Changing Horses

Flood Plains marks a shift for Mooshim. A full-length score for an experimental documentary film of the same name (providing a different slant on Queensland's 2011 floods), it's a recording typified by composition and arrangement. When Mooshim was initially assembled by drummer/bandleader Paul Young, it was as an improvisational collective. Until earlier this year, it was known as The Quadratic Contingency.

“The project has changed a lot in the last few years,” Young explains. “I guess Quadratic Contingency represents a band that was writing more jazz-influenced material, had much more set players in it and had a lot more through composed material. As I found myself developing as a writer and the players kept on changing, I really felt it had become a very different band. And I wasn't as fond of the name anymore, anyway.”

Young is now drawing from a different spectrum of influences. While still retaining elements of improvisation, he's pulling from the fertile grounds of minimalism and post-minimalism: artists like Arvo Part, Steve Reich, Terry Riley. Currently studying a masters degree at the Queensland Conservatory of Music in improvisation within minimalism, Mooshim will allow Young to test his theories by blending the two.

“I'm basically the major writer of the group; I have been since formation. It was never intended that way. When I started it off, it was a collaborative band. It's just gradually turned into me doing everything,” the drummer says. “Broadly speaking, a lot of our music is fully scored and written out with sections for improvisation, which I keep in because, really, that's where a lot of our strengths have been as an ensemble.

“We did a commission for GoMA a few years ago where we had to score six silent Alfred Hitchcock films and that was the turning point between our moody cinematic writing style and our twenty-first century jazz style. A lot of our old material is much more improvised whereas after 2011, it's written with more improvisational areas.”

Flood Plains really confirms that shift. The Quadtratic Contingency's debut release as Mooshim, it's a score, not a series of improvisations or experiments. In many ways, it's Young's coming-of-age as well. The drummer never originally intended to be a composer. However, the past five years have seen him shifting away from his typical role of journeyman musician and getting more and more comfortable with composition.

“I guess, as a composer, I have been sort of experimenting over the past three-to-five years as to what I wanted my writing style to be – because I certainly never intended to be a writer,” Young says. “It's always been a bit of an ad-hoc approach – both figuratively and literally – but, since I've been writing more and more for film over the past couple of years, I think I've found my comfort zone.

I think you'll be seeing a lot more composed material out of Mooshim in the future,” he confirms. “For the Brisbane Emerging Arts Festival, I'll be presenting a new composition, which will be the first time I'll be combining electronic music with live performed music. That's definitely what I'm spending a lot of time on, at the moment.”