Fluent Form

Hailing from Melbourne’s south east, Fluent Form dropped his debut Chapters Of Substance last year. Independently hustled, it was a gritty, sullen introduction to the talented wordsmith. Come 2009 and he’s already knocked out another full length album, The Furnace. For the most part, it’s a dark manifesto, serving as an outlet for rage and dissatisfaction. Produced by Geko, Doc Felix and Must amongst others and featuring Brad Strut, Ciecmate and Fatty Phew amongst a host of Melbourne talent, The Furnace is another praiseworthy notch in the MC’s belt.

Over what sort of timeframe was The Furnace recorded?
This album took about 7 to 8 months to complete. For some, that may seem like a quick amount of time for producing an album but we could have actually gotten it done in an even shorter amount of time. I’m diligent with my writing and I make sure to write everyday and as Geko handles most of the production, we share a similar work ethic. He’s always pumping out the beats and that allows us to make quality music without taking strenuous amounts of time to do so.

What lessons did you take from Chapters Of Substance into the process this time?
Not to rush into things. Don’t be to eager to drop a release. Hone your style, find your niche and really deliver your best work. Also, doing the distribution myself for Chapters Of Substance was a good lesson on how things operate outside the musical part of this game. I had great feedback which I drew upon when creating The Furnace.

Every Step exhibits perspective on your path thus far. What has most profoundly influenced the music you make?
Definitely my environment and life’s lessons. I’ve matured so much in the last few years and looking back on the shit I used to get up to, I can’t help but think to myself “what the hell were you doing?” But like most musicians, inspiration can come from anywhere. I draw upon everything.

The video is fairly simple but potent at the same time. Who made it?
My man Discourse produced that gem. I oversaw the clip, But Discourse really brought it to life with his vision. Classic clip, I’m very happy with it. It is definitely the most budget clip haha. Was awesome to see our method work so well. We didn’t even have a green screen. We just took out an old green blanket from the cupboard and used that!

How do you interpret the title The Furnace?
Good question. For me it entails everything. My burning desires, rage, my fuel that feeds me, burning wack toys haha, life, lessons, greed, envy, growth, anger, obstacles, reward, death, life…everything.

What’s the response to the album been like so far?
I’ve been blessed to always receive great feedback. I must be doing something right. People have definitely seen it as a big step up from my previous work and that’s what I wanna hear. Some of the heads that I really respect and look up to have all loved it. So it’s great. I’m proud of this album, just hoping I can reach a lot more heads with it. You gotta keep evolving.

“…I wanna tap into your soul, your mind, your being and make you think. Make you feel a rush, make you see where I’m coming from or even bring you down into my depths with it…”

The Furnace is filled with vivid concepts and imagery, especially on tracks like Short Stories, Do you enjoy operating in this voyeuristic vein?
Definitely…I wanna tap into your soul, your mind, your being and make you think. Make you feel a rush, make you see where I’m coming from or even bring you down into my depths with it. The power of music is phenomenal and to be able to make another person stop and think about something you’ve written, is the reason why I do this.

Paper Chase Days discusses good ol’, elusive scrilla. What do you work as a day job?
Nothing at the moment haha. I’ve done all kinds of jobs, from your typical laboring in a factory and call centre shit, to working with disabled children. At the moment, I’m literally living off the music. But I got a kid to feed, so I gotta get the old looking for work section out of the paper and find myself something new. I ain’t moving units in the thousands you know, haha  But I’m doing alright with the hand to hand hustle, centrelink and waiting for my quarterly payment from sales in the stores.

Is Endless Road an epilogue of sorts to Every Step?
You could look at it that way. It’s more like no matter what I do to try and better myself, I always end up back where I was. Back on the antidepressants, back on the dole, back into trouble. Back on that endless road.

The last handful of tracks on The Furnace take a slight turn in vibe with some subtle injections of funk. Was this a conscious placement? Finishing on a not-so-dark note?
Yeah, I wanted to add in a few beats that weren’t expected. The album is pretty dark for the most part, so I thought I’d chuck in a little bit of a twist and hit the listener with something different. Something they wouldn’t have expected on first listen. It might not fit the template of how to keep continuity in an album, But I like how it takes that new vibe and brings you back into the album via a different process.

4 Aces with Mata, Must and 1/6 is a nice touch of variety. How did you reach out to these fellows?
They’re all friends of mine. Once again I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by great mates who are all extremely talented and really bring their A-game to the table. It’s always fun to get your friends on a bit of a posse joint, especially when the outcome is so dope, haha.

What can you tell me about the Crate Cartel collective?
Crate Cartel consists of Geko, Raven, Discourse and myself. Just four guys doing their thing and who pride themselves on nothing but the highest quality production. Whether it’s rhymes and beats, or artwork and music videos. We’re coming!

