All posts tagged vine

• April 10, 2011

  The Vine interview: Brett Mitchell of Jebediah, April 2011

  An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.

  Interview – Jebediah

  “Jebediah’s apparent strategy is simple,” I wrote in December last year; “Take to the stage and kick several shades of shit from any lingering doubts about their ongoing aptitude.”

  At the time, it’d been a while between drinks for Perth quartet, who rose to national prominence off the back of their 1997 debut, Slightly Odway. During the ensuing years, their high-energy alternative rock – occasionally intercut with slower, ballad-like singles, in ‘Harpoon’ and ‘Feet Touch The Ground’ – was on a par with Silverchair, Spiderbait, You Am I et al in terms of both triple j airplay and frequent festival appearances. The foursome – frontman Kevin Mitchell, his older brother and drummer Brett, bassist Vanessa Thornton, and guitarist Chris Daymond – took a breather after the so-so chart performance of their independently-released fourth album, Braxton Hicks (2004), Kevin Mitchell pursued (and found) success with his solo project Bob Evans. Jebediah would continue to play sporadically, but by and large, it seemed as though the group weren’t in any hurry to return to the studio.

  Now their fifth album is being released on April 15 via Brisbane-based independent label Dew Process. Kosciuszko was recorded on-and-off over several years with Dave Parkin (Snowman, Sugar Army) in a Perth studio, whenever the four members could find the time. Bar now-Melbournite Kevin Mitchell – the only member able to support himself as a full-time musician – the other three still live in Perth. Mitchell senior works for a logistics company, Daymond works at 78 Records, and Thornton recently completed a Bachelor of Science, between playing with Felicity Groom & The Black Black Smoke.

  I spent a couple of days with the band in early December last year, while they played a short run of shows and shot the video for ‘She’s Like A Comet’ – their current single, which is receiving heavy airplay on both alternative and commercial radio – in Sydney. With those experiences still fresh in mind, TheVine connected with drummer Brett Mitchell.

  —

  You’ve been in this situation before, where you sit down and do a bunch of phone interviews to promote the new record. How does it feel this time around?

  It’s coming back to me. Promo is one of those things which – as I’m sure you know – ranges from genuinely painful to genuinely enjoyable. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag for me. It’s always nice to have the chance to talk about things in a meaningful way, or in a way that you think is going to be relevant to people. But that doesn’t always happen. What can I say? I’m just kind of going with the flow, and trying not to be too cynical about it.

  At this stage, which sensation is more accurate: painful, or enjoyable?

  I have to say, it probably has been more enjoyable than I would’ve anticipated. Maybe that’s because the commercial [success] is happening with the single (‘She’s Like A Comet’). Plus there’s that [band] history there, which a lot of people seem to be familiar with. I guess people have got a couple of different angles to approach us from, and maybe that’s helping me smooth it over.

  The single has been doing well, hasn’t it?

  Yeah. I’m certainly spun out. It’s very strange to me, that after all this time, we get this song pretty much across the board on radio. It’s certainly never happened before. It’s awesome because it’s giving us a springboard, which I’m sure we did need. But it’s still a shock. It probably doesn’t bear anything, really; it’s one of those things that’s just happened, and perhaps it’s a random event. We just have to capitalise on it.

  I have to ask about the album title, Kosciuszko. Is there a significance behind it? Can we draw some parallels between it being the summit of Jebediah’s musical career so far, or some such?

  I was actually a bit worried about the symbolism that people might interpret in that. It seemed like it might be a little bit grand, or arrogant, or something. But in actual fact, that doesn’t exist at all, and I’m still at the point now – speaking of promo – where I’m actually telling the truth about most things. So the truth with [the album title] is that it was Kevin’s baby.

  Apparently The Beatles were going to call The White Album Everest. He must have read something about it. Obviously it never happened, and I don’t know if anyone else has ever gone down that path. But the appealing thing to me about it, is that it’s essentially a nonsense word. It doesn’t even look like a word, when you see it written on the page. We’ve always had a lean in that direction, so I think it kind of fits. As for the symbolism – I don’t know. People can make of it what they will.

