1.What Do You Look For In A Band?
Our band is Josh, Ben, Matt and myself. We play acoustic synthpop with vocals, synths, electronic samples, acoustic guitar, bass and live drums. We like to write fun songs and make the people dance. We’ve started using video projections during our live shows and we’re really excited about their artistic and interactive potential. At gigs we hand out a phone to the crowd. We’ve programmed it using OSC so it acts like a remote control. The audience then picks a clip from 40 videos of us doing ridiculous dances. They use the ‘remote’ and essentially make us dance. And perhaps even make Josh get naked and shake his butt.
2.Keeping Busy
The last few months have been all about the video for our latest single ‘I Think I Love’. We shot in this amazing laundromat in Glebe that happened to be perfectly art directed for what we had in mind. A fortuitous venue find. Josh was our director and the incredible talents of Evan Papageorgiou were behind the camera. Meanwhile, I taught a dance to the extras on Glebe Point Road. We got a few ‘wtf’ looks from people walking by. It was worth it.
We also had Josh’s grandparents as the leads. They had a ball filming their scenes, and hung out watching the rest until we wrapped at 1am. Absolute champions. Next up is to finish recording the tracks for our EP, plan a tour and shoot another clip or two. Probably two.
3.Best Gig Ever
One of our best gigs has to be our most recent – The Standard on February 8 with Made In Japan, The Khanz and Tales In Space. A wicked lineup. It started off a little shaky. Ben, our drummer, was frantically finding a park until five minutes before we were set to play. But everything came together. It was such fun. The crowd danced and sang; the sound was great and we thought we played pretty darn well. Good vibes all round.
4.Current Playlist
I saw Chvrches at their Laneway sideshow… omgozzle I love them. Josh saw Toro y Moi and pretty much had the same reaction. We’ve also been listening to Bombay Bicycle Club, Cloud Nothings, Oscar Key Sung, Foxygen, Connan Mockasin and Metronomy. Always Metronomy.
5.Your Ultimate Rider
I’ve worked at a lot of music festivals over the years, and seen some pretty insane riders… a juicer to make fresh juice; socks and underwear; bottles of Dom Perignon. I had to take a whole roast chicken to a band right before they went onstage once. But what is crazy is that so much is left over at the end. I just don’t get it. As a band, we’ve bonded over the simpler things in life: beer and killer pythons. But Ben said next gig he wants Baller Shiraz.
‘I Think I Love’ video launch is at Hellen Rose-Schauersberger LabOratorium, Surry Hills on Thursday February 27.