What’s on the agenda for the next few months? Any shows in the pipeline?
Yeah, just organizing interstate shows, got a few launches in the next month and opening up for some big acts. So I’ll be keeping myself pretty busy for the next few months. Plus I’m always working on new music and ways to continue growing and establishing myself as a premier wordsmith in this country.

www.myspace.com/fluentformmusic

Fluent Form – The Furnace

The Furnace is the second full length album from West Melbourne MC Fluent Form. A staunch, 14-track offering, it’s dropped on Melbourne imprint Crate Cartel with distribution from Obese. The depth and diversity of lyricism is top shelf for an album of this hue. Whether conceptual or anecdotal or just straight, in-ya-face, battle rhymes, Fluent keeps it cohesive with an accomplished flow as well as a discrete tone. The Furnace also boasts an impressive line-up of guests: Brad Strut, Ciecmate, Mata, Must, 1/6, Fatty Phew, Maundz, Raven and Geko-a distinguished cross-section of Melbourne talent.

Short Stories is a despairing account of various sordid life situations. Fluent exhibits the desperation of a young woman resorting to oldest profession in the world as well as an entrepreneurial drug fiend. The epicurean dalliances of both man and woman ultimately lead to their downfalls. A sonorous piano loop, swirling string section and a rigid drum loop accompany the destructive anecdotes. Though it would have been nice to hear K21 incorporate some more of the sorrowful choir sample throughout. Fluent Form excels once more on Paper Chase Days. Following an intro of typical rap hustle, he discusses the various means of subsistence afforded to a centrelink-funded recording artist. The lyricism is propelled by a scathing mentality towards the critical dollars. The track is filled with quotables. “…Not a major in any occupation…” along with the effective hook are revealing and instantly relatable. Take Notice is a highlight of The Furnace. Ciecmate handles production as well as dropping a verse. The beat is on that villainous tip listeners have come to expect from the man. Another menacing strings and piano combo compliments the verses from Brad Strut, Ciecmate and Fluent. Strut opens with an ostensibly simple 16 bars. Multisyllabic rhymes are broken down with an ease of delivery. Kilo from Art Of War also makes an appearance with some super nice cuts.

The style of production that powers The Furnace is appropriate though it was somewhat of a tease to be eased into proceedings by the soulful riffs of Spit Surgeon. Perhaps the album could have strengthened with a more balanced distribtuion of production, as things get a little bogged down in the guts of it. The touches of Doc Felix and Must on Authorized and 4 Aces breath some fresh air into The Furnace later on. The disparity of beats is no more apparent than with successive tracks Spit Surgeon and Every Step. The Furnace is a exemplary album, Fluent Form is an MC to keep an ear out for.

Chasm & Vida-Sunshyne – Move

As one of the Australia’s premier beatsmiths, Chasm has achieved a great deal. After signing to Obese Records, he released his debut LP Beyond The Beat Tape last year. Featuring some of the country’s most able MC’s, it cemented Chasm’s name in the local scene. His electric talent has also been on display as one third of Elefant Traks’ ARIA-nominated group Astronomy Class. The outset of summer marks a new chapter for Chasm, collaborating with soulful vocalist Vida-Sunshyne for the release of his long-awaited follow-up Move.

The LP kicks off with Lion Up, one of a handful of Chasm’s impeccable interludes. Various horns and keys work together seamlessly in an undulating series of crescendos. Lion Up heralds the infectious reggae vibes present throughout. Set Me Free is another instrumental highlight, featuring traditionally offbeat keys and beautiful vocal sample underpinned by a crisp drum loop. It’s a track that exhibits the pure class of Chasm’s production. Move takes a cannabis-fueled digression with the track The Highest. Vida Sunshyne and Damajah discuss the plant as well as its implications with regards to the law. Chasm keeps proceedings rolling along at a swift pace only to be interrupted by a smoked-out, exhaling Vida at the death. The worldly percussion sits at the forefront of the mix, providing a simple foundation for the marijuana musings. Punchy brass rings out at the beginning and intermittently throughout it’s submissive to the multiple layers of rhythm. Twinkle Twinkle brings British hip hop artist Million Dan into the mix. Along with Vida, the pair highlight the glittering, ever-growing credibility of hip hop in Australia. Ozi Batla also appears to have done a spot of ghost-writing work. Chasm, never missing a trick, provides another exquisite beat.

In essence, Move is an inadvertent dichotomy of themes. Chasm’s brightly-tinged soundscapes offset the, at times, serious introspection of Vida-Sunshyne’s lyrics. Successive tracks like Meditations, Stress and later on, Arguments reveal a strong emphasis on the mental. Though it’s hardly one way traffic with the uplifting sentiment of Give Thanks with impressive MC Mantra. Damajah is a worthy addition on a bunch of tracks throughout this invigorating LP, lending his ragga vocals. Chasm is a producer who continues to excel, every release profitting from his midas touch of sorts. Move is one of the more vibrant releases locally this year, a frantic exposition into the reggae realm of Chasm. Well worth picking up.

