite are the ones from ‘Go West’ too. I really like when Marian is singing the line: who is paying rent for a filthy cage? From the song called ‘Deposit Bottles’. And of course: I see Suzie / riding a surfboard / smoking weed on the beach/ posting iced latte / short pants for the fans / nice tan / a million likes on Instagram. My personal goal in life.

We love the visual art on Lassie’s releases; who’s behind that?

MARI: Shreddy did the cover of the first tape, the second we did together, the single illustration comes from Teun, the album is illustrated by Anna Haifisch, the new tape is illustrated by Dima from Russia haha that sounds funny – he is a guy I met on Instagram. I lay out most of the releases and designed some shirts.

TEUN: What about the French dude?

MARI: He did an illustration for a shirt right, look him up Aldorigolo on Insta. Johanna aka Shreddy does a lot of awesome illustrations and comics Check out her WE ARE DEVO sci fi comics! Teun is a crazy painter. The two studied together. And me I do printing, design and illustration too.

Art: Anna Haifisch & Fuzzgun.

What are you working on now?

SHREDDY: Beach body.

KATHI: Nice tan.

MARI: A really annoying Red Land Destroy Deck.

KATHI: You are not are you????

MARI: MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAH.

When you’re not making music what would we find you doing?

TEUN: Making tacos, fishing.

SHREDDY: Drawing, rearranging my room, collecting cute animal pix.

MARI: Playing Magic THE GATHERING with Kathi and her boyfriend THE JUPP (SHOUTOUT), we are trying to get LASSIE endorsed by WIZARDS OF THE COAST but the others are not really helping…

SHREDDY: What is WOTC?

MARI: The company that owns Magic.

 KATHI: YES MAGIC!

MARI: We got into Magic again on our last tour, I can recommend it to every touring person, time flies, YOU WILL ACTUALLY BE SAD THE DRIVE IS OVER ALREADY disclaimer: you will also destroy your social network and annoy the shit out of the people around you.

SHREDDY: I hate board games and card games, so obviously I always feel super bored during touring.

MARI: Thanks for the interview – this was nice! BYEEE.


Please check out: LASSIE. Phantom Records. Find Lassie members online: SHREDDY. TEUN. MARI. Friends of Lassie: ANNA. DIMA. ALDORIGOLO.

French Punks Mary Bell: “Paris is a tough city to live in: the population density is very high, gentrification is everywhere, the cost of living is skyrocketing”

| gimmiezine
Original photo by Josephine Fournis. Handmade collage by B.

French band Mary Bell’s music is a combination of classic punk rock, American hardcore, grunge and Riot Grrrl. We spoke to them about what Paris is really like, got some insight into each member’s history of musical discovery, what they do outside of music, how they pulled through a controversy surrounding the band’s name and of new music in the works.

Mary Bell are from Paris; can you tell us a little bit about where you live?

VICTORIA: I’ll start with the positive things: Paris is very beautiful, it’s thriving in culture, you can go to a different gig every night, things to do and to see are really endless. It’s what keeping me here: as a hyperactive person, I constantly need new things to do and things to see, and Paris is the only city in France that has lived up to those needs. Still, Paris is quite small compared to other European capitals, so I think the DIY punk scene is quite small as well. That means that you easily get to know the other bands and that the different music scenes tend to mix with one another, which is a good thing, to my mind. Otherwise, Paris is a tough city to live in: the population density is very high, gentrification is everywhere, the cost of living is skyrocketing… A lot of people, especially young workers or students can’t afford to live in Paris anymore.

TRISTAN: Yes, gentrified, expensive, violent for a lot of people, especially if you have not a lot of money. What you notice the first when you come here is that there is a lot of impolite, not friendly, stressed and aggressive people, because the “everyday life” in this city makes you become this way. Everybody is always running and there’s no room for everyone in the transportations, and if you want to come home after a long day of work you have to walk on other people to do so… It does still shock me after living here for more than 10 years. But I guess it is normal for one of the most crowded place in the world (people per square mile: 55,138…). And it does rain a lot and the sky is almost always grey. Everything here is grey, the sky, the buildings, the pavements, and it makes you become grey too. I guess this is one of the most greyish city in the world too. The good side is that it is not that hard to find a job here compared to somewhere else in France, and there are a lot of shows and exhibitions happening. But forget about the romantic bullshit.

