1.Growing Up
SM: There were a lot of instruments around the house, [it was] more playing than listening. My folks were both musicians; my mum was a pop star in Poland and Dad was a bass player that was hired to play in her band. How romantic, I know. After they immigrated to Australia, they played weird residencies in restaurants; Mum on vocals, Dad on a plethora of late ’80s synthesizers and sequencers and occasionally myself on tambourine – usually under a table.
2.Inspirations
DM: My first serious music crush was Nick Drake. I found a vinyl of Bryter Layter in 1982 and brought it home purely ’cause I liked the cover. The sky kind of opened when I heard it. His music gave me license. Other seminal bands include VU, Sparklehorse, Yo La Tengo, Smog. I love the new Warpaint album. These days I’m probably more inspired by art and films. I really enjoyed the Adelaide Biennial this year.
3.Your Band
DM: The Holidays On Ice recording lineup has been the same for about eight years now – Angie Hart sings and Stella Mozgawa and I do the rest. We’re just pals who like making music. That’s what keeps us together. We live in different cities and countries so we work in intense bursts. It keeps it fresh and frees us from the day-to-day hassle of a ‘group’, which we’ve all endured at some point. Angie and I have always come from the same place, wherever that is. Stella is like a comet zooming by.
4.The Music You Make
DM: This is our third album. We recorded it ourselves in my living room, mostly on an eight-track reel-to-reel. It’s minimal and moody with a few early morning jams. We worked with French electronic duo Machine Est Mon Coeur on some tracks and had a few friends and guests in. Stella’s on the road with Warpaint in the US this month but we’ve drawn together some great players for the album launch tour and found some interesting venues – a church hall, a creperie, a bookshop and an old ice factory. In Sydney we’ll premiere The Luxury Of Wasted Video – a collection of films set to the new album tracks.
5.Music, Right Here, Right Now
AH: The scene in Melbourne is ridiculously healthy. There are always new bands that I have never heard of, or on most nights of the week, you can see a local legend playing in one of your nearby pubs. There are always the issues of gentrification vs live music, copyright infringement, and the lack of national radio play for most artists. I do not encourage the next generation to get into music, but they seem to go ahead and do it, regardless of the tough terrain. Music is just too good not to do. It would be better if it were acknowledged as the essential that it is by those that could make our lives a little easier, but then maybe the music wouldn’t be as good as it is.
Catch them at Glebe Cafe Church Hall, Friday April 35.The Luxury Of Wasted Space out now through Cloudy But Fine.