Anon Speak

Anon Speak, comprising of MC Lakonic and DJ Fokus, are a relatively new duo out of Victoria. Early last year the pair decided to bridge a pronounced divide in mentality and musical sensibility. The result is a very unique debut LP; Conventional Emporium. Lakonic’s lyrics are an esoteric bombardment, every verse packed with meaning. Fokus’ production achieves its purpose of delving into the stated mid-90s boom-bap sound but also works with a wider pallette including touches of indie rock and drums & bass. Lakonic elaborates…

From what I’ve heard, Anon Speak is a somewhat unlikely pairing. How did you originally meet and what led to a desire to producer music together?
Fokus and I met digitally actually. Since I live so far from the city(Melbourne), digital contact is all I have with the rest of the supposed ’scene.’ I believe he was scouring for emcees to rap on his beats and I was scouring for producers to make some beats, so we were both searching and just ended up finding each other at the same time. I know there’s a lot of purists out there that would call this process amateur or slack but to be honest, digital communication is just how it is now. As it was, we only met this way but less then a week or so after contact, we were underway, trying to just make some good music and see where it eventuated.

You’ve released a few solo demos and such. What do you see as the merits of both that and a group dynamic?
That’s the interesting thing. By the time Fokus and I had started working together, I felt that with the demo’s I’d done, I was at a comfortable enough level to start working on a feature length. Initially, it was my intention to bash out a dark, dynamic and somewhat different release and it was actually at this time that Ivens released his debut Sounds to Expire to, which resonated with me deeply-not so much because of it’s level of execution and quality, but because of it’s confident and bold move to stand out in this heavily jaded, outdated market. At the same time, it also crippled me a little because he had superceded any ambitions I had personally set for myself and even though I knew Fokus and I were travelling down a different path, the high expectations I forced upon this debut were catapulted over what I felt was realistically achieveable. Nonetheless, we moved on and I began to see that the sound we were concocting here was way too big of a step for my solo stuff to progress to so in the mixing stages, we just decided to share the load equally and create this side duo project. I guess because of this decision, only since we’ve started doing shows have we seen this as a group thing. It is the first time I’ve worked completely with one producer as opposed to just bedroom beats or producer friends so I guess in that respect, it’s been nice to have a much more cohesive, tightly fitted project together but yeah, group dynamic vs solo? Whatever sounds good.

What was it about DJ Fokus’ production that originally piqued your interest?
If someone had said I’d have been doing a release with DJ Fokus, I would have said bullshit. His production in general is the complete opposite to anything I’d choose to work with, but the funny thing was when I filed through some beats he showed me, there were a handful or so that were incredible, most of which you hear on the disc. They were progressive and had movement to them, structure, difference and they weren’t merely loops-that was the lynchpin. I wanted to create structured compositions and not just raps over loops because you find a lot of the time there’s no sense of connection there; raps will just run parallel with the production but they never fuse. I took a risk in thinking that Fokus could do something no-one else could and it most definitely paid off.

Over what sort of timeframe was Conventional Emporium recorded?
Conventional Emporium was recorded over about four to five months at the Magician Records lab. Given all the technicalities, mixing process, promo, distro, cover design etc, four to five months was when we had the skeletons done. But it’s been well over two years now since we started.

It’s certainly an abstract, philosophy-heavy release. Do you think this is a inherent feature of your lyricism?
No doubt. It’s incredibly hard to come from an alternative angle without sounding preachy, which is why I try and cloak my words in a level of ambiguity. It’s funny too because much like artists, you get critics that dissect your content, lay it all out across hundreds of pages of thesis’ and texts, all the while the individual sits there going “meh…it’s just a painting”. I like the idea of having a simple concept, and just stretching it and fleshing it out across the course of a song because what one person will see in it, another will see something else, and so on. To be honest, you find most people don’t even listen to the lyrics-if the flow is good and the beat is strong and/or suitable, people will enjoy it. I’m just trying to supply a cataylst to get people thinking.

The press release for Conventional Emporium states: ‘Anon Speak are…striving for originality in a stale and distilled local music scene, breaking down hip hop stereotypes.’ What paradigms do you see yourselves as having broken with this release?
I think the ‘Australian hip hop’ mould was set many years back and it’s unfortunate that everyone who releases product under this term gets predisposed as befitting of this title. Not the case. I’d say we’re not aiming to break certain paradigms as such, or even that we have, we’re just trying to expand the narrow minded ones so they know you can do something different, you can fuck about. We plan to progress to the point where we may not even be categorised under hip hop, and I think that’s where a lot of these guys miss the point-you don’t have to be the genre you’re creating music for; music is music.

“…I think that’s where a lot of these guys miss the point-you don’t have to be the genre you’re creating music for; music is music…”

Tell me about the significance of the trinket box in Broken World Of The Borderline.
I read a few different philosophical texts from time to time and at the point of receiving this beat, I was finding it difficult to think of some concepts that would fit it. At the same time, I was trying to understand all this philosophy so it was a fucked case of saturated writers block, but once I took a step back and realised that half of this philosophy is just about people thinking too much about the world, life, the big questions and whatnot, I decided to harbour all these thoughts as a single entity, hence the trinket box. Yeah, it’s bit of a large concept but that’s what’s makes it so easy to apply it to anything – the trinket box can be existence or the trinket box can be simply that, a trinket box. Up to you.

