Irish eyes are smiling

Travelling is commonplace for seasoned musician /performer, Roisin Murphy. She’s developed into a deft solo artist since her split with boyfriend and collaborator Mark Brydon. Together they made up the hugely successful trip-hop dance outfit Moloko who crafted the catchy ‘Sing It back’ and ‘The Time is Now’ dance-floor hits.

So successful has her sophomore album release – Overpowered - been (following on from Ruby Blue a sexy, disco- pop, velveteen offering) she’s wanted on the bill of every major festival in Europe until August. That is of course, notwithstanding her latest frolic in Oz for the V Festival tour circuit and her own individual side shows to supplement her time here.

In fact she’s much more accustomed now to clicking her high-fashion heels and finding herself in a different country each week.

“They can be very surprising things festivals some of the festivals, we played as Moloko were pivotal in breaking into certain countries and you don’t even know you’re doing it,” she said. “You land somewhere go on and do the gig and at the end of it you’ve had such an amazing response it really can change things for you.”

Chatting to Roisin, it’s easy to get a sense of her approach to life. She gives the impression she’s laid back and bothered by, not much at all really. She calmly stopped the interview a few minutes into it where I was only to hear on the other end of the receiver clip- clopping through her apartment. I find out later she was off to the bathroom only to return to say she probably couldn’t go while she was speaking on the phone. Moving on from that ‘wee’ drama, she qualifies her desire to come to Australia with solid reflection on the good time she’s had here previously.

“I’m looking forward to coming over because of the sense of freedom sense of being whoever you want to be. There’s a sense of ‘no judgement’ sense of frontier of the world in a way, just like you can always have such a good craic [good time],” she said jovially.

Truth be told, Australia would be one of Roisin’s preferred places to live if only it wasn’t so far from the rest of the Murphy clan. An independent woman from a young age, she’s self assured and her Irish humour must surely have assisted propel her from the party districts of Sheffield to the seductive disco halls she frequents globally, but that is what she considers to have been the time in her life where she really learned a lot about the music she wanted to be making.

“I’ve probably learned more about music through that scene than I have through musicians though, I still learn through musicians but particularly in understanding lineage of music – dance (house) music has taught me a lot,” she said. Understanding the lineage of music has no doubt come in handy when penning the latest tracks to make up the Overpowered release. One in particular is a favourite to perform at the moment being Let me know.

“Let me know – is amazing because now we’ve fused it with the sample that it’s cut from which is Dtrain’s ‘Keep on’, so when I’m performing it we’ve have the first sample of Dtrain then – Let me know on top of that. It’s very emotional because kids who are 14 or 15 are coming along now who haven’t a clue who Dtrain are and then I’ve got the 30, 35 year olds who do and they recognise it and get into it,” she said.

As well as the emotion of the crowd, Roisin draws on her reserves of energy to perform. Not to mention doing a hell of a lot of remembering (loose choreography, reams of lyrics and lighting changes) all of which demands a levels of dexterity and poise and for her to be in a place in her head where it’s all just happening without her thinking heavily about it. “I mean I had an eye injury recently and I could have – kicked myself which would have been terrible cos I would have an eye injury as well as a kicking injury but it showed me that you have to be spatially aware,” she said wryly.

“Some people ask me if it’s an ego trip too and to be honest with you, you haven’t even got time to think about your ego you’re more a vessel for all this information and feeling it’s just an utter sense of rightness. This is you at your purest form in your most right place, I’m not the fittest person in the world it’s a lot about stamina too when you’ve got the stamina to keep going that helps,” she added. While she hopes to bring some of that ‘rightness’ to her performances during her time in Oz she’s also just looking forward to the opportunity to be with the band touring.

“ I just love the aspect of rolling into a town, kind of like when you’re child and when you’re always with the gang’ and you just roll in and think ‘we come here’ and then we change the atmosphere, and just go around as if we run the place,” she say’s jokingly. With the unrelenting festival schedule ramping up post Australia Roisin will be off with the band to Russia, Luxembourg and Holland she looks forward to each unique experience that will befall her.

“Festivals are all different in themselves you can be playing inside a massive aircraft hanger next you can be outside in a field god knows where and then you might be the next night in a fort in eastern Europe all very different from each other, but that’s really good for the band good for the group mentality to push em,” she said.