ALICE: I live in the countryside, two hour drive from Paris, in the “Center” region of France. It is beautiful, this is the “King’s region”, there is a lot of castles from the Renaissance area and a lot of forest… But it’s REALLY CALM. I go to Paris when I want to see shows and friends!

What kind of music and bands were you listening to growing up?

VICTORIA: Growing up, I was listening to lots and lots of music, different styles, different eras, and most of it I’m still listening to now. I had the chance to grow up in a musician family: I listened to classical and baroque music (Bach, Marin Marais…), pop, new wave, rock, hard rock… And then, at the beginning of the 90s, grunge exploded and it totally blew my mind. I listened to bands such as Nirvana, Hole, Babes in Toyland, Melvins, Soundgarden on repeat. Those bands still stick with me nowadays. At the same time, I was really into hip hop and French rap. One of my favorite bands at the time was the French band NTM (it stands for “Nique ta mère” which you can translate to “Fuck your mom”, haha). I discovered punk and hardcore music a couple of years later while hanging with some skateboarders at a party. Again, it totally blew my mind. I was already what you can call a music digger, as music has always been the most important thing in my life, and so, started digging into punk and hardcore.

ALICE: I went to music school, I listened and studied classical music, specifically Baroque. At home my parents were listening to Led Zeppelin a lot, The Doors, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, we danced on Madness… Then I took my big sister’s CDs, I mainly remember screaming to Hole and Nirvana, but also dancing on Madonna and Ricky Martin… At 11, I discovered internet and Sum41, Marylin Manson, Avril Lavigne… Hahaha. I was living in the suburbs, at fifteen I went to school in Paris and discovered the Punk scene.

TRISTAN: I feel like I’m still growing up, so I don’t know what you mean exactly in term of period. So, when I grew up the most (in height) I think it might be when I was five to eight or something, the bands I listened the most were AC/DC, The Cure, Helloween, Sex Pistols, Bad Manners, Deep Purple… Just stealing my parents’ old tapes and records in the attic. A lot of “bed jumping” happened for me as a kid on these things.

GAÏLLA: I grew up listening to what my parents were listening to. Artists like Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Zappa, and a lot of blues and jazz too. And I feel like it really impacted me. But during my adolescence, like a lot of teenagers, I wanted to listen – to try – every kind of music. I listened to rock in general, metal/ heavy, punk, grunge but also Hip-hop/ R’n b etc.

Photo : Céline Non.

How did you start playing music?

VICTORIA: I started playing the piano at an early age, and then the viola da gamba, but stopped everything when I became a teenager: the academic way of learning music was becoming a real pain in the ass for me. At that time and since then, most of my friends were musicians, and were playing in bands. And all of them were guys. I could have picked up a guitar, but somehow, being a girl, and having internalized a lot of fucking sexist ideas, I didn’t feel legitimate to do so and even thought, at some point, that it just wasn’t for me. What a bunch of bullshit!! But I guess those crazy ideas kind of stick with you growing up, even when you start to realize that it’s not true and such. While getting deeper into Feminism and meeting more and more female musicians, a lot of them reclaiming from the legacy of riot grrrls, I realized that I could grab an instrument as well and start a band. By the time I realized that, I was 30!! Yes, I guess you can say that it took me some time to get accustomed to the idea… The cool thing about all this is that as soon as I started playing the guitar, I knew exactly what I wanted to play, what I wanted to sound like, and what it was gonna be for me.

ALICE: My big sister was singing in a professional choir, my parents did the same for me and my little brother. I started by learning the piano at 6, then at 10 I went to “half-time teaching music school”, school in the morning and music studies in the afternoon, every day from the age of 10 to 18. Then, at 16, I started screaming. I have to say it was not really good for my lyrical voice, which I gave up on at 18.