There’s a certain line: ‘…our lives are just rentals to the morgue…’ which captures the predominant mentality of the album for me. Do you think this is a fair evaluation?
Yeah, it would be fair to say that. I mean by no means is this a positive record, we don’t aim to please, and I guess since there’s already so many people nationwide and even worldwide trying to deliver their two cents through music, all you can do is throw yours on the stock pile in the hope it collects interest. This is not to say we’re down right pessimistic, but being realistic is better then gambling with false hopes.

You’re somewhat of a movie buff and it shows in the selection of vocal samples on the album. Is it a satisfying process to have something on the pad correlate with a profound exchange on the screen?
Oh yeah, definitely. I love cinema probably more then music and in fact, most of my inspiration for writing comes from themes or dialogue, cinematography or even sound effects from films. It is very difficult to get a quote that works within the context of a track though because often, a quote will summarise a track for someone who is unsure what the concept is about and if the quote doesn’t fit, people get altered or even conflicting perceptions about what the track is truly about. At the same time, if you can get them to gel, it can enhance a track just enough to improve it’s value and I guess much like crate digging, the obscurer the reference the better.

How did you go about being picked up for distribution by MGM?
Fokus’ label Magician Records was already signed to MGM distribution prior to our collaboration. With Anon Speak, we were keen to start afresh and see if we could lynch a deal with a more exclusive hip-hop distribution company, but we soon discovered that this was a real bad time for distribution labels. In the end, we just decided to go with MGM because of the unstable footing surrounding the more prominent distribution houses. We’re not complaining.

What was the desired concept when it came to the album artwork?
With the artwork, I wanted some crazy, fucked up illustration from the outset-I actually had more of a direction in what the artwork should look like then the music. Initially, we started looking international for some illustrators across the globe who could achieve what we wanted, but we soon realised we didn’t have the funds nor the convenience or prompt communication to be able to achieve something good. I then started browsing local art galleries until we came across the art of Pierre Lloga, whose amazing landscape stretches across the cover. It was interesting to see how well the artwork combined with the music and there’s a somewhat noticable death metal style to it, but I don’t think we’d have it any other way. It’s epic, dark, a little weird and suits the project better then anything I could have thought of.

Are there any plans to tour at this stage? How are things looking on the live front?
At this stage, touring is probably out of the question. We love doing shows, but we don’t have the credibility to pull the kind of crowds. We’re really just trying to get our live show right by doing a few hip-hop specific lineups, then we might branch out and try to jump on some rock, electro, heavy metal stages, basically anyone that will take us just to see how they react. We’ve done a few shows so far, most being well received so we’re just gonna keep doing shows, keep pushing the CD.

www.myspace.com/anonspeak

Koolism – JMJ Til Infinity

Hau and Danielson of Koolism recently recorded this fresh little ditty in dedication to legendary Run-DMC DJ Jam Master Jay. October 30 marks 7 years since the man’s untimely passing. Titled JMJ Til Infinity, this is what Hau had to say about the track:

“…in honour of the man and his work, we have created this song. A tribute. A homage. A big thumbs up. We’ve decided to give it up and turn it a loose to the people right now to appreciate as the date approaches next week. This tune will not be on our forthcoming album. So you can blog it, mixtape it, gift wrap it even Serato it…”

Click here to play or download JMJ Til Infinity. Koolism’s fourth LP The Umu is nearing completion.

Phatchance

Phatchance is a young emcee from Sydney. Having started out on the now defunct Nurcha Records, he now tours frequently with Coptic Soldier and Mind Over Matter as part of their new collective I Forget, Sorry! Featuring prominently on the Triple J Unearthed charts for some time now, Chance is finally set to release his debut opus Inkstains. Though Phatchance’s talent transcends the mic as he’s recorded, mixed and mastered the whole project.

Inkstains has been a long time coming. What have been the greatest impediments to its release?
That’s a tough question man, I could tell you all about the record label issues, family problems, self doubt and technical hitches I faced along the road. Probably when you get down to the core of it though an inherent laziness and addiction to games on facebook and the like is the real villain, though.

Whatever happened to Nurcha Records?
Honestly that’s a really hard question as well, Nurcha as an idea was a beautiful thing, having a group of friends who were all passionate about music and operating like a family was one of the best times of my life, musically, so far. At the end of the day though Nurcha was a business and the independent music scene is highly competitive, I think probably it was a lack of experience and a desire to push the limits of what was possible for a really small label that nailed the coffin shut. I mean, I’m still really good friends with a lot of the artists who were on the roster, some of us have stayed together, some of us have moved on to other things, but the label didn’t have the resources to keep operating, especially once the stores came into play.

What line of thinking was the title Inkstains born out of?
I’ve always loved the idea of doing albums conceptually, in essence Inkstains, both as a title and a release is trying to convey the mark that writing has made on my life. It’s also about the mark that life makes on the self. As an album I knew it was going to be extremely personal and probably a little messy, I felt that I needed a concept to keep everything coherent and once I teamed up with the artists involved in the cover design and worked closely with the physical production of the album, that idea tied together really nicely into a final package.

