STACK #145 Nov 2016

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MUSIC NEWS

(compared to Mind Renovation ) – was there a careful effort to allot brain power to each stage of the process? Yeah, that's exactly right. Mind Renovation is perhaps a bit more chaotic a record, and people have said to me that each song sounds like a completely different band. I guess going in to this record, we wanted to get the feeling of a journey (as I think we did with Mind Renovation ), but to make sure that the band sounded a bit more like Dorsal Fins and not 10 different bands. We also wanted it to reflect the live band a bit more in terms of instrumentation, which has been great.

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INTERVIEW

Q1/ There are numerous cross-overs between other bands amongst your members. Does material ever drift sideways? Yeah for sure; it happens occasionally. On this album, Precious Hands started life as a jam I brought in when we were rehearsing up songs with Saskwatch to record for Sorry I Let It Come Between Us . The fortunate thing for me, with our friends who are singers (Ella, Jarrad, Nkechi to name a few), is that they're exceptionally talented and have unique voices which give the songs such character, so even if it was a Saskwatch or Dorsal Fins song originally, they bring their own thing to it and push it in another direction. Q2/ The rhythms are so integral to these tracks – they’re impossibly jangly, like Primal Scream. Do you ever start with beats and build from there, the hip hop way? Yeah, that's how we do it with the Fins. I'll write the music first and send it to Jarrad or Ella (or a guest like Tim Karmouche, Nick Vorrath, or Tim Nelson and Cub Sport, on this album) and they'll come up with the melody and lyrics. LIAM McGORRY DORSAL FINS

Then we jam it with the band. We love a lot of funk, disco, beats and of course Primal Scream. Music that really lifts you up. Q3/ The end of When It All Comes Down To Love has an epic Arcade Fire feel to it, with just enough noise to feel completely free. Is it possible to layer too much, so that everything gets murky – kind of like how if you mix all the paints together it comes out brown? Of course. I feel like recording with Dorsal Fins is really about throwing everything at the wall, seeing what sticks and then peeling back eight or nine layers, because we got really carried away. It's a really tough balance not to have it turn out 'brown', but I think we're getting better at it. Q4/ The album sounds like you have had more time to distil exactly what you wanted from each track

Q5/ Your album cover shot is at Parliament station. What does it mean to you, other than being a good Melbourne meeting place? I think to me, Marcelle's [Bradbeer, photographer] shot was really apt for the cover, in that the name Digital Zodiac is referring to movement, searching, travel and finding your way. I feel like where we're at now, compared to where we were a year ago (releasing Mind Renovation and starting out as a band) is a world away, and we're still travelling and learning together. It's great.

Digital Zodiac by Dorsal Fins is out now via Remote Control.

FACTOID: The Griswolds are named for the fictional family in the 1983 film National Lampoon's Vacation , whose patriarch is played by Chevy Chase.

to us: ‘I need this album – I have to have it. I don’t want to just mix it, I want to produce the whole thing.’” They were stunned – for the band, it was like working with royalty. “It was kind of scary as well. We’re pretty touchy with that kind of stuff because we usually do a lot of the production ourselves. But it ended up being the right move – we got into the studio and it was a dream come true. He was so open to ideas – even the craziest idea could be experimented on. I guess he had a trial by fire working with Kanye – apparently he’s one of the hardest people to work with.” Chris was listening to a bit of everything to draw inspiration for new tracks: “Prince and Michael Jackson are all over the album. Tame Impala’s Currents is my favourite album on the planet at the moment. The Weeknd... Marvin Gaye... Kendrick’s To Pimp A Butterfly . All those influences were just seeping into us subconsciously, and it all came out in the album.”

these songs are telling little stories from the last few years of my life, and my relationship status at that point,” he says. “On You Don’t Love Me , I’d just met this

INTERVIEW

THE GRISWOLDS

Words Alesha Kolbe

fantastic woman and I fell in love with her after a one night stand,” he laughs, “which is a pretty rare thing. She didn’t want a bar of it – there I was trying to take her out for dinner and see her more and being needy, and she wasn’t having any of it. Not interested.” The record was brought together with the help of Andrew Dawson,

High Times

For Low Lives by The Griswolds is out November 11 via Chugg Music/MGM.

T he Griswolds’ High Times For Low Lives refuses to conform to any particular genre, and that’s exactly what the group were gunning for. “There wasn’t really anything we were trying to do, genre-wise,” says frontman Chris Whitehall. “We wanted to steer clear from this second release just being Be Impressive Volume 2. We wanted

a producer who’s worked with the likes of Kanye and Gambino. According to Chris, he’s always been someone The Griswolds have wanted on board. “Every time we make an album, we make a shortlist of the people we want to work with. Us being huge fans of Kanye’s stuff, we had [Dawson] on our list. He heard all our demos and came back

to be creative and to be influenced by anything and everything. There are songs on there that sound like old school funk, and R’n’B, and even hip hop. Then there’s [lead single] Out Of My Head , which is still an anthem rock song at heart.” One of our top picks is You Don’t Love Me – turns out it’s about Chris pining after an elusive tryst. “All of

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