TRISTAN: My mom offered me a guitar when I was in primary school. I was too scared and shy to ask to or begin something like this by myself, but was always listening music, so she just bought me the piece of wood and gave it to me. I never stopped playing since…    

GAÏLLA: I tried playing bass when I was +/- 15 because my dad was a prog rock and jazz bassist, but I wasn’t very studious. I liked it but it wasn’t really my thing. And at this time, drums looked out of reach for me, so I put this idea aside. But when I turn 26, it feels like an urge to play music again, especially drums, it feels like it was “now or never”. So I took a few drum lessons, and a few days later, I met Victoria and we started Mary Bell.

How did the Mary Bell get together?

VICTORIA: We started playing with Gaïlla while both learning how to play our instruments. After three or four rehearsals, we decided we wanted to have a band, and started looking for musicians.

ALICE: I saw an announcement Victoria posted on Facebook, “looking for a singer”, I was shy to but I answered because I really wanted to sing in a band and I liked the bands she mentioned as references. I passed an audition, we played “Rebel Girl” from Bikini Kill (which is too high for my voice by the way), and a composition she and Gaïlla made. I also played the bass but it was so, so hard for me to play and sing and the same time!

TRISTAN: Playing guitar, they were searching for a girl to complete the band, I’ve insisted a lot and it finally worked out as a boy and as a bass player. I was like, “let me join you, I can play some really dirty bass, and I can record the band too”, and blablabla… I don’t even know why I wanted that much to be in that band in the first place. I was homeless at the time and searching for an additional band to have fun after a long day of work before sleeping who knows where. But I don’t regret my insistence in joining it at all, for what it gave us in terms of records, tours, and funny times. (Haha…)

Photo: JetLag RocknRoll.

Can you tell me something interesting about everyone in the band?

VICTORIA: Gaïlla is a huge fan of Mariah Carey, Tristan is a highly trained virtual plane pilot and Alice bakes amazing carrot cakes.

ALICE: Ok, this is very interesting: Victoria’s zodiac sign is Scorpio, Tristan had a chicken pet when he was little, Gaïlla has her driving license but don’t let her drive!! Hahaha

TRISTAN: Vicky can tell what your future is with tarot, Alice knows a lot of weird medieval music stuff, and Gaïlla can sleep up to 23 hours a day when we tour!

GAÏLLA: We all love listening to horror/crimes podcasts while on tour but, I don’t really remember because I was sleeping.

Your band is named after a British serial killer from the ‘60s; how did you find out about her?

VICTORIA: I first heard of Mary Bell while reading Crackpot from John Waters, where he cites the Mary Bell case as one of his obsessions. Somehow, Mary Bell being a child at the moment she committed her crimes, it really interested him and I totally can understand why. There really is something striking in the Mary Bell case, her being a child, her murdering two children, her trying to manipulate people in thinking that another girl committed the crime… She was just 11. Children are believed to be innocent at that age. Anyway, I think we all thought it matched well with the idea of our band. 

Mary Bell was forced to cancel a concert in the UK in February last year following outrage from the families of Bell’s victims and other locals; how did this situation impact the band?

VICTORIA: It all started when a lousy so-called journalist wrote a piece about us claiming we were making lots of money from the name ”Mary Bell” + getting fame out of it (uh hello, we’re a DIY punk band, we’re not making any money…) The worst is that she reached out to the families of the victims to have their say about it (I guess otherwise, they would have never heard of us…). They went to their local MP to send a lot of letters to cancel all our shows in the UK… We had no choice but to let go, and take the shitstorm, the insults and the death threats (which we used to receive daily on our Facebook and YouTube pages). What a time…

ALICE: Victoria worked a lot for this tour, I was really sad but really angry for her because of all this work and efforts being ruined because of this sensationalist press. (Who’s really making money out of people sadness?) We still had a great time with our few concerts, meeting amazing people and having very interesting talks about England and safe spaces.