There are some tracks on the album featuring some fairly pointed lyrics towards certain individuals in your life. Have you received any backlash over the references?
Haha, definitely. Some of the feedback has actually been really good, I think some of the songs were very important to the way my relationships with people have panned out, I’m in a pretty content place right now emotionally and I think a lot of that comes down to venting negativity in my music. With that said, a few of the tracks definitely didn’t go down to well with the people they were about. I guess it’s kind of unfair that I have this very public medium to explore my point of view on events and the people I’m writing about aren’t necessarily afforded that luxury, I’m not going to claim I’m unbiased either, I try to be as honest as possible in my music with the way I view things, but if you don’t see eye to eye on a situation then I’m never going to be able to convey the whole story.

What sort of vibe were you looking for when selecting producers?
The production on the album grew in a very organic way, a lot of the songs were conceptualised long before I actually found the beats, but I never start writing without the music in front of me. I think since I’m a fairly melancholy person the music I source has a tendency to lean in that direction. I didn’t select producers so much as make friends with producers and begin working with them on a professional level, which meant that it really came together over time and as my life progressed. Some of the tracks changed beats two or three times, other beats got fleshed out a lot with live instrumentation or additional production work on my end of the board, since I engineered the whole album I had a lot of control over the end product in terms of arrangement and structure.

Is it more of a blessing or a curse to record, mix and master the entirety of your own release?
It’s a double edged blade, on one hand I couldn’t stand to lose control over the end product, I have a catalogue of earlier mixes and recordings of the songs and I’m so glad I was able to work up to the last minute and make those final tweaks whenever the muse took me. At the same time it really is a full time job without the pay, you can spend hundreds of hours getting a single song right when you are responsible for every aspect of its production. I’m glad the beats were handled by other producers though, I think that granted the album a diversity of sound it wouldn’t have had if I were also making the beats.

You’ve been on tour with Pez recently, how’s that been?
The Pez tour was really fun man, I was only on for six of the legs but I had a great time, it was crazy seeing all these new faces at every show, the Australian Hip Hop scene used to be this nucleus of heads and every show you’d bump into familiar people, now it’s a wash of strangers, but passionate strangers…which are the best kind.

What can you tell me about the I Forget, Sorry! crew?
I Forget, Sorry! is comprised of myself, Mind Over Matter and Coptic Soldier, basically we’re a group of really good friends who’ve been working together and making music for a long time. It’s a collective, rather than a crew, we tour together and design ways to cross promote and cross market our music. It’s been a really positive thing to be a part of and is probably a large part of the reason Inkstains ended up getting finished. The bonus discs are probably my favourite part of the collective, on every artists release there’s a numbered bonus disc with a few exclusive remixes or unreleased tracks from themselves and the other guys in the collective, it basically means more free music for fans and it makes touring a lot easier to organise.

How does the Samuel Beckett quotation in the album artwork tie in with what transpires on Inkstains?
I’ve always loved that quote, it appeals to me on a personal level and I felt it encapsulated the theme really nicely. To create is such a large part of the human experience and probably the most meaningful thing I’ve ever done, the quote captures that feeling. I also wanted to stray as far from the stereotypes people(often unfairly) associate with Australian Hip Hop, I felt that combining that particular quote with the visual imagery in the design was a good way to break down preconceptions about what a listener is going to expect to hear on the CD.

“…I guess to those people I’d give a thumbs up, throw my headphones back on and bump some more Death Cab, haha…”

As mentioned, you’re somewhat of a fiend for the social networking sites. What role do you see these advents playing in regards to your music?
Honestly I think the day of breaking out via a particular social networking tool is gone, nowadays they’ve formed a very necessary means of engaging with your fan base. I think the days of the inaccessible cult celebrity are diminishing, I find it really rewarding and enjoyable engaging with listeners on a personal level, social networking sites let anyone who wants to contact me, they also let me promote whatever I’m doing to a target market of people that actually care about what I’m saying. I don’t expect any particular method of promotion to transform me from an unknown artist to a popular artist, but I feel like it’s easier than it ever has been to put what you’re doing into the public eye, from there people can make their own decisions and evaluate my art.

Do you feel the chemistry generated between you and the featured vocalists are vital to the album’s impact?
The feature artists are such an important part of the release. By definition there’s going to be less change across an album as a solo artist, those vocalists(and instrumentalists) let me take a step back and provide a really critical break in the proceedings. It was a pleasure working with talented like minded people across the album, I learn more from a day in the studio with another artist than I do from a month of working on the album alone.

Speaking of variety…the album features quite a gamut of instrumentation. Is this something you were eager to accentuate?
Definitely. I absolutely love working with musicians. The basslines and guitar lines especially added heaps to the album, they let me change the vibe of the songs where I wanted to, thickened out the overall sound and added another layer to the arrangements. My best friend Kieran played the bulk of the bass on the album, so it was also an opportunity to catch up with him regularly, something I haven’t been able to do enough since high school.