  For the full interview, visit The Vine. For more Jebediah, visit their website. The music video for their song ‘She’s Like A Comet‘ is embedded below.

  Elsewhere: ‘Jebediah Return From Hiatus’ news story for Rolling Stone, February 2011

  No Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• April 3, 2011

  The Vine interview: Kenny Sabir of The Herd, April 2011

  An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.

  Interview – The Herd

  After spending ten years at the forefront of Australian hip-hop, you could forgive The Herd if they became complacent. Ten years in anything is a long time, let alone the music business. Yet complacency is the furthest thing from the minds of this Sydney collective, whose eight members have earned a reputation for both their energetic live shows – owing equally to the live instrumentation and sheer number of bodies on stage – and their want to challenge Australian society and politics thereof. See: ‘77%’, whose chorus call of “These cunts need a shake-up” was directed at the ‘77%’ of Australians who (according to a poll) supported the then-Howard government’s response to refusing to allow a distressed fishing vessel, the Tampa, to enter Australian waters. See also: ‘The King Is Dead’, which celebrated Howard’s removal from office.

  This overt politicisation wasn’t always apparent in The Herd’s musical output, though. Their first single to achieve triple j attention, for instance, was an ode to ordering food at a take-away store (‘Scallops’). During their career, they’ve released four albums; over time, the quality of songwriting and production has steadily increased. Though they’ve got their eyes on release #5 later this year, The Herd are currently embarking on a short run of shows to celebrate their 10th anniversary (or birthday, depending on which way you look at it).

  The morning after the tour’s first show in Newcastle, TheVine connected with Kenny Sabir (a.k.a. Traksewt, who plays accordion, clarinet, and beats), a founding member of both The Herd and their associated label Elefant Traks.

  —

  First things first, Kenny. How’d last night go?

  Last night was great. After not playing for two years, there was that nervous excitement of, “Oh, do the crowd still remember us?” But when you’re up on stage, it comes back to you about how it feels to be playing. The crowd were into it. We got to try out the new single (‘The Sum Of It All’; TheVine review here). It went down well.

  I take it you’re playing something similar to a ‘greatest hits’ set for these shows, since you don’t have a new record to promote.

  Yeah. We’ve got the new single, and we’ve got lots of new tracks, but we’re not thinking about [playing them] on this tour. We’re doing a new beat, but we might use it as an instrumental for freestyles. There’s a lot of stuff we’d love to play, but they’re not fully finished yet.

  I’m interested to know some of the differences between touring Australia now, versus when the band started in 2001.

  One thing is that, when we started, we were very Sydney-centric. The label wasn’t purely hip-hop back then; we were doing electronic stuff as well. Back then, a lot of the focus was on the label itself, The Herd were more unknown. We started to get dedicated fans. You’d see the same faces quite often. Once we started getting more radio play, we started venturing [outside Sydney]. The first gigs in other cities were hard. We started gigging around before the radio [play] really took off, too. But after that, it was a constant groundswell. We’d get a lot of love from Brisbane and Melbourne, and it kept ramping up. Some of our craziest shows have been in the other cities.

  It’s changed a lot. Getting into the festival circuit was very hard initially, as we were independent and we didn’t have the arrays of contacts that you need to get into that circuit. But it’s always been fun, and they’re great guys to be touring with. We still have the same problems that we had 10 years ago, of trying to organise eight or nine people to leave somewhere for breakfast [laughs].

  I’m guessing you take better care of your physical health nowadays, too.

  [Laughs] Yeah. It’s pretty diverse in the band, you could say. There are more things we’re aware of, that we have to worry about now. We’d like to think that we take better care of ourselves now, but when you’re in the mode of touring, you switch on your ‘touring brain’ and you start living how you used to live.

  For the full interview, visit The Vine. For more of The Herd, visit their label’s website. The audio for their new single, ‘The Sum Of It All‘, is embedded below.

  No Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• March 29, 2011

  The Vine live review: ‘Foo Fighters at Brisbane Riverstage’, March 2011

  A live review for The Vine. Excerpt below.

