– Thanks for taking the time to talk to us Matt! Firstly, congrats on the Laneway spot! How has the festival tour been going?
Hey Larry, thank you, the festival’s been incredible so far. This is our first touring festival, so it’s all been very exciting and over whelming so far. It’s the serious business of having fun. Very serious business. Lots of fun.
– Who have been some of your favourite bands to see?
I think we’ve all loved seeing Holy Fuck the most, I’ve also really enjoyed Deerhunter, Ariel Pink, !!!, Worlds End Press and our buddies the John Steel Singers in Brisbane were great too.
– Sleigh Bells and Regurgitator have been amongst your support slots over the last few months… what have been some of the highlights?
After we played with Sleigh Bells in Melbourne we literally finished our set and Adrian our bass player and I took responsibility of driving duties straight to Sydney over night to play the next day. That was really fun. I think I drank close to two litres of “V” and Adrian and I played the most intense music we could find on our respective ipods to keep ourselves awake. From memory there was lots of dubstep, drum and bass, speed metal, etc, etc.
I remember being so wired that when I was driving the van it felt like I was driving from the back of the van with really long arms and the windscreen looked really small and far away, like I was Stretch Armstrong operating a computer or something. But about those two bands, both Alexis and Derek from Sleigh Bells were total sweethearts and we’re all majorly in love with Ben, Quan and Pete from Regurgitator and their manager Paul, so it’s really great to be able to play with really wonderful people and get the opportunity to play to people in other cities who otherwise might not ever hear about us.
– 2010 was a big year for you guys, what will 2011 hold?
We’ve just started recording our next album and should have our first single out in May. That actually really needs to happen because we’ve got a tour then with one of our absolute favourite bands in the world – an amazing band from New York that we’ll be doing a co-headline tour with, but more details on that soon… Apart from that tour, getting album #2 finished is our main priority.
– I understand you took some time off over the Summer to work on follow-up material to ‘Daughter Of Sunshine’. How is that going so far?
We’ve got it all written, taking a bit more time off after Laneway to go into some more mental writing mode but so far it’s been feeling great. A real mish-mash of a lot of different sounds.
– How do you feel the newer material might compare to that which we’re familiar with?
We’ve been playing a lot of the new material in our live set for the last year, but as far as comparing to the stuff on Daughter Of Sunshine, it’s a lot more developed and refined as we were still kind of learning how to play as a band when we recorded DOS and working out what we wanted to do. We only play a few songs off that album now and they are basically complete re-worked versions of the recorded songs.
– How do you feel you’ve grown as musicians since you formed? What’s changed?
As a band we play so much, most weeks we rehearse / write music twice a week and when we first started generally played a show a week, so I suppose that would make any band / musician grow. This has been the most openly creative band I’ve ever played in, and I’ve been dicking around in numerous crappy bands since I was 15 years old (I’m now 24). Unlike other bands I’ve played in the past where I might have felt musically stifled, I feel like I’ve personally grown more in the last two years since we formed than any other period in my entire musically obsessed life, mainly thanks to playing with similarly open-minded, enthusiastic and creative people.
– Of course you’re playing GoodGod in Sydney on 17th Feb – how do you feel the Sydney crowds have responded to you, compared to perhaps your hometown crowds?
We’ve only been playing in Sydney lately as support slots to other bigger bands, so it’ll be interesting to see if we’ve translated to some new people since the last time we did our own Sydney shows back in May for our album launches at two warehouse venues.
– Have you been throwing any new material into your sets yet? Can we expect anything new at GoodGod?
Loads. 70% new stuff, 30% old stuff.
– Your stage layout is quite unique, up front and in your face! Has it always been like that? How did you decide upon it?
We never decided on a set up, whatever our set up is just sort of happened that way. Having a percussive thing was definitely something we always wanted to explore and we all like playing different instruments so we just sort of bring whatever to rehearsal and write different songs on different instruments and after a while you just need to bring a ridiculous amount of gear to play the songs you’ve written.
– Your music has been described on our website as “a bit like a sonic explosion, but in a good way” (Robert Jansen). How would you describe it?
A frequently evolving mish-mash of genres. The music we make is an extension of the music we listen to and love and really changes and develops depending on the music we listen to over periods of time. Our early, early stuff definitely has that post-Animal Collective sort of vibe to it, from there we started getting really into krautrock, so we have a batch of krautrack inspired tracks, a collection of psychedelic rock stuff and now a lot of the new songs have taken a more dancey direction.
I’m getting really into the origins and evolution of rave music and culture, all of the different sub-genres, styles and scenes that have evolved over the last twenty or so years. I suppose Chicago and Detroit acid-house in the late 80’s is one of the evolutions from 1970’s krautrock, so kind of makes sense for us to explore.
– And finally, if you could be the master of one instrument you’re not already a master of, what would it be?
I’d love to be able to play bitchin’ jazz piano.
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Don’t miss Rat vs Possum at GoodGod Small Club in Sydney on February 17th.