“It pushes us to the limits of what we can do by landing somewhere different and having to adapt, that really pushes us and that’s healthy for the band.”

Catch Roisin Murphy when she performs at the remaining V Festivals in Melbourne and Perth; or for a more intimate encounter get along to one of her solo performances for the following dates:

April 1 – The Tivoli, Brisbane
April 2 – The Metro, Sydney
April 4 - Billboard, Melbourne

Ruth Bailey

Posted: March 15th, 2009 under FESTIVALS, INTERVIEWS, international.
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Just Dandy

Amidst some mixed reviews for the eighth chapter in The Dandy Warhols chronicles: Earth to the Dandy Warhols, the band return to tour Australia this month.

Not total strangers to Oz shores, in fact they love Australia because their favourite bands are appreciated here. So says Dandys’ drummer, Brent Deboer.  The band’s love of Australia has something to do with the fans they encounter here.
“We always tour Australia.”

“We love Australia. The people are smart and cool,” he said.

Brent is excited about their upcoming tour to Australia for another reason; he plans to tie the knot with his fiancé whilst here. Choosing to remain tight-lipped about details of the impending nuptials, Brent instead relives fond memories of previous tours to Australia, one in particular the 2004 Big Day Out circuit, which saw them perform alongside Metallica, The Darkness and The Flaming Lips.

“I mean come on. Living in hotels across Oz with this crew? It was a blast to say the least,” he beams.

The Dandy Warhols current foursome has been solid for over a decade. Made up of band members, Courtney Taylor-Taylor, vocals and guitar; Zia McCabe, on keyboards, bass and vocals; Brent on drums and Peter Holstrom on guitars. According to Brent, it’s their mutual respect for each other that has seen them stick together for this long.

Dandys’ classic - We Used to be Friends

“This respect allows us to acknowledge and appreciate each others artistic, musical and creative ideas,” said Deboer.

The Dandy Warhols first became known to us when they broke through with their distinct grunge rock ballads. Tunes including “Not if you were the last Junkie on Earth”, “Bohemian Like You”, “Godless” and “The Last High”, spawned from albums 13 Tales of Urban Bohemia and Welcome to the Monkey House helped to establish them successfully at the height of a music landscape which at that time was lapping up sounds out of Seattle and anything alternative rock it could get its hands on. The sounds they are creating today exhibit strong moves away from this alternative garage rock scene. Instead Earth to the Dandy Warhols delivers songs with a bent towards electronic and psychedelic ‘shoe-gaze’ retrospection.

Deboer believes in order to make the ‘great songs’ from this album of which the band are all very proud, it’s their ability to tap into the currency of music and maintain their relevancy in the changing music environment. “Being influenced by any great song, by any great artist, on any level regardless of musical genre and being fortunate enough to have a talent for song writing and musical arrangement are what assisted us to make this album,” he said.

Whilst Deboer is clearly passionate about his band’s latest offering he’s quick to downplay the criticism he and his fellow bandmates have endured for making it this way. “The record was finished when Zia, Courtney, Peter and I decided it sounded cool. If the music makes us happy and feels groovy we figure there are a few people out there in the same boat,” he continued.

He remains firm that the songs featured on the Earth to the Dandy Warhols album are purely for lovers of their music. “We make music for people who listen to music, not critics,” he said.

Catch The Dandy Warhols when they play the following live shows (2008):

OCT 28 - Metro City, Perth

OCT 31 - Enmore Theatre, Sydney

NOV 01 - Stonefest, Canberra

NOV 02 - Fat As Butter, Newcastle

NOV 05 - Tivoli, Brisbane

NOV 06 - The Palace, Melbourne

NOV 07 - The Palace, Melbourne

Posted: October 11th, 2008 under INTERVIEWS, international.
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Cut Copy, Ghost of a chance

Australian fans have been promised the new album from electro indie outfit Cut Copy since 2007 got underway with a bang for them, appearing as part of the billing for the Good Vibrations festival. A decision to hold off on its release until February 2008 could see them lynched in their homes. Well that might be a little over imaginative but so strong is the desire for the band’s sophomore album In Ghost Colours they’ve decided to buy themselves a little more time by putting on another round of headline shows (their second for the year). Those, combined with Homebake and an appearance along side the most hotly anticipated duo Daft Punk in December, should calm supporters for now.