  Foo Fighters – Queensland Disaster Relief Benefit
  Riverstage, Brisbane
  Sunday 27 March 2011

  Behind the Riverstage, at the edge of the City Botanic Gardens, the Brisbane River silently ebbs in the night. As ferries pass by, their flashing beacons reflect off the body of water that snakes though the city. A few months earlier, that river rose too close for comfort; for a week in mid-January 2011, Brisbane effectively came to a standstill while its inhabitants rallied first to escape the water, then to salvage what was left in its dreadful wake. It was a scary, surreal thing to live through. Even now, the topic is never far from conversations shared between both friends and strangers. Owing to the city’s one degree of separation, every Brisbanite was either directly affected by the flood, or knows someone that was. Repairing what was lost will take more time and money than can be realistically measured. Still, in the immediate aftermath of what went on in this town and others throughout the state of Queensland, the Premier set up a fund for donations, whose resources will be allocated toward those who lost possessions, homes, or worse.

  Unsurprisingly, a spate of flood benefit shows were held at live music venues across the state, and throughout the country. A couple of weeks ago, this – the largest single natural disaster benefit event since Melbourne’s Sound Relief in 2009 – was announced: American rock act Foo Fighters were to top a bill that included Melbourne stalwarts You Am I, adored Blue Mountains indie pop act Cloud Control, and a local act to be hand-picked by Foo frontman Dave Grohl. (Apparently, he fancied a storming rock quartet named Giants Of Science.) At $99 a head, 9,000-odd tickets to the event disappeared within minutes. Donating to victims of natural disasters seems to be way more fun if the package deal includes a rock show.

  Once inside, the Foos – who performed in New Zealand last week under similar circumstances, in support of those affected by the Christchurch earthquake – offer us a couple more deal-sweeteners at the merch desk: t-shirts ($40) and posters ($30), both designed and printed exclusively for this show. All proceeds go toward the Premier’s flood appeal. The limited run includes 350 posters hand-numbered by the artist, whose design includes the five band members’ faces framed around an outline of a Queensland branded with the Foo Fighters’ logo; underneath sits the Brisbane skyline. (Interestingly, the drawings barely resemble their real-life counterparts.) At my request, a guy behind the merch desk checks some paperwork and tells me that 1,783 shirts were printed for this show. Since they’re doing a roaring trade all night, it’s likely that they’ll have very few left by the end of the night.

  For the full review – and photos by Elleni Toumpas (who also took the above photo – visit The Vine.

  No Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• March 29, 2011

  The Vine album review: Collarbones – ‘Iconography’, March 2011

  An album review for The Vine. Excerpt below.

  Collarbones – Iconography
  (Two Bright Lakes)

  Despite being written and arranged by two dudes living in different cities, Collarbones’ debut record is surprisingly cohesive. The product of the interstate collaborations (or should that be collarborations? *cymbal crash*) between Sydney-based Marcus Whale and Adelaide native Travis Cook, Iconography is the disorienting soundtrack to a ride through multiple sounds and scenes: electronica, pop, R&B and hip-hop all seem to inform the duo’s sound in equal measures. This has been Collarbones’ best asset since Whale and Cook began fooling around together in 2007: they can’t be confused with anyone else, they’re on their own wavelength. Iconography is worthy of your attention if only for its unique individuality.

  Describing Collarbones’ music robs the experience of much of its pleasure, so here’s a couple of cliff notes. Most every song is built around an eclectic selection of sampled beats, synths and instrumentation, all of which are chopped and shunted into a shifting mass of sound. The results feel organic and effortless, the effects beguiling. In spite of the disjointed nature of their compositions, the production smooths over most jagged edges to ensure Iconography stays on a fairly even keel. Whale sings on the majority of the album’s 11 tracks; more often than not, his voice is discombobulated just as much as the surrounding instrumentation. Some of the album’s best moments are lyricless; the hook of ‘Id’ – if it can even be called a hook – is essentially a symphony of swelling vocal samples, intercut with staccato beats. Previous singles ‘Beaman Park’ and ‘Kill Off The Vowels’ feature Whale’s voice prominently, though the songs’ moods are vastly disparate. The latter is bent around a dark, almost industrial vibe and lower-register singing; ‘Beaman Park’ pitch-shifts Whale’s voice to improbably lofty heights. Both work incredibly well.