What would you say to those who dismiss your music as overly emotional?
Haha! That’s a criticism I expect to get, I can’t really think of another artist in Australia that’s made an album with as many melancholy songs as this, but that’s my sound and it’s what I’m into musically. I grew up listening to people like Jeff Buckley and Atmosphere, those artists resonate with me because of their down tempo, emotional tracks. My favourite song on peoples albums are the tracks that bring out a lot of feelings, so I set about making an album where the bulk of the tracks did that. I guess to those people I’d give a thumbs up, throw my headphones back on and bump some more Death Cab, haha.

The fairer sex and matters of the heart are popular topics throughout Inkstains. Tell me about the concept behind Invisible Queen.
Invisible Queen rides the line between playful and earnest. I wrote that track when I was really frustrated about a particular girl I’d been chasing, it seemed everytime I felt like she was within my grasp she would dissappear. My friend N.U.G. sourced me this wicked beat by DJ Hoppa from California, the same guy who did Choof Choof Train and Up Jumped The Boogie for Bliss N Eso. It has this kind of playful, eerie vibe, so I took that energy and the idea of the invisible queen is what I ended up with. I’m shooting a video clip for that track in November with some really talented film producers slash DJ’s by the name of Heroes Of The Party, hopefully that video clip will illustrate the concept a bit better than I can with words.

How did the collaboration with 360 come about on The Catchy Song?
I really wanted to get some solid features on the album, I’ve been friends with 60 for a long time, we’ve played a bunch of shows together and I have a lot of love for what he does, I also really wanted to do a song with Smiles Again. Akouo sent me a beat that was more happy than anything that I’d usually use, I knew it was a great beat I just wasn’t sure how I could slot it in with the rest of the album. This was just after The Waitress Song had smashed Triple J, I noticed a theme and thought it would be funny to take a tongue in cheek look at those happy songs that seem to go viral. Both 360 and Smiles are really funny guys so I knew they’d be perfect for the track, unfortunately that meant I was up against the two funniest rappers in the country on a beat well outside my comfort zone. I was really happy with how it turned out though and I think it goes a long way towards balancing out the album and making it more accessible to a first time listener.

You’ve scored some impressive support slots to date. What do the next six months hold for Phatchance?
Honestly, there’s two versions of this answer, what I want to happen and then reality. In an ideal world the album will drop, it will be well received by radio and street press and I’ll set off on a mini tour in March, then follow that up with a solo tour later in the year. I’d love to tee up a good support slot on a major artists tour, but these things are really difficult to time and it’s all dependent on whether the right people enjoy the album and approve of what I’m doing. I’m going to put all the effort I possibly can into taking this album as far as possible, but so much of it depends on factors outside of my control that there’s really no telling where I’ll be in six months. I’m already hard at work on the next album though, and I’d love to release that late next year or early 2011. If there’s one thing making this album has taught me, it’s that momentum is incredibly important to getting anywhere.

Inkstains is out November 27 – www.myspace.com/mcphatchance

Horrorshow

In 2008 Horrorshow dropped their debut LP The Grey Space to widespread acclaim. 18 months later, and with much having transpired, the talented duo are set to release Inside Story; a somewhat more outward-looking LP that still maintains that power of introspect Solo has come to be known for. The 13-tracks exude a constantly-developing lyrical and musical perspective. It isn’t hard to see why they’ve played Big Day Out and Groovin The Moo festivals and toured nationally with Muph & Plutonic and Hermitude. Solo recently took some time out for a chat.

How does it feel to be gaining favour in a culture that only five years ago, you admired from anonymity?
Umm I don’t know if I really think about it like that to be honest. It’s cool though, I enjoy being able to throw down and kinda do what we do, especially in a live context. Lately I’ve been enjoying getting back in front of people and having that moment. Live, you really get to see people react to the music and you get to see them smiling and enjoying themselves so that sorta thing is pretty cool, to go from standing in the front row of a crowd, rocking out, to being the one that’s making everybody else rock out and watching the different roles in that relationship, that’s a pretty cool feeling. Particularly moments like when we played the Big Day Out, I’ve seen a lot of acts that I really love and admire in those kinds of situations so I guess it’s cool to be on the flipside of the whole process now. I dunno, it’s all happened so quickly, we’re just still rolling with it and not really sure where it’s going to end up but it’s great.

Explain the philosophy behind the album title, Inside Story.
I remember the moment I thought of it, I was walking up a stairwell in a hostel in London. Basically I had just been tripping out since I arrived in Europe. There’s a line on the first album: “…having revelations about my place on the food chain…” What I was talking about there was this feeling of being this little dot on the map and being removed my normal world and placed in this other environment that was totally unfamiliar to me. Travelling through that environment-different places, different people-and engaging with it. The only constant was what was going on inside my head and that’s the philosophy behind the album. A lot of the thoughts, lines and ideas for the tracks were all things that were going through my head during that three month period. I had a bunch of notebooks with me and I’d scribble down ideas or words and carry them all around with me. I didn’t get too stuck into the writing until I came back and opened up these notebooks. Also, there was another layer of meaning to it, I wanted to be a bit more cryptic this time around with what I was talking about and maybe wrap certain things up a bit more. So the album works on one level but within it, there’s all kinds of things that I’ve hidden in there personally-certain lines that relate to particular moments on my trip. That’s the other level of meaning to the title, there’s this whole other story for me inside the music.

