In anticipation of his show tomorrow night in Fitzroy (The Empress Hotel) and on the 2nd of July at the Oxford Art Factory in Sydney, we catch up with up-and-coming Sydney hip hop artist Phatchance.
Your debut album Inkstains was a critical success and has seen you do quite well on the live circuit – what can we expect from your follow up album? What will you be doing differently to what we found in Inkstains?
I’d like to think I’m crafting a stronger record in general – I’ve been focused on trying to achieve a greater sense of balance on the next disc, Inkstains was my debut album and it was an extremely personal collection of songs, I think because of that and the type of guy that I am a lot of it came out very melancholy, which is great as that’s the type of songwriting I resonate with the most – but at the same time there’s always space for some light with the shade, especially in the scheme of a whole album. I’ve also tried to play around with production styles and pace, shifting out of my comfort zone a little and trying new things. There’s a whole lot more live instrumentation too, making these acoustic EP’s really caused me to fall in love with those organic sounds and I want to carry a lot of that over into my primary project.
Has the success of the acoustic EP changed any plans you may have had for the sophomore album?
We (I Forget, Sorry!) sort of went into this year with a plan for what we wanted to complete release wise, as you’d expect we greatly overestimated what we could do with the time we had, but the acoustic EP’s were very much a part of the plan and we’d already drafted a touring and release schedule before we actually made the recordings, they’ve definitely done more for us than we expected but they were primarily a bridging release so I’ve tried to keep focused on the album and make sure we don’t get too carried away on the touring side of things as that stuff really consumes a lot of creative energy.
You’ve become well known for engaging and entertaining live performances. Do you have a “live performance” philosophy?
Live performance is extremely important to me. Being fully independent and making the type of music I make I’ve never really received the mainstream attention some other acts in the genre garner, so for years I’ve approached everything in as grass roots a way as possible, with a lot of support touring and a huge number of shows in general. There’s a lot to be said for putting on a compelling performance and I think what fan base I have is largely in response to the personal way in which myself and Coptic Soldier (my touring partner) approach the performance side of our music, at the end of the day it’s all about communicating and including your audience to try and do something memorable.
You’ve become quite vocal on Twitter -how has Twitter changed the way artists interact with their fans.
Hahaha, for me Twitter (and by proxy all social media) is as much an addiction as it is a promotional tool, I genuinely enjoy chatting to my listeners and connecting to them personally and Twitter is a great medium to do that, inversely it’s also a great avenue for listeners to communicate directly with artists, which is a rare and valuable thing, I think a lot of artists have jumped on that facet of it. The networking side of things is great too, I get to chat to artists on a regular basis I otherwise would only see once or twice a year at shows – which is awesome.
On that note (pass this on back to us after the fact as such haha) how was X-Men: First Class?
Hahaha, I just got home from the screening and it was really awesome! I’m a huge comic book nerd/movie buff so I was going to love it even if it was trashy, but they took the source material and transformed it into something that worked really well on the big screen. Some mighty good looking girls too – I’d recommend it.
Who else has you excited in the Aussie Hip Hop Scene?
Obviously I’m really excited for all the stuff coming out of our camp – I’ve been working on new material for Coptic Soldier, Johnny Utah & Mind Over Matter – the other artists in ‘I Forget, Sorry!’ but in general it’s a really exciting time for Australian hip-hop, a lot of artists are rising in a meteoric way and there’s a big spread of sound right now which is a very healthy thing, it’s also daunting seeing so many great artists producing excellent music.
How does you think aussie hip hop is doing in general in terms of local acceptance?
Well, the last two Australian #1 albums were Australian Hip-Hop so I’d say we’re well past the sub-genre stage and into the real mainstream. I don’t necessarily agree with the type of song choices being thrown out to the general public though, in particular the type of Australian Hip-Hop tracks which tend to make the jump from Triple J to the commercial stations, I think there’s a great deal of pigeonholing going on in terms of what constitutes a viable song in the genre, but I guess that’s life when you’re dealing with a fledgling genre like ours. I would like to see the stations spreading their reach a little bit further – if Australian artists like Gotye can crack the mainstream with genuinely moving tracks I see no fundamental reason those same types of songs can’t receive airplay in our genre.
Do you feel that it is becoming more respected in the global community, or will this be a harder shell to crack?
I think it’ll be a much tougher nut to crack – I think Bliss N Eso have the strongest chance of doing so in the short term, given that they’ve got an artist from the states on board and they’ve got an amazing live show, but the fact is the US in particular don’t generally like to import hip-hop since they have so much of it on their own shores, they’re a very patriotic country and naturally they act as a taste maker in regards to the urban music scene internationally. With that said, if Professor Green can do it then someone from Australia probably can too, so here’s to hoping.
Any international tour plans in the foreseeable future?
Not at the moment, I wouldn’t mind getting out to the UK and Europe at some point in the next few years, though.
What’s getting the most play on your iPod at the moment?
Well, Death Cab For Cutie never really leave, last week I rediscovered the Kaiser Chief’s early albums which I’m a huge fan of and I finally gave Basia Bulat’s newer album the listen it deserves and it’s mind blowingly good. On our shores I’ve been thrashing Drapht’s most recent release too, that album definitely deserved the commercial success it’s seen.
What else do you have planned for 2011?
New album later this year which I’ll be touring fairly heavily, I’ve also got plans for some mixtape material with the rest of the ‘I Forget, Sorry!’ family. I really want to release more video content if I can, both in terms of video clips and live performance stuff, I think there’s a lot to be said for having a good visual presence on the net. I’ve also executively produced Johnny Utah’s new album which should be dropping soon enough and I’ve been recording or mixing projects for a whole lot of indie acts and lending verses to albums here and there. All told it’ll be a pretty busy year, but I’m excited for it!
Questions by Larry Heath and Chris Singh.