  For the full review, visit The Vine. For more Collarbones, visit their Tumblr. Music video their song ‘Don Juan‘ embedded below.

  Elsewhere: an interview with Marcus Whale of Collarbones for The Vine

  No Comments / Music Criticism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• March 29, 2011

  The Vine interview: Marcus Whale of Collarbones, March 2011

  An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.

  Interview – Collarbones

  Marcus Whale lives in Sydney. Travis Cook lives in Adelaide. Combined, they form Collarbones, an electronic-based act fascinated with pop and R’n’B, who cut, paste and loop sounds and voices atop one another to create dense, uniquely compelling music. Whale and Cook had gone by their respective experimental music monikers Scissor Lock and Cyst Impaled for several years before they connected online. Though they bonded and began sharing song sketches immediately, it was 18 months before they met in person.

  Following a string of appealing single and EP releases – ‘Beaman Park’ wasForkcasted in July last year, and their EP Tiger Beats was a collection of pop covers, remixes and reinventions – Collarbones’ full-length debut, Iconography, is released on March 18 via Melbourne-based, artist-run label Two Bright Lakes.

  TheVine connected with Marcus Whale to discuss interstate collaborations, getting Collarboned, Bieber, and male models.

  —

  At what point did this become a public project? When did it move from just you two exchanging ideas, to putting your music online?

  In the ‘Myspace generation’, you can basically be public as soon as you finish a track. Even with sketches and demos; they can be already up there on the internet, it’s just a matter of whether or not people actually know it. So technically, about an hour after we finished our first track, toward the end of 2007 [laughs]. It’s been a while, but at the beginning, it was just for shits and giggles.

  You were comfortable with sharing even just rough sketches? There was no hesitation?

  The idea of making music public nowadays is way less intense than it used to be. I guess I never really thought about it; it was just like, “Hey, we’ve got some music. Let’s put it on the internet.” We’re both pretty used to that sort of thing. Knowing that it’s not necessarily going to be widely listened to; it’s just there.

  Has making music always been a solitary activity for you?

  Not really. I grew up playing in the school band, and that sort of thing. I played in rock bands when I was in high school. I’ve sung in choirs. It’s always been a fairly group-based thing. I did do a lot of solo stuff; have done, and still do. I did have a lot of fun collaborating with people.

  Travis and yourself currently live in different cities. Are you happy with that arrangement? Do you hope it stays that way?

  Funnily enough, I feel like we’re more productive when we’re just doing little bits and pieces on our own and then sending it [to each other], rather than a really intensive situation where we’re both in the same room, but doing stuff at the same time. I found that if you invite someone over, and say, “Hey, we’re going to make some music,” it takes quite a long time to get something happening. In my experience. Unless it’s really improvised, jammy music.

  We’ve only really successfully collaborated in person twice. I think we’re getting better at it. It’s becoming easier, I suppose. But Travis has generally made music on his own. He has a fairly strange way of going about things sometimes. He has quite an obtuse taste in music. It’s very trial-and-error. He’s come up with some really awesome stuff using devices in a way that’s not standard. I was listening to some of his old music the other day; it’s probably some of the weirdest music I’ve ever heard. He had a very strange mind as a teenager. His project is called Cyst Impaled, and it’s completely different [than Collarbones]. Basically, it’s a combination of really fucked-up ranting about stuff. Brutal noise, flamenco guitars, lots of sampled stuff, and occasionally some really hot dance beats. But then it became a mash-up project. Some of it is truly disturbing.

  For the full interview, visit The Vine. For more Collarbones, visit their Tumblr. Music video their song ‘Don Juan‘ embedded below.

  No Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• March 15, 2011

  The Vine story: ‘First Three Songs, No Flash – And No Copyright’, March 2011

  A feature article for The Vine. Excerpt below.

  First Three Songs, No Flash – And No Copyright

  Andrew McMillen inspects the contracts and copyright law related to recent Australian tours by Big Day Out artists Tool and Rammstein.

  (Main pic: Slash vs Photographers at Soundwave, Adelade 2011 by Andrew Stace)
  

  As the 2011 Big Day Out tour wound itself across the country this year – it ended in Perth on Sunday, Feb 6 – hundreds of professional photographers snapped portraits of an artist line-up that included Californian hard rock act Tool and German industrial metal troupe Rammstein.