TRISTAN: Oh yeah, and I get beaten in the middle of the night coming home from one of these shows, by a bunch of crazy guys with knives and no t-shirt in the middle of winter. UK is a very nice place currently, it is really a giant safe space, safe from common sense. I hope it will get quickly better for them and our friends and family there in the future, but it does currently look bad, with clowns at the head, and a lot of racist and violent people. The shows we did were good but when talking to locals, I can see that the country was a mess in the middle of the Brexit thing and it was not an easy time for them at all. So yes, it was a little bit weird sometimes during the tour.   

At the end of 2018 you released EP HISTRION on it there’s a song called ‘I Used To Be Kind To People In Crowds, But That Gave Me Murderous Tendencies’; what sparked the idea to write this song?

ALICE: Within a week, a friend of mine lost her daughter and another one had a stroke. It was so sudden and unfair, my friends and I suffered a lot. I’ve always been the “nice person” holding the door, smiling to people, saying hello to my neighbours, never complains… But the day after the funeral, one of my neighbours screamed at me because of my car. First, it was a nonsense, secondly, the fact she was so concerned about this tiny little shitty thing made me furious, I screamed at her, she didn’t say anything, she thought of me as a little smiling girl and was visibly shocked. I pictured my friend losing her child and people complaining to her about everyday problems, it made me furious… And “gave me murderous tendencies”.

GAÏLLA: It’s a really powerful song, and very intense – overwhelming sometimes – to play. I think Alice put the right words on a feeling mixed with hate, frustration, helplessness that we all felt once in our lives.

Your drummer Gaïlla has done the artwork for all your releases before the latest one which is by artist Stellar Leuna; what made you choose her for the art?

GAÏLLA: I studied graphic design so I started working on MB visual art pretty naturally. We love esoteric-witchy-weird stuff so it fitted well. But we also are big fans of Stellar Leuna’s work, she’s really talented. Her art perfectly reflects our music too: It’s dark and goes straight to the point. So we asked her and sent her our music. She loved it and got inspired by it and… ta-da! She did an amazing job, we were thrilled.

Have you been working on any new music? What can you tell me about it?

VICTORIA: We’ve been working on new material since the release of HISTRION, and we currently have 12 new songs we were supposed to record in April, and release on vinyl later this year… Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all our recording projects are on hold. We’ll see how it goes…

ALICE: New things: donuts, trains, cats.

VICTORIA: Yes, the themes tackled in our new songs are very eclectic!!

What’s your favourite things you’ve been listening to lately? We love finding new music!

VICTORIA: I’ve been listening to lots and lots of music since the beginning of the quarantine… I think you can all find them easily on Bandcamp. Bands like Slush, Gaffer, Cold Meat, Nightmen, Thick, Lizzo, Malaïse, Mr Wrong… Also, please check out my friends Bitpart and Litige who both released records this year on Destructure Records.

ALICE: I mostly listen to podcasts because I need to hear people speaking during this confinement! I really have phases… Today it’s raining so I’m listening to Douche Froide, Traitre, Litige… Yesterday I spent the day listening to rock steady (guess the weather), but sometimes I really can’t bear it. (Apart from Phyllis Dillon I’ll always love).

TRISTAN: a lot of Australian bands actually, I guess you already know them all (Civic, Eastlink, UV Race, Destiny 3000, Cuntz, Venom P Stinger, Gee Tee, the Stroppies…) Aside from that : Destruction Unit, Slippertails, Sun Araw, Pussy Galore, KARP, Part Chimp, Marbled Eye, Lungfish, Red Aunts, Poino, Liquids,… Not new stuff, but these are a lot in my ear currently and I am not in a ‘music searching’ period. 

GAÏLLA: Like Alice, I mostly listen to podcasts lately. And during the confinement I listen to really chill stuff as Julia Jacklin, Angel Olsen, Beat Happening, Hope Tala, Cate Le Bon, Part Time, Charlie Megira, Deerhunter, Homeshake, Los Bitchos, No Name and some jazz/ classic rhythm and blues and some 70’s folk music.

Outside of making music what do you do?