But it’s not only fans who are registering their frustration with the slow album release; the lads themselves have become restless too. Forced to concentrate on other things like heading to Japan for the Summer Sonic festival, signing new talent to their record label Cutters Records and also developing their skill behind an espresso machine are just some of those things. So says Tim Hoey, bass guitarist for the band.

“We mix[ed] in August and since then we’ve really been waiting on the label (both here and abroad). It [the album] was supposed to come out in October in Australia but then they wanted a simultaneous release world wide so they pushed it back to February.

“Things can move so slow…it’s very frustrating at times,” he said.

Rest easy though that the wait for the album will prove worthwhile. If the singles already released from it are anything to judge them on. There is something very catchy about the grungy- disco sound the band produce. Hearts on Fire for instance has held our hearts captive on dance floors everywhere this year and the follow up single to that So Haunted has achieved similar success in the short amount of time it’s been unleashed.

This is something Hoey believes can be credited to the evolution in their song writing, wanting to try some new and interesting things with arrangements and the fact Dan Whitford (vocalist) is singing a lot more.

It’s also been attributed to the fact they opened their ears to a diverse range of influences (including developing a penchant for the ‘shoegaze’ bands of the 90’s (noisy guitars sounds like Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth etc). As well they took advantage of a collection of Italo and disco records, this time around.

“We had been listening a lot to ELO’s Time and Dan just started putting together all these amazing harmonies,” Hoey said.

“I guess we sound a lot more like a band on this record which came from three years of endless touring, plus we weren’t listening to a lot of current dance music.

“Things that were really inspiring us [were the] Animal Collective or the new[est] Sleepy Jackson record.

“All of this certainly creeps into what we were playing,” he said.

In Ghost Colours will surely claim success because of the man behind its producing credits. Tim Goldsworthy co- founder with LCD Sound System’s James Murphy and Jonathon Galkin of New York label DFA Records has been responsible for producing records by bands like The Rapture and, N.E.R.D Unkle and Le Tigre. This is label is renowned for producing predominantly ‘dance punk’. A genre of music that sounds are reminiscent of those of the Talking Heads and Blondie.

Huge fans prior to meeting, Hoey believes it was the combination of sending their demos and Goldsworthy picking out all their samples during that and their initial conversation of four hours that cemented this collaboration.

“We just talked about all the music we had in common and all these recording techniques we could try,” he said.

“We knew straight away that we wanted to work together.”

With access to a great mind like Goldsworthy’s now on board and access to his treasure trove of unusual instruments it has paved the way for the band to grow and learn a lot.

“We had access to so much amazing gear over there…It was totally like a wizard’s lair at DFA,” he said.

“Everyday some new gadget would arrive and Tim would be like ‘Ok let’s use this on this song’ half the time we didn’t know what sound it made.

“Because we were learning the instrument or effect you would come up with some amazing spontaneous sound.”

The So haunted tour will settle fans who have eagerly awaited this record. The lads will make their way around hitting major cities and some off the beaten track on the East Coast this month, but can the fans look forward to hearing any of the new material? According to Hoey definitely.

“The ‘So Haunted’ tour will certainly consist of a whole bunch of new material along with some old gems,” he said.

“We have a special guest fourth member JP Shilo of seminal Melbourne band ‘The hungry ghosts’ coming along for the ride to add some new guts to the old songs and so we can play some of the new material a lot of it requires another member to play live,” he added.

The live shows this month are all about supporting the new and emerging talent from off the boys’ label too. Knightlife and the Damn Arms have been chosen this time around and for good reason.

“I think it’s very important to have that ‘family’ community when you’re on the road,” Hoey said.

“We always choose our supports and are really committed to putting on a well-rounded night…a night that the audience can enjoy from start to finish,” he continued.

“Knightlife is our most recent signing to ‘Cutters’ and he is getting a lot of attention in the dance community both here and abroad.

He is going to do some amazing things!

We’ve been fans of Damn Arms for a while now. Their new material is sounding great and their live show is a lot of fun.

Visit www.myspace.com/cutcopy for info on shows and album release dates.

Posted: October 11th, 2008 under Australian Interview, INTERVIEWS.
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