1. Growing Up
My parents did not play instruments.I remember Dad’s running joke was that he played the record player. Having said that, I do remember being fully supported by my parents in pursuing my musical dreams. Yep, there was an element of ‘get a real job’, but not a lot.
2. Inspirations
I am particularly inspired by the musicians I see as innovators. There was a time in my life when it was all about guitarists – Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix. For many years I became fairly obsessed with innovative drummers – Stewart Copeland (The Police), Mitch Mitchell (Hendrix), Tony Williams (Miles Davis). These days, a lot of the music I listen to are the big symphonic works. Old-school masters. Give me Russian. Give me big. Give me ballsy (Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Borodin).
3. Your Band
As Social Science I am essentially a solo artist, which of course has its own opportunities and challenges. Great freedom and creative control but also a certain degree of insanity, especially finding the balance between fully immersing myself and trying to stay objective at the same time. I’m very grateful for the input from producers Garry Frost (Moving Pictures, 1927) and Tim Powles (The Church) in walking this line. I’m certainly focused a lot on collaboration. At the moment this is with the Northern Suburbs Symphonic Wind Ensemble, a top quality 55-piece wind ensemble who are kind enough to get on board to bring a blend of symphonic and contemporary sounds to the stage during November.
4. The Music You Make
The major focus at the moment is the EP, Experiment. Experiment was firstly about jumping into a musical playground ranging from full orchestra and choir, to stripped-back acoustic folk, to full big band with distortion on trumpets and saxes, to reasonably straight-up pop. The second focus of the Experiment was about exploring visual and narrative elements, creating animatic illustrated video clips for each of the tracks.
5. Music, Right Here, Right Now
The last gig I saw which blew me away was TaikOz. Absolute masters. I subscribe fully to the motto ‘Big drums good’, and there is nothing quite like the experience of hearing half-a-dozen musical masters beating the living heck out of drums the size of rhinoceroses with grace, power, precision and abundant energy to bring a smile to my dial.
Social Science’sExperiment isout now independently and available here.