ALICE: I’m a music teacher, I don’t do anything outside of music. Haha. Just kidding, I live for food, we cook a lot with my boyfriend and love to have home-made fancy dinner with a lot of red wine. We’re doing gardening too, crafts activities (I made my own garden furniture and I’m really proud of it! Haha).  I’m still studying musicology, I love to learn and research new things, I read and cuddle with my cat Mystic.

VICTORIA: I’m currently the International Digital Communication manager for a NGO. That sounds really pompous, but really, my job is great!! Also, with a friend, I’m running women and non-binary people empowerment workshops through music, it’s called “Salut les zikettes!” which I guess you can translate to “hello, musicians!”.

TRISTAN: I work as an IT engineer five days a week, aside from that I drink a lot of beers, like to read technical stuff before the beers, and more “artistic” stuff after, with my cats not far from me. I cook a lot too, and like to eat really tasty food. 

GAÏLLA: I’m a graphic designer but I started to study jewellery recently and I hope to do that full time at some point.

Please check out: MARY BELL. MB on Facebook. MB on Instagram.

Brisbane Grunge Indie Rockers Lunchtime: “Family and emotional violence is a hard topic because love is used as a weapon so often… we’re trying to help young people who are going through similar situations feel strong”

| gimmiezine
Original photo by Kieran Griffiths. Handmade collage by B.

Lunchtime are a band that wouldn’t be out of place in the ‘90s; the dream of the ‘90s is alive in Brisbane. Their songs are a mix of grunge, punk and indie rock, the band co-founded by twin sisters Eden and Constance along with high school friend Lachlan. We interviewed them just as they were getting set to drop their latest single and video ‘Science Of Sorrow’.

Lunchtime are from Brisbane; what can you tell me about where you live?

LACHLAN: Constance, Eden and I live at Stafford but they used to live in Deception Bay and I lived at Caboolture while Tim lives in Carindale.

CONSTANCE: The best thing about Deception Bay was going down to the local shops and seeing people sitting at the bus stop drinking wine. Our single ‘Deception Bay’ was inspired by these three blokes who were omnipresent at that bus stop. 

EDEN: I always know if it’s a cloudy day in Stafford cuz Constance only does the washing when it’s raining which is annoying but funny.

How did Lunchtime get together?

LACHLAN: We started when the twins and I were at school and then two years ago Tim joined the band after our previous drummer left.

CONSTANCE: It was kinda weird how we ended up in the same band because Eden and I were in a band with these other guys that broke up and started a band with Lachlan which also broke up then the three of us formed Lunchtime with the drummer from the original band.

EDEN: I just remember me auditioning Tim before the others got there and the only question I asked was “Do you like Tiny Teddies” and he said “Yeah they’re alright” and I was like yup this is the one.

Photo: Ben McShea.

How did you start playing music?

LACHLAN: I picked up a guitar.

TIM: I started drums in school.

CONSTANCE: I found my dad’s old guitar in the garage. It had three strings and that’s how I taught myself to play. Hence the punk rock band…

EDEN: Constance needed someone to back her up so I got forced into it and then I decided playing piano was cool cuz I was obsessed with Mika back then. Then I also got forced into playing bass cuz our first bass player decided he wanted to play guitar instead.

Can you tell us something about everyone in the band?

LUNCHTIME: Tim can do a kickflip. Eden is an artist @mumblebee_art and has 93 cacti. Lachlan can put his legs over his head Constance is a Pilates nut!

Constance and Eden are twins; what’s it like creating with your sibling?

CONSTANCE: It’s pretty great because I never really have to explain the artistic direction I want the song to go in, she just knows. Or if one of us is struggling with part of a song in the writing process we can run it by the other and they usually can make it perfect in two seconds.  

EDEN: I love it because it’s like we were made to harmonise with each other. Singing together is so easy and she can always finish things if I hit a wall or tell me how to do it better. You can be brutally honest with each other and there’s no hard feelings.

What’s an album that means a lot to you?

LACHLAN: Hungry Ghost by Violent Soho. They’re a really good Brisbane band, I think we look up to them a lot.