  These two bands were the heaviest-hitting acts on the tour. Yet their photo release forms also revealed that they were the bands most protective of their image. “All copyrights and other intellectual property rights shall be entirely Artist’s property,” read a line from Tool’s contract, which photographers wishing to capture the band from the front-of-stage photo pit were required to sign. “[The photographer] is prohibited from placing the photos in the so-called online media, and/or distributing them using these media,” stated Rammstein’s decidedly archaic contract, which concludes with an apparently self-defeating line about being subject to the laws of Germany.

  Such rights-grabbing statements are nothing new in the live entertainment business, where artists’ images and ‘trade secrets’ have always been fiercely protected. Eddie Van Halen was known to turn his back to the audience when performing innovative electric guitar solos before Van Halen were signed, so as to prevent both his newly-discovered techniques from being viewed by rival guitarists – or being captured by keen-eyed music photographers.

  Recent Australian tours by popular rock acts like The Smashing Pumpkins and Muse have demanded that photographers shoot only from the sound desk; Muse, too, issued a contract which states that photographers “hereby assign full title guarantee the entire worldwide right, title and interest in and to the Photographs, including the copyright therein”. Which means that if Muse (or, more likely, their management or lawyers) happen to be browsing your live photo portfolio and they’re particularly taken by a picture of bassist Christopher Wolstenholme’s fetching red suit, they can request the high resolution image file – or negative – free of charge. You have no power to negotiate because you’re bound by a contract.

  Why, then, in an age where the vast majority of gig-goers carry web-ready media devices in their pockets, are bands still so insistent on attempting to shield themselves from the close scrutiny of professional cameras? And are these contracts even legally binding, or simply attempts to scare newbie photographers into surrendering their hard work – with zero additional compensation on top of their publication’s one-time print fees?

  For the full article, visit The Vine.

  No Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• March 1, 2011

  The Vine festival review: ‘Soundwave Festival Brisbane’, March 2011

  A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.

  Soundwave Festival
  RNA Showgrounds, Brisbane
  Saturday 26 February 2011

  2011 marks Soundwave Festival’s fifth year as a national touring entity; five years old, and already rivaling the Big Day Out in terms of sheer artistic firepower. The most recent BDO was headlined by Tool. This year’s Soundwave features Iron Maiden – one of the biggest bands in the world – closing each night with a two-hour set. What a coup.

  Besides that classic British metal act, nearly 70 other acts – mostly internationals – fill out a line-up pregnant with talent. The bookers are clearly doing something right, as several Soundwaves have sold out, Brisbane included (though curiously, today they were still selling tickets at the gate, for $180). Judging by the maps being handed out inside, the festival grounds have nearly doubled compared to last year. For the first time, organisers have placed two stages outside of the RNA Showgrounds, thereby using some of the space that an expanded Laneway Festival trialled last month. More space means more people. Maybe it’s the urban environment messing with my perceptions, but it feels like there could well be more people here than at the Gold Coast Big Day Out. At least on sight, it’s a major achievement for a festival solely focused on rock, metal, punk and hardcore.

  Pathways to the new stages – numbered 3 and 6, which makes very little sense – become natural bottlenecks early in the day, as many thousands attempt to see Swedish act Millencolin on stage 3 at 12.30pm. There’s not a skerrick of space anywhere within eyeshot of the band, who’re celebrating the 10th anniversary of their most popular album, Pennybridge Pioneers, by playing it in full today. It’s a winning decision: tracks like ‘No Cigar’ (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, anyone?), ‘Fox’ and ‘Penguins & Polarbears’ are all classics.