You have spoken of the significance of travel in the music you have produced. How much importance does your city and locality have as well?
Well we deal with that on Found which is basically the real story of me coming home from the journey and just tripping out over being back in my familiar environment and just seeing it for how amazing it is because of the time spent in separation. The second verse of the track is about rocking out with the Spit Syndicate guys a year later at Good Vibrations and partying our whole crew there, friends of ours from the neighbourhood. I think that feeling of belonging is really important to us as musicians, in terms of knowing that we have a really strong supoort base back home. I think the first album was really centred on Sydney and the things that go on here, the vibe of the place. Whereas I feel the vibe of the new album is more epic or worldly.

There’s a line on the new album alluding to giving The Grey Space a paintjob. What has changed in the last 18 months personally? What has spurred on the desire for vibrancy?
That was just the sort of period that we were at when we did the first album, we maybe wanted to do something that was a bit darker and grittier. This time around, there’s been a whole lot of external influences and experiences that made us want to build on what we were doing. We’re proud of the first album and what we did with it but what has changed is just our learning curve. We learnt so much from making that first record, we were just kind of making it up as we went along and now we’re in a better position, particularly sonically-everything that Adit has learnt about his production, the whole engineering and mixing process-all those sorts of things in creating that vibrancy you’re talking about. I think this record has a lot more texture to it, it’s just more rich whereas I feel with the first one we were in a bleaker place and also our know-how sent us in the direction of that stripped-back, bare sense lyrically and musically. Whereas now, we know a bit more about what we’re doing and we’ve got a few more skills up our sleeve to pull off some other things, to pull of some tracks to move a crowd.

The artwork for Inside Story is outwardly symbolic with the warm colours used and the collage of accumulated experience on the cover. Do you think this was important to convey following The Grey Space?
I just think what we tried to do with the artwork this time around was to really tailor it to the music. We had an overall idea of the vibe of the record from the get-go, once we had that established with the music, we really wanted the artwork to channel that same vibe so we could create an overall package. That was really important to me this time around. We hooked up with this graff writer from Brisbane called Gimik. One thing we talked about was the importance of having colour and different textures. One thing I’m stoked about with the album is the artwork-I do feel like it adds something to the album when you’re listening to it and looking through the booklet, there’s little hints in there.

How did you approach Inside Story differently on account of ‘the fear of an impending deadline?’
Well it was a very different process. We did the first album over four or five years and just went along with it, we’d have months off here and there. Whereas this time around, it was always a long-term plan when we got involved with Elefant Traks, even before The Grey Space, that we would follow up that album with another one inside a year. So we were always aware of that deadline but we’re talking about a much more compressed time-frame. One thing about being on a label like Elefant Traks is that you have to fit in with everything else going on for everything to function right. So this whole tour with Urthboy has all been locked away since way before we finished our album so if something had gone horribly wrong and we didn’t finish it, the tour would still have had to go ahead. It’s just industry once you get a bit involved in the ‘industry’ side of things, there’s many more concerns to doing a record than just when you feel like it, there’s lots more at stake and you have to rise to it I guess.

Is Thoughtcrime an affirmation of your particular brand of lyricism?
I wrote the track as a kind of call for substance in music. I feel like we get an opportunity as artists to say something to get people thinking. A lot of music out there doesn’t do that, it just caters to the lowest common denominator. It’s a little frustrating sometimes as an MC or as a fan of Hip Hop which I think, as an overall culture, definitely has some principles within it about putting effort into what you do and really treating it as an art. So I just wrote the track as a bit of a call to people to use their brain and really put time, effort and thought into their music. Some of what I was saying in the track is that we’ll probably never write that mega-hit, that super-catchy track everyone loves but I feel like our music does identify with people who like to think about things. I guess it’s a general call to everyone saying lets have some substance in what we’re doing but we can still enjoy ourselves doing it.

Was Always Coming Back Home To You by Atmosphere an inspiring force behind the opening track, In?
No, not really-only in the sense that it’s an awesome example of a beat driven by an acoustic guitar. Adit made the beat a while back originally as a remix of Lupe’s Kick Push…and I loved the way raps sounded on it. Acoustic guitar to me creates a sense of intimacy-like the listener is right there where the sound is being created-and was the perfect instrument for sucking people in and also for establishing the slightly darker, organic sound we wanted to get for the intro track.

“…I feel like we get an opportunity as artists to say something to get people thinking. A lot of music out there doesn’t do that, it just caters to the lowest common denominator..”