EDEN: I remember hearing ‘Covered in Chrome’ and thinking he had a weird voice and I liked that cuz I thought I sang funny as well. The show at the Riverstage for that album was my first mosh pit and I lost my toenail which I keep to this day in a jar.

Photo: Schema Collective.

What was the first song you wrote for Lunchtime? What was it about?

CONSTANCE:  The first song I wrote for Lunchtime was called “Get over it”. It’s the last song on our first EP Feedback and it was about the first time a band I was in broke up. When bands break up it is way more upsetting than any romantic break up. For me anyway haha. The song was me telling myself that you can try and do everything to forget and still feel the pain but you need to find a way to move on and get on with your life.

EDEN: My first song for us was “I Bleed Lemonade” it was about me punching a concrete pillar after my mate told me he had unknowingly set up my secret crush with someone else.

Your latest song was released late last year and called ‘Deception Bay’; how did that song get started?

CONSTANCE: Deception Bay is where Eden and I grew up. I wrote it when I was about 16 and in the midst of trying to figure out life and all these crazy emotions. ‘Deception Bay’ was named because when it was discovered they thought it was a river because it was so shallow. Random fact but it started the process of ‘huh this place isn’t as it seems let me make some art about it.’ At 16 I was at the restless point when you just want to run away from your problems and used my hometown as a synonym for everything (mentally, etc) I was trying to escape from.

Last year you released single ‘Show n Tell’ which is a song about domestic violence and feeling like there is nowhere to go even when you’re in the place where you are supposed to be safe; what inspired you to write this song?

CONSTANCE: Eden and I had a lot of family issues (as you can probably tell cuz half of our songs are about it.) ‘Show n Tell’ was written about my family and basically what it was like for us growing up. Writing songs has always been a coping method for me because I felt the only way to be heard was through music. The lyrics are pretty dark and sarcastic I think I wrote them after a particularly nasty fight.

EDEN: Family and emotional violence is a hard topic because love is used as a weapon so often. I think we’re trying to help young people who are going through similar situations feel strong and let them know they can get out because there is so much to look forward to in life.

I saw that you were recording last month; is there new music in the works? What can you tell me about it so far?

LACHLAN: We’re recording every day for a couple of things hopefully you see it sooner rather than later cause we don’t have any excuses for time.

CONSTANCE: We’ve been working away at an album which should be finished this year at some point. Its top secret but we may be about to drop a new single – ‘Science Of Sorrow’ [Ed’s note: the song has come out since we did this interview]. We are pretty stoked about this song as it is our longest yet (over 5 mins) and quite different from our other material.

EDEN: One of our mates is hiding in a scene so there’s a Where’s Wally kinda scenario in the new music vid.

I know recently you were super excited to be working on a music vid with Kieran Griffiths Filmmaking; tell us a little bit about it?

LACHLAN: Kieran is a mate we met at a gig and have been good mates since and he did a degree in film so we thought it would fun to work together.

CONSTANCE: We were filming the music vid for our next single. It was pretty fun we all just set up in Tim’s living room for a couple of hours. Kieran is super talented and we are pretty honoured to be working on this with him.

EDEN: The Griffiths twins are our insanely talented best mates, Kieran had been bringing his camera to Gathos and one night we got talking and said it would be cool to do a collab. He directed and shot the whole thing singlehandedly. I’m really proud of it cuz the new song is my baby and is very personal to me. He made me punch yet another concrete wall and made Tim sing which was great. Keen as mustard for yas all to hear it.

How are you keeping busy while we’re all locked down at home right now?

LACHLAN: Lots of recording and Netflix and Minecraft.

CONSTANCE: Studying a marketing degree and a lot of songwriting and jamming.

TIM: Hanging with my girlfriend and fishing.

EDEN: Painting and gardening and watching Friends at 6pm on channel 11.

Please check out: LUNCHTIME. Lunchtime on Facebook. Lunchtime on Instagram.