  Walking through the main arena – where stages 1 and 2 are positioned adjacent to each other – presents a strange sight: very, very few people watching Welsh rock band Feeder. Poor dudes. Apparently MxPx/The Ataris brought a big crowd immediately beforehand. Outside the arena and across the train tracks that split the venue in two, Sevendust are playing the same heavy, down-tuned breed of metal I remember from high school on stage 4. (Stage 4a is right next to it. Soundwave don’t try too hard with naming stages, clearly.) It appears not much has changed in the interim. They add in a couple of metal cred-seeking song snippets, including ‘Master of Puppets’ and Pantera’s ‘Walk’; a decision which was always going to work in their favour in front of a crowd like this. Singer Lajon Witherspoon makes some strange comments toward the end of the set: “Thank you for making our dreams come true!”, and “Sevendust has arrived!”. Huh? They’ve been around for 17 years. Weird. Still, they’re playing to several thousand people, so… good for them. Monster Magnet are playing over on stage one. The vocals are really high in the mix. The singer’s voice sounds shot. Or maybe he always sounds like that. I sit and idly watch them from the shade of the grandstands for a while – they don’t seem to mean much to many people.

  Devildriver, on the other hand, clearly do. Over on stage 4, they’re playing to a field full of young dudes thrashing away in the sun. I opt to explore the wide range of food outlets positioned between stages 4 and 5. The organisers have allowed some non-traditional food stalls to operate in the venue: ‘Punk Rock Burgers’ is doing a roaring trade, and the Iceberg (slushie/slurpee) fan is working in overdrive. $5 for a 600ml Coke is a bit rough, though.

  For the full review, visit The Vine. Above photo by Justin Edwards.

  No Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• February 28, 2011

  The Vine festival review: ‘Good Vibrations Gold Coast’, February 2011

  A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.

  Good Vibrations
  Gold Coast Parklands, Gold Coast
  Saturday 19 February 2011

  On show day, wide open spaces are among the last things that festival promoters want to see. So Jam Music, the team behind Good Vibrations, must be pretty bummed by this year’s turnout. Half price tickets were offered to the Sydney show, and there were reports of lacklustre attendance in Melbourne and – to a lesser extent – Sydney, while punters at the Gold Coast leg were informed a few days prior that they could bring a friend to the show for free. One can’t help but wonder just how bare the venue would be, were it not for that last minute face-saving decision; even now, there’s loads of unused space within the Parklands.

  Despite running a similar amount of stages to the Big Day Out, the Good Vibes grounds take up perhaps half of the floor space. In recent years, promoters have attempted to distinguish the festival from myriad other doof-fests by booking indie pop and rock acts high up the bill. Evidently, their efforts this year weren’t enough to stand out from a crowded summer schedule. By moving away from the dancefloor in search of the moshpit, Good Vibrations may have lost its core audience.

  I am not part of this festival’s core audience. When the first line-up announcement was made back in September last year, two of my most anticipated artists were Cee-Lo Green and Janelle Monae. Both ultimately cancelled in favour of staying Stateside and performing at the 53^rd annual Grammy Awards, meaning that some large holes suddenly emerged among the line-up. And so the first artist of real interest isn’t until half three on a disgustingly hot Saturday afternoon. (Although curiously, the $40 festival shirts for sale behind the merch desk still list the names of both Monáe and Green. The perils of printing merchandise months in advance.)

  Erykah Badu is a thing of beauty. At the outset, I’m a bit sceptical, due largely to the circumstance in which she takes the stage. For over five minutes, her band are put in a holding pattern playing the same eight bars; a dark jacket is handed to the bassist, whose white check shirt stands out among his fellow black clad musicians. I expect a diva-like performance, fraught with perfectionism and divorced from spontaneity. Thankfully, my doubts are disproven around 10 minutes in, as the American singer smiles for the first time and reveals herself to be wholly engaged with the wide crowd of admirers. “You know why I do this?” she asks us halfway through. “I do this for my sanity.”

  Thank fuck that she does. Her hour-plus on stage is a thrilling ride through her eclectic catalogue of soul and R&B stunners. With a wave of her hand, she cuts her band off on the beat time and again; by constantly deconstructing and rebuilding her songs, Badu ensures that she remains the focal point. Indeed, it is impossible to take one’s eyes off the singer, so alluring is her voice and presence. When she walks the length of the front-of-stage barrier toward set’s end, while still singing and holding onto the crowd for support, there’s little doubt that any of us would let such a beautiful creature come to harm. From 1997’s Baduizm to last year’s New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh), it’s a wide ranging and powerfully-delivered set. Massive props to the Good Vibrations bookers for bringing her out to Australia for the first time. It’s good enough to take us away from the fact that, under the stifling dark canopy of the Roots Stage, it’s so hot that our bodies constantly ooze sweat, even while stationary. It also sets a very high bar for the rest of today’s acts.

