Getting On With It

Considering Brant Bjork and his Kyuss Lives! bandmates were squeezed by former allies Josh Homme and Scott Reeder in 2012 for copyright infringement on a name Bjork created, you could've expected the 41-year-old to be a little bitter with the music game. But after reclaiming Kyuss under the guise of Vista Chino – the power of which was seen firsthand on this year's Big Day Out – Bjork was a man reinvigorated. He returned home and threw himself into a six-week writing stint which has brought a new set of songs to life.

Calling in from Joshua Tree, California, Bjork says he “dug real deep for these tunes”, estimating he penned around 50 demos before culling that number back to a workable 12 tracks. “I'm very excited,” he warmly drawls, “I can't remember the last time I was this excited. The rock is rolling for sure.

“There's definitely a throw-shit-against-the-wall-and-roll-with-it [mentality], but I'm just excited about doing this record with this band, so I went a little deeper than I normally would, just really following my muse and totally obeying it and not settling for anything that wasn't totally on [that] level.”

The “low desert punks” that he's pulled together as part of this new unit are all old friends, with the three men – Dave Dinsmore (bass), Bubba Dupree (guitar) and Tony Tornay (drums) – holding some serious cred thanks to time spent in Che, Void, Hater and Fatso Jetson, to name but a few acts.

“I shot for the moon and the stars putting this thing together,” Bjork smiles, “and we're all on the same page and all doing our own thing. But for this particular unit I just primarily needed guys that are cool and a pleasure to be around, because the music is always ultimately going to reflect the collective band and them as people and their vibe, so it was important to me that I put a unit together that we can sit down, have dinner and drinks and just enjoy each other's company.”

When talking about the music though, the multi-instrumentalist stresses that this is going to be a hard rock record. He needed players that could bring “fire and power” to a collection of songs, conjuring up the dominant imagery of the Californian desert and allowing the heat to practically radiate from the music. Bjork might call Los Angeles home these days, but he knows where his heart lies.

“The desert is a mysterious place even to people who live here. There are still things that are never discovered and energies and questions. It's an intense environment, and this band represents that. How people perceive [the desert], what they make of it, what their perspective is, how they romanticise it, that's part of the entertainment for me, so I just do what I do, we do what we do together, and we're excited to see how people react to it.”