Pludo Turn To Busking To Drum Up Big CD Sales

Anthony Kupinic started Pludo as a side project after he decided that the band he had dedicated a large chunk of his life to (A Sound Mind) were not headed in a direction that he personally wanted to go in. While there are elements from that group's pop leanings in Pludo's sound, it's clear that he had very different plans for where he wanted to take his music. Pludo encompass many ideas, with big electronic soundscapes delving into tracks of ambience and light through to much dancier numbers. It wasn't until a chance encounter with street performer Alex Cooper that he realised exactly which direction he and his music were really headed.

“I met Alex in Sydney and he was busking on a bucket drum set,” Kupinic explains. “Growing up, his mum never really supported him doing music. She never bought him a drumkit – she considered it taboo to get involved with music. So when he moved from the US to pursue music, he just started playing on the street with the bucket drums. I saw him playing and I thought, 'Fuck, this kid is incredible!' He was so entertaining and pulling off so much sound with such a little amount of stuff. We had a jam literally straight on the street with no rehearsal. We play to a click so he put the headphones on and the first thing he did was duct-tape the headphones all the way around his head! You get crowds on the street if you're interesting, and just from this we had a crowd of about 70 people. He never knew any of the songs and we just started jamming and freestyling in the street around what I had previously written.”

Kupinic says from this moment he knew that Cooper had to be a part of the band. He was packing some demos at the time and from this first performance alone they managed to sell 70 copies. He estimates that Pludo have sold about 4,000 copies of their demo on the street at over 200 shows in the last four months, an incredible achievement for any act.

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