  For the full review, visit The Vine. Above photo by Justin Edwards.

  No Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• February 28, 2011

  The Vine interview: Dan Whitford of Cut Copy, February 2011

  An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.

  Interview – Cut Copy

  Known affectionately these days as just ‘Cutters’, the profile of Melbourne-based electro-pop act Cut Copy has grown considerably since their humble 2001 beginnings.

  A career borne from the bedroom of singer and band leader Dan Whitford, who also runs a graphic design business named Alter, the band are now three albums into their career. The group has also expanded to a full-time quartet, including guitarist Tim Hoey, drummer Mitchell Scott and bassist Ben Browning. Cut Copy is at the point where they can headline Australian festivals like Parklife and Laneway, play to big crowds throughout the United States and Europe, and enjoy consistently high ratings from the a raft of online tastemakers. (Including *ahem*, The Vine’s recent‘first listen’ to the record.)

  Alongside acts like The Presets and Midnight Juggernauts, the band has been instrumental in paving the way for the wider acceptance of Australian music built around synthesisers, samples, and electronica – electro-pop if you will. The new album’s title is, apparently, an instrument as well as a concept. (“We built it from scratch”, Hoey told The Music Network in November. “Whenever we were working on a track and stuck for ideas, someone would suggest it needed ‘more Zonoscope’. Then the song would truly begin to take shape.”)

  On the eve of the band’s first headline appearance at the 2011 Laneway Festival in Brisbane last Thursday – coincidentally, the day before Zonoscope was released across Australia – TheVine connected with Whitford to discuss setting expectations, leaked albums, their record label, and hearty dance moves.

  —

  Hey, Dan. We’re talking because Zonoscope is released in Australia tomorrow. What’s on your mind?

  That’s probably largely on my mind, the fact that it’s finally out tomorrow. It seemed like such a long way off for quite a long period of time since we finished it late last year, but now it’s less than 24 hours away, so we’re pretty psyched on it. And also, we start on Laneway Festival [today], so it will be the first time I get to perform a lot of these songs as well. So it’s doubly exciting.

  I’m always curious about this moment for recording artists, because the four of you have been pouring your heart into this music for a long period of time, and now it’s about to be out there in the wider consciousness for people to make up their own minds about it.

  I guess that’s the point of popular music, that people will hear it. All the hard work leads up to a point like this. While we’re not making records necessarily just to please our fans or anything like that; we’re motivated by our own personal goals artistically. But it’s obviously important to us what people think when they hear it, and the experience of people hearing the songs for the first time.

  For the full interview, visit The Vine. For more Cut Copy, visit their website. The music video for the song ‘Need You Now‘ is embedded below.

  Elsewhere: a ‘first listen’ review of Zonoscope, for The Vine, and a track-by-track interview with guitarist Tim Hoey.

  No Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• February 20, 2011

  The Vine interview: Kim Moyes of The Presets, February 2011

  An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.

  Interview – The Presets

  Alongside labelmates Cut Copy, The Presets have arguably been the most influential Australian band of modern times. After meeting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 1995, Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes quickly ditched the ambient electronica they were fussing about with in instrumental band Prop, in favour of a more playful electronica, tinged with darkness. The duo’s EPs in Blow Up (2003) and Girl and the Sea (2004), gave way to debut album Beams (2005), released via Modular Records, which delivered their first club (and festival) hit, ‘Are You The One?’.

