It’s early evening in Gympie, and Ocean Grove frontman Luke Holmes chuckles, “I didn’t think I’d ever be here.” It’s the hometown stop on tour for The Amity Affliction, with Holmes and his bandmates joining Sydney hardcore outfit Hellions on the bill.
“I think that it’s inspiring to have bands to look up to in the heavy music scene that have toured the world and are able to stay so dedicated,” says Holmes. “The best part is that both bands are very different in their sounds, yet they can play together and it just works.
“Obviously we’re quite young as people, and seeing the way they conduct themselves as professionals and how they approach touring… it’s awesome to be able to watch them every night. We can sit back and make mental notes on how it’s done, and bring that into what we’re doing going forward. So I think it’s a great opportunity.”
Ocean Grove themselves burst onto the scene with their EPs Outsider and Black Label, and are making steady waves on the live stage, recently playing Unify Gathering for the second time running. “The first year we just went as punters, so to play it twice is a dream come true,” Holmes says. “It’s definitely got a great community sense to it, and it’s great that we live in a country that has a camping festival just dedicated to heavy bands.
“I remember going to Soundwave back in 2009, and Dale [Tanner, bass] and I actually worked there at the bar. You get there so early and leave late, and there’s nowhere to chill out. Unify has this BYO boutique feel. It’s really unique in terms of festivals, let alone what opportunities have been there for heavy music in punk and rock with Violent Soho and Luca Brasi.”
Conversation turns to the group’s impending debut album The Rhapsody Tapes, which Holmes admits he’s only shown to “my girlfriend and a couple others”. It’s a layered sonic experience, and the singer contemplates how its key idea of searching for something through a hyperreality applies to his own life.
“We’re honestly a self-referential band, and we’ve been friends longer than the band’s been around,” he says. “There have been a lot of things that have happened from Black Label to now, and I think we’ve been in search for something and weren’t sure what it was. ‘When You’re This High You Can Say What You Like’ is about that. So it’s touching on the fact that the last EP was a really unknown time for us as people, in terms of going through university and into this world of being an adult. While it’s a bit dark at times, the record has quite an emotive and relatable side, which keeps it pretty fresh.”
The album was recorded in multi-talented drummer Sam Bassal’s bedroom, but Holmes admits to having had second thoughts over the home recording. “I think we’ve found our way to write, but the record pretty much started as these 30-second snippets from [producer and musician] Running Touch. They were done with samples and it was almost a dance record, and to take that to Sam and be in his bedroom, which is 50 kilometres west of Melbourne… but we weren’t paying by the hour or day, so there was no limit in what we could do. Sam’s great, and he’s come leaps and bounds. It’s something we maybe take for granted, but it’s so amazing that we can have so much creative control over our record.
“We’re really a DIY band,” Holmes continues. “We travel around with a little camera and get these photos from all different people and places … Then editing, directing and producing the music video [for ‘Intimate Alien’], doing our own merch designs – we always have creative control and that’s great, but it is time-consuming, and sometimes we end up staying up all night.”
As for ‘Intimate Alien’ itself, the story behind the song is an amusing one. “When you get to the point of listening to it, it’s a completely different thing to what it’s been during the process,” says Holmes. “When we were recording it, I was so not sold on my performance on it, and I was like, ‘We’ll put it there for now but it’s not going to stay.’ Now when I listen back, I like it and it’s got good drive to it, but it’s just so funny to think that at the time I was so uncertain. But it’s a good soundtrack to whatever you want to do.”
Ocean Grove are slated for amazing things this year, with The Rhapsody Tapes already picked as a triple j feature album. “It opens up a world of people who haven’t heard of us before,” says Holmes. “We’re no longer seen as a local band, but somehow being played on national radio. It’s been a tumultuous time in the past year, because we’ve had meetings with record labels, and had to do different things to assemble this team and try to get representatives in America and Europe.
“All the hard work and things that went into this record – that was a turning point for us where we just said, ‘OK, we’re going to do this band, let’s be serious about it and give it our all.’ It’s exciting to think of where we’ll be in 12 months’ time.”
[Ocean Grove photo by Thomas Elliott]
Ocean Grove’sThe Rhapsody Tapes is out Friday February 3 through UNFD.
