Gypsy Kings

The Barons Of Tang play tiny punk clubs in America, massive folk festivals in Europe and gypsy bars in Northcote, but this is not a band with an identity crisis. Punk and folk music may sit at opposite ends of the musical spectrum, but to double-bassist Julian Cue, they are almost the same thing. “You could call punk rock a more modern, suburban folk music, if you want to analyse it too much!” He laughs. “Folk music is just music of the people… I guess sonically it's got some conventions. When you say 'folk music', most people think of Irish folk music, but folk music can be anything from music from Mali or Indonesia or – so it doesn't actually mean anything.”

Musical bowerbirds The Barons Of Tang take cues from all around the world, from French manouche jazz to Eastern European gypsy folk. “There was a while ago when there were all these indie bands that were playing with a calypso twang, which I quite liked actually,” Cue confesses. “It sort of comes in waves, the sounds that people are trying to make at any given time. Ours is just a little less hip or something! It's just a little bit more obnoxious.” Perhaps boisterous might be a better word? “It inspires some sort of convulsion,” Cue agrees.

As a seven-piece band wielding more exotic instruments such as an accordion, saxophone, double bass and bass clarinet, The Barons Of Tang's songwriting process is also a little more unconventional. “Because it's not as guitar-driven as a lot of bands, and we're not an especially vocal band either,” Cue explains, “the way we come up with melodies and stuff like that – we rely a lot on the dynamics of the reed instruments to carry the melody or express a feeling. I guess we've got one foot in orchestral composition and one foot in more modern rock'n'roll composition, so we meet somewhere in the middle.”

After six years touring relentlessly, The Barons Of Tang finally started recording their debut album, titled Into The Mouths Of Hungry Giants, last year. “We were pretty excited to look at recording an album as [a way of] making an extravagant version of these songs,” says Cue. “Just in a production sense, having a chance to put in various instruments that we don't get to use all the time like a dulcimer or a toy piano or even a contrabass clarinet. We've got a lot of quite quiet instruments playing in a very loud band, so it can be tricky to know how to mix that as it often is in a live context as well. And trying to capture the energy, which is really our thing. It was hard, but we're pretty stoked with the results.”