Alex Patching of Perth Punk Band Aborted Tortoise: “I became obsessed with four-tracks, thanks largely to Get Real Stupid the first Reatards 7-inch”

| gimmiezine
Handmade mixed-media collage by B.

We really dig Aborted Tortoise with their wild, driving, rapid-fire, jangly, buzzing punk. Their latest release is a concept EP – Scale Model Subsistence Vendor – about Coles’ Minis, the stupidity and frustration of the frenzied obsession and the pointless consumerism people buy into. We chatted with drummer, Alex Patching.

How did you first discover punk rock?

ALEX PATCHING: Personally most of my initial exposure probably came from the skate videos I used to watch when I was younger. The influence of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater soundtrack also can’t be overstated. My dad is a massive rock dog so I didn’t really grow up with much punk being played aside from maybe the odd Sex Pistols song. Initially I got really into the bigger names (as you do) like Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat etc. but eventually started digging a little deeper and got really into the lo-fi cassette stuff that’s been so popular on YouTube over the last few years.

You all grew up together before Aborted Tortoise was even a band; tell us a little something about each member?

AP: Connor [Lane; vocals] is The Tony Galati of cryptocurrency (WA reference – sorry). Charles [Wickham; guitar] is a reality TV addict/Coles Minis enthusiast. Tom [Milan; guitar] is a medical physicist/renaissance man. John [Peers; bass] is a rock pig/gamer and I’m a subpar historian.  

All of us (except Connor) went to the same high school, so we were all more or less familiar with each other long before the band was a thing. Tom and I have known each other since pre-primary and have a long and vibrant history – I have vivid memories of playing AOE at his house in primary school, the one you used to get in Nutri-Grain boxes. We used to make mazes filled with various hazard like crocodiles and lions and force innocent villagers to escape.

The four of us had a short-lived high school band which we fucked around with before starting Aborted Tortoise just after we graduated. We needed a vocalist, so we ended up recruiting Connor who I’d known for a while through a wider group of friends who used to go skating.

What’s the story behind your band name? How did you come to putting the words “aborted” and “tortoise” together? It’s has a nice ring to it!

AP: Haha, thanks. There was talk of changing the name at one point but we decided against it and now, for better or worse, it’s what we’re called. Its eye catching at least?

From memory we were hanging out in a carpark at this lake near where we live and there are all of these signs warning the public of tortoises crossing the road. Pretty sure I just saw the sign and the words came out. It’s far less heinous than the two pages of alternate names that we had lying around so we decided it would be the band name.

Aborted Tortoise are from Perth, Western Australia; how does your environment influence your music?

AP: I’m not sure it does influence our music per se. It does influence where we play in that it’s far more expensive to tour living here than it would be if we were based in Sydney or Melbourne or something. It’s not like we can pop over to a neighbouring city for the weekend with any ease, so we have to get used to playing the same five venues to the same 50 people. Thankfully we have the internet to peddle our wares because if we had to rely solely on the local scene for selling merch, things would be a bit grim.

You once describe your music as “like Chuck Berry on crack”; what key elements do you think make the Aborted Tortoise sound?

AP: Hahaha that quote is edgy 18-year-old me to a tee. Certainly early on, particularly on the first EP, there was a pretty strong element of traditional garage and surf like the Sonics or Dick Dale, so there was lots of blues scales, and most of the lyrics (at least on my behalf) ripped off a lot of the song concepts from those bands.

That said we’re a totally different band to the one that recorded our first EP. I think now we try to use the dual guitar thing a bit more interestingly rather than just having two guitars playing power chords. There’s also definitely a sense of humour and immaturity because we don’t want to take things too seriously. We have the most fun when we’re taking the piss.

At the start of March you released your Coles’ Minis inspired concept EP, Scale Model Subsistence Vendor EP; what sparked the idea?

AP: We had the idea of doing some form of concept EP and Charles had written a song about Coles Minis so we ran with that idea. Charles reckons he went to some movie night at a friend’s house and saw a bunch of Coles Minis on display around the place and got unreasonably (I say reasonably?) annoyed about it. The rabid presence of makeshift marketplaces and swap-meets for them online were also an inspiration.