How did you find the experience of clearing samples this time around?
Getting samples was a really interesting process, although we can’t take much of the credit for this-we had a lot of help from Sulo at Elefant Traks who handled the process. There were two major instances of sample clearance, Walk You Home which we discussed earlier and In My Haze with Jane Tyrrell. The former samples a track which came out via a smaller, independent music publishing company so it wasn’t too difficult to get in touch with them and come to some arrangement. I also wrote a letter to the artist saying something about our track and what it meant to me to try and use the sample in question, trying to explain that part of the reason we were using the sample was to pay homage to that style of music. Who knows if they read it-but we managed to work something out fairly easily. The sample for the track with Jane Tyrrell is actually a Midnight Oil song from one of their albums. We knew we HAD to get this cleared as we played the track to a few people and they picked it instantly, from being so familiar with the band’s work. We reached out to Sony(the publishers) but didn’t hear anything back for a while. We were starting to really stress about what we would do with the track as we really liked it with the original sample, and we liked the idea of paying a bit of homage to some classic Australian music.  So we actually mixed the track and bounced it as separate parts in case we had to get things replayed…still hadn’t heard anything. Then one weekend The Herd went to Brisbane to do a Kev Carmody tribute show with a bunch of notable Australian musicians, and one of the dudes in the band at this show was Jim Moginie, the guitar player from Midnight Oil! So Urthy took him aside and played him the track and explained our situation. Luckily he dug what we’d done with it so he got in touch with Sony and got the ball rolling…we were absolutely stoked, for them to come across someone from the band right at that exact time when we needed their help-it was one of those weird moments where you feel like fate must have had something to do with it.

In your recent behind the scenes video, you make mention of important lessons and development following the debut. What has been learnt?
This is tricky to answer as a lot of what we’ve learnt isn’t necessarily tangible or easy to put a finger on-we just have been through a lot musically in the past 18 months. We went through the process of recording and mixing an album for the first time, got to see first hand what sort of sounds work well with that process, how to record and layer vocals to get different effects, all that sort of thing. We’ve also learnt about shows, we’d never really played them before the last record so there’s been a real learning curve there, seeing what works in a live context and then trying to channel some of that in the next record. We’re constantly learning lessons about how to handle ourselves in this music thing, and no doubt we’ll learn some valuable ones from this release as well.

The title track is characterised by a strong lament for the prominent role of technology in our lives. How do you strike a healthy balance when promoting your music in this digital age?
What I was trying to say there goes beyond music-these new technologies are totally affecting every aspect of our lives, how we interact with each other, how we shop, how we get our information, how we plan our travels, how we bank-everything! And I guess sometimes I just trip about that, about what our world is like now and how so much of it is digital or intangible-how far away we’ve gotten from the basic, primitive place we started in and how unnecessary so much of what we’ve constructed for ourselves is if you really think about it. A lot of the inspiration for this track came from a job I was working for a large media agency, seeing how huge multinational companies hire people to sell things to consumers and how media agencies strategise about reaching people in their homes, on their phones, etc. I sort of feel like all of these things, and particularly the way they’re developing with smartphones and high speed internet, etc-are in some ways taking us further and further away from our basic human relationships with each other. Even things as small as catching up with your friends on the phone or in person-now we all just sit back and stalk each other, getting gradual updates on every detail of each others’ lives without having anywhere near as much of a quality interaction. The second verse of the track is sort of looking at the recession amongst other things, the amazing economic system we’ve created and how much strain we’ve put on it with our own greed, buying and consuming things that when it comes down to it are totally unnecessary. As far as promoting our music, we definitely try to engage with our listeners online as that’s where people have migrated to-now as bands that’s where we have to try and reach them. We use myspace and facebook a lot to interact with people and also twitter to keep them updated, and while we try and embrace all these things so we can keep our message relevant, sometimes I get really frustrated. Essentially I just get sick of sitting on my laptop all day, and sometimes I wonder what life would have been like 20 years ago when people still largely interacted with each other without the need for a computer screen. Or 500 years ago, when there wasn’t even electricity! With that said, I understand the trade off, these sorts of technologies make so many things possible for people like us-such as the very fact that people are able to visit your blog and read this interview without the need for any financial backing from a media outlet.

Something I’ve noticed about both of your albums now is an ability to compose a really poignant track to finish with. Is this something you’re aware of or just the way it happens?
Well I think you’ve got to have a sick track as your last track. For a lot of people the strongest track doesn’t necessarily go at the end, a lot of people want to get their strongest tracks towards the beginning and that’s fair enough because we’re all struggling for peoples’ attention spans these days. I like to go out on a lasting note so that when the CD ends, you feel like going back and listening to it again. Walk You Home was one of the first tracks we did, we were in a position where we had both the intro and last track done and I knew that we wanted to put that at the end so then we just sorted the order in the middle. When we wrote the track I didn’t think it could be placed anywhere else besides last. I’m interested to see how people react to that song because it’s obviously really personal for me, it meant a lot to me to write it and I’m proud of it but it’s very much not your typical Hip Hop song. I’m not sure if everyone is going to like that track.

What’s on the agenda for the next few months? Can we expect another album in the near future?
We’re on tour for the next 2 months with my man Urthboy in celebration of both of our new records, so make sure you come and see us on the road when we’re in your town! After that we’ll see what happens over the summer…Adit’s turning his attention to working on some new tracks with Spit Syndicate which I’m really excited about, and we still have a few tracks on the boil. I don’t think anyone could be mad at us if we had a break though–2 albums in 14 months is a pretty good effort I reckon.

www.myspace.com/horrorshowcrew