  The band’s sound soon found favour with a mainstream shifting away from the tired posturing of guitar rock; one moving towards a more hedonistic, celebratory club-like culture that began pervading everything from festivals to the local pub. Whether it was right-place right-time, or something more intrinsically linked to the band’s quickly growing fanbase, The Presets second LP Apocalypso was released in 2008 right as a newly branded mainstream were feverishly scrolling for new icons. Preceded by the mega-hit ‘My People’, which quickly became a generational anthem, sitting in the ARIA Top 100 singles for over 18 months, the album struck a chord,. That year, Apocalypso was second only to AC/DC’s Black Ice in sales terms. (It’s now gone three times platinum in Australia). The band embarked on a solid two years of touring, packing out halls, accumulating international fans (the Black Eyed Peas will.i.am claimed that ‘My People’ was a “huge influence” on that bands album ‘The E.N.D’) and making mockeries of festivals “dance” tents. Apocalypso cleaned up at the 2008 ARIA Awards, winning Best Dance Release and Album Of The Year, as well the Artisan Awards for Best Cover Art and Producer of the Year, a sweep which brought an intense, bizarre period for the band to a neat close. After five years of touring and recording, they retired for a much-needed break.

  With a third album to be released sometime this year, and ahead of their re-emergence on the live scene as part of the Future Music Festival touring across Australia next month, Andrew McMillen connected with drummer and keyboardist Kim Moyes to discuss his change in addressing music, the weight of expectations and the ugly side of Australian culture.

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  Hey, Kim. Besides a few shows in January, you spent most of last year out of the public eye. Was that a good year for you?

  Yeah, it was a great year. The whole last five years – up until the end of the last few shows of Apocalypso – we were touring non-stop. If we weren’t touring, we were making a record, and then we were touring again. It was great. It was a huge experience in my life and career, but at the end of that I think we needed to have a few months off to defrag, enjoy some home time with our partners. We both became fathers in that year. We started working again about a year ago, and it’s been a steady, long slog since then. Right now we’re getting to a point where we have an album starting to take shape and just trying to put the final touches on it. We’re ready to go back out there and face that public eye again.

  Was it a bit of a shock to the system to live through five years of non-stop creativity and touring, and then come home and adjust to the everyday pace of life?

  Not really, because – without going into it too much – having a kid is kind of like a whole other pace of life [laughs]. There were a few moments where we got to really unwind and enjoy nothingness, and that was not unusual at all. It was bloody awesome. The rest just kind of…I feel like fulfilling the next bit of our lives, that we felt needed to be fulfilled.

  You’re playing MS Fest in Tasmania in a couple of weeks, which will mark your return to live shows. What made you say yes to that gig?

  We’ve done it a couple of times and always have a really good time there. We really like working with the guy who puts it on. We have a really good relationship with those guys and we thought that’s probably a really good, nice way to start things again. We’re doing the MS Fest, and then the Future Music Festival. It’s an isolated run around the country and a reinvigoration for us. Even being in rehearsals this week – getting ready for it, trying out the new songs and seeing how they fit, tweaking them and all that sort of stuff; it’s really taking the creative juices to another level.

  I think there’s only so much… I was talking to Jules [bandmate Julian Hamilton] about this yesterday. I remember when we wrote Beams, and I remember when we wrote Apocalypso, and both those situations we were [playing in other] bands (both Kim and Julian have worked as touring musicians for other bands, most notably Hamilton with Silverchair – Ed) and recording with other bands, and we really felt this urgency to go and work at our [own] music. So we’d be working all day at rehearsal studios with a different band and then at nighttime we’d go to the studio and write songs. We’d done that at fever pitch, and then the same with Apocalypso; we came back after three years of touring and we were so highly attuned to what we were doing and what we needed to do in the next record, that we went in and did it in a short time.

  I guess the drawbacks of taking a break from it all is that those things start to fade a bit in your mind; they’re not at the forefront and you start to forget. In a way it’s really great for your creativity to take on new ideas, new concepts, and try things you normally wouldn’t do, and that’s what we’ve done a lot of. But getting back into rehearsal this week and having this run of shows to look forward to, this reality check is really starting to complete the picture. As a result, we’re going to have a really interesting record. But nothing that’s too far away from what we normally do. It’s an exciting time.

  For the full interview, visit The Vine. And I highly recommend that you do, if you’ve already read this far: while the above questions/responses are quite standard, the interview took a real left turn once we began discussing how Kim thinks Australians view The Presets, and how they’ve influenced Australian culture in unexpected ways.

  For more of The Presets, visit their website. The music video for their song ‘If I Know You‘ is embedded below.

  No Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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