STACK #145 Nov 2016

NEWS MUSIC

TOURING 02/11 - 02/12

THE LAURELS INTERVIEW

CLIENT LIAISON INTERVIEW

Q1/ Tell us a little about the hip hop techniques you’ve employed on this record – did you begin with beats? Certain tracks like Clear Eyes and Frequensator started out as beats on our samplers, but for the other tracks it was more so the methods we were using in post production. We were working with sketches of songs we'd brought from home and encouraging each other to lay down any ideas that popped into our head to use as source material. We would then create samples out of those ideas, finding ways to manipulate and re-purpose them - that could involve sampling a guitar line, chopping it up on an MPC and replaying it so it sounds like a mellotron… The sampler ended up becoming one of the main instruments on the album because it was used to trigger and sequence so much of what's going on. Q2/ Did you have a plan for sourcing the verbal samples, or was it a matter of just digging around everywhere until you found something you liked? It was a bit of both… It was really about using samples that linked to the context of the lyrics and would expand on a song's backstory. It's unfortunate we couldn't fit them all on there. We actually had a mate come in to redo an Alfred Hitchcock quote but we couldn't stop laughing every time we played it back so had to take it off. Q3/ You have tour dates coming up; have you amended your approach to playing live? The first few weeks of rehearsals were hilarious because we had no idea what we actually played on the record – a lot of the audio has been so warped and twisted that it's hard to decipher. There's three of us triggering samplers live now which adds another layer to the sound and helps us get a bit closer to the feel of the record (as long as we manage to keep them all in time for the duration of the song). Part-way through the tour to promote The Laurels' most excellent sophomore album Sonicology , we chatted to vocalist/guitarist Luke O'Farrell.

“T hink nothing. Feel everything. Pleasure is good. Fantasy is truth.” These are the Client Liaison maxims, and Monte Morgan and Harvey Miller certainly embody them, from their energetic live show to the surrounds of their “HQ”. It’s on the top level of a Collins Street building; one side houses racks of shiny costumes and framed newspaper pages which depict Bob Hawke and Warney in their primes, and the other is a mass of ceiling-high shelves bursting with document

Harvey Miller, STACK 's Zoë Radas, Monte Morgan.

boxes. They’re all components of the fantasy: the adult world of the '80s seems enchanting to someone born in that era because you were a child, looking up at the world. Boardrooms were as magical as bunyips. On debut album Diplomatic Immunity , the stand-out track is a collaboration which brings together so many threads of the CL fabric (retro Australiana, camaraderie, unabashed pleasure): Foreign Affair , featuring Tina Arena. “Harvey came up with the

verbal stoush during Question Time). At the back of the album’s booklet is a map, and each song is matched to a particular location. Foreign Affair sits in France – Tina’s second home – while Off White Limousine is charted on the west coast of the States (“The producer and songwriter live there as well,” says Morgan). Home is plotted against Melbourne, Where Do We Belong in the Red Centre, and The Bravest Beginnings

Diplomatic Immunity by Client Liaison is out November 4 via Remote Control.

in the Middle East. “It’s in Syria,” Morgan says. “The song’s about refugees, and people moving across borders – ‘borders they were born to break’ – so it’s influenced by the [things we’ve seen on] social media, and the mass migration of people.” The pair assert their efforts to be “apolitical”, which has got to be a trying endeavour when your concept album touches on so many points of that spectrum. But they’re firm. “We don’t like to give too grandiose a statement about what we think is right and wrong,” Miller says. “We do struggle, after things like the Cronulla Riots, to show [pride] – it’s difficult. But we don’t pretend to have any answers. We try to put stuff out there and let people speak for themselves.” Morgan adds: “It’s nice to talk about Australia. When we were growing up, people pretended we weren’t Australia. America was everything. Then September 11 happened and things kind of flipped around. Hopefully we’re part of that conversation. Australia is a cool, crazy place.”

‘Sorrento’ lyric, and it was kind of an ode to Tina already,” Morgan smiles. “We started thinking about a duet. Tina came in and smashed it out in a couple of takes. She’s got a lot of conviction; very strong-willed, very amazing." The song is gorgeous, snuggling into your head like a pet rather than an ear-worm, and that’s basically how Diplomatic Immunity works. The minimalist (for CL) Off White Limousine is a propulsive groove, as is the opener Canberra Won’t Be Calling Tonight (which features samples of a

Sonicology by The Laurels is out now via Rice Is Nice.

Read the full interview – including how the booklet artwork was created – online at stack.net.au .

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