Melbourne ‘astral space-core’ five-piece AlithiA are a band that likes to do things a little differently to most. Not only is their music several large steps to the left of centre, they like to go to far away, exotic places to record it.
Their last album, 2014’s extremely well received To The Edge Of Time, was recorded in Budapest, Hungary, and they have plans to record their next effort on the other side of the world as well, as bassist Tibor Gede explains.
“I’m putting in a funding application to do our new record, because the Labor government brought back in the music grants which the Liberal government took away. So that’s really good, hopefully we’ll get to do that, because if we get it, we’ll go over to Istanbul, Turkey and do our next record there.”
The process of recording in far-flung places, immersing oneself in the local culture and music, can help inspire creativity.
“There’s a few things behind it,” says Gede. “The first one just kinda happened because I was living in Budapest at the time. I was away from the band for quite a while and the guys said, ‘Can we come over and do some gigs?’ and I said, ‘Sure, I’ll organise a tour.’ And we thought we might as well do the album while we’re there. So the whole band was there for two months, living in my apartment!
“A lot of people, what they say about AlithiA is that we’re prog in a way, but we don’t sound like an Aussie prog band – we are kind of European-sounding, we do stand out in a different way, and I think being over there is inspiring for us.
“Plus we’ve got guest artists,” he adds. “We’ve got a Bulgarian gaida player, the gaida being an ancient, traditional Bulgarian instrument. We also have another couple of Hungarian guest artists, a violin player and a guy that does really deadly, deathly screams, a couple of other vocalists and a New York rapper. So I think it really transformed and impacted our sound.”
AlithiA also recently went out on a limb and made a short film to go along with their weird, wild and wonderful music. That film, Sacrifice, will screen as part of a Sydney gig at the end of this month.
“Basically, I think the best way to describe it is that it’s a dark comedy, mockumentary, social commentary,” laughs Gede. “It takes Spinal Tap and puts it with David Lynch, and we had cameras following us around for 48 hours, and we’re playing kind of heightened versions of ourselves. It’s not a documentary, it’s a mockumentary, so we’ve put ourselves in a fictional context. The context is that we’re a local band, we’ve hired a publicist to help us get some more likes, more reach on social media, try to get us out there desperately, sell more tickets and so on. We’re in that kind of ‘pay to play’ process of selling tickets to our friends and family, but the gimmick of the show is that it’s the singer’s last-ever show, because after the show he will be dead!
“It puts a spotlight on the fact that unless people have a deep interest in supporting the local culture, most people don’t – they’re not even aware of it, they don’t even know what venues and bands exist.”
AlithiA play the Factory Floor Friday August 28, with Chaos Divine, Hemina and The Winter Effect, and To The Edge Of Time is out now independently.