Was it hard to write all the EP songs to theme?

AP: Honestly it probably helped a bit. We don’t often write to a consistent theme and we just choose ideas based on what we think is funny. Everyone had an idea about what part of the Minis process they wanted to respond to so we split the writing duties like that. Any parallels to the actual minis process are purely coincidental, but we made some educated guesses. Very happy to have finally used the word polyethylene in a song though.

You recorded and mixed the EP on a 4-track; how did you first learn how to record? Are you self-taught? Can you tell us a bit about recording process?

AP: In the pre-Aborted Tortoise days we used to badly self-record stuff with a USB mic into a computer, but we had no idea what the fuck we were doing and consequently the recordings are heinous. I ended up studying sound at Murdoch Uni which was fun but only maybe 40% was relevant to my interests. During that time I became obsessed with four-tracks, thanks largely to Get Real Stupid the first Reatards 7”, and in the end I learnt more by just playing around with my four track at home than I did during my degree. I just used my other bands, and my friends’ bands as guinea pigs to figure out what I was doing.

The first Aborted Tortoise release that I recorded and mixed was the Do Not Resuscitate 7”. That release was done mostly live on my Yamaha MT50. That machine shat the bed during that session, so the second side of the 7” was recorded on a different four-track that we borrowed (cheers Tom Cahill). When we were doing takes of 20XX the tape was speeding up as we started playing so it sounded like we were taking off or something, it was fucked.

Subsequently, for Scale Model Subsistence Vendor I reverted back to using my first-four track, my Tascam Porta 02. It’s probably the most basic four track you can get that isn’t just a tape deck. It’s technically a four-track but it can only record on two tracks at once. The only mix functions it has is level and pan control so essentially the mix had to be decided on before pressing record, and all the instruments were squashed together on two tracks as a stereo mix.

Connor’s place has a neat granny flat which we have kindly been granted access to, so we can record in there for free. The set up for Scale Model Subsistence Vendor was super basic; we just chucked all the instruments in the same room, popped a few mics about and played some takes, tweaking the settings on the desk as we went. Once we were happy with the mix, we just played the songs through and got them done in a day. Vocals were done separately a week or two later and that was that.

What’s is the most memorable show you’ve played? What made it so?

AP: Definitely a major one was when we went to Melbourne around 2015 to play a couple of gigs. We played a show at The Grace Darling with Dumb Punts who were kind enough to chuck us on a bill with them. The set itself wasn’t very memorable but at some point, someone knocked over a pint glass and it smashed on the stage. Later during Dump Punts’ set, Tom fell over straight onto the smashed pint glass with arms outstretched and badly cut up his hands, so we had to bail to the hospital so he could get stitched up which took all night. Tom still couldn’t move his fingers when we got back to Perth, so he went back to hospital only to find out that he’d actually severed some tendons in his hand, and the fuckhead doctor in Melbourne hadn’t properly checked it out. In any case it’s miraculous that Tom can even play guitar anymore. Hopefully that doctor got fired.

Some honourable mentions: that shit house party in Yanchep, Chaos Club 1 + 2 (for all the wrong reasons), Camp Doogs (both times).

Outside of music, how do you spend your time?

AP: Charles is in his final year at uni studying education so he can finally morph into Mr. Wickham and boss kids about.

I’ve just started studying honours in history part time, so I’ve got two years of uni ahead of me before my life starts truly resembling Night At The Museum. Charles and I both work together at the same store of a popular technology chain selling unnecessary shit to annoying techies who have nothing better to do.

Tom works at a hospital as a medical physicist doing complicated things to complicated machines that I don’t fully understand but its fucking sick nonetheless.

Connor had been residing in Europe until coronavirus kicked off big time so he’s back for the time being. Probably plotting his next crypto move.

Finally, John works in disability support, and has recently logged 200 hrs of the new Call Of Duty.

Please check out: ABORTED TORTOISE. AT on Facebook. Scale Model Subsistence Vendor available via Goodbye Boozy Records.

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

| gimmiezine
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.