1.Growing Up
My first musical memory is buying a Backstreet Boys tape in Dubai. I didn’t really have much access to music growing up in the Middle East, so whenever we drove to the nearest city we bought the shittiest, poppiest thing we could find. My parents aren’t musical at all, but my brother was always into interesting music.
2.Inspirations
I record a lot of artists, and I’m more inspired by that procedure rather than musicians that I grew up listening to. Leigh [Craft] is also inspired by a lot of visual arts and things like that, more so than musicians.
3.Your Band
It all started in Melbourne when I recorded some of Leigh’s songs and we ended up working pretty seamlessly together. Skipping ahead two years, we’ve kind of landed on an aesthetic that we’re happy exploring a lot more. We write our songs in my home studio and then with Sam Perejuan and Rhian Todhunter, we make them work in a live setting.
4.The Music You Make
We’re an electronic pop band, but we incorporate acoustic/real instruments like guitars and drums and percussive samples. We always make sure that we’ve got a song among all the sounds that we use, and have a strong focus on songwriting as well as sound design. We recorded our upcoming EP all ourselves, other than a couple of sections of real drums, which we did at Blackbird Studios with Dave Parkin. Our live show is pretty similar to the recording with the added bonus of Leigh dancing like a Backstreet Boy. It’s definitely leaning towards the dreamy mellow side, but there’s enough there to dance to.
5.Music, Right Here, Right Now
The music scene is a pretty strange place to be. As a project we kinda identify with a lot of different sections of it. On one hand we’re in the electronic realm, which is constantly evolving and moving and generally getting a bigger fan base, especially online. And on the other hand we’ve been exposed to the more traditional band set-up, which is kind of struggling in places around Australia. So a lot of our shows are more club night vibes, which is cool and newer. We saw some cool bands in Austin at SXSW, which was a combination of overwhelming and inspiring. It was pretty cool seeing Client Liaison do their thing when we supported them, especially for the entertainment factor.
28 Mansions is out now, independently, and Flower Drums playBeach Road Hotel on Wednesday May 6 and Oxford Art FactorySaturday May 9.
