Fergus Miller had no intention of becoming a serious musician. “I really didn't mean anything to happen with it, I was just making stuff for friends,” he says of his project Bored Nothing. A year on Miller, as Bored Nothing, has signed to Spunk and they're releasing an 'album' of his work. The collection of songs charts the progression of his music through this time, with five new tracks and a smattering of tunes from each of the four tapes he'd self-produced. More mixtape than actual album, the thing drifts along in an awkward kind of dream. It's pop music that's destined to be unpopular – the best kind.
“I started leaving little recordings everywhere,” Miller says of the early cuts that now make up parts of the self-titled (as in Bored Nothing) Spunk release. “I'd make little CD-Rs of my recordings and just leave them in record stores and in train carriages and in pubs and stuff.”
The things were only intended for unsuspecting members of the public and friends, but it quickly blew up. “I had a Bandcamp page with the recordings on it, so when people found my little CD-Rs they'd send through emails and stuff and I started getting heaps and heaps of booking offers. I was just turning everyone down 'cause I didn't have a band. After about six months of turning people down I thought it would be worth putting together a band, so I set a date to have a band by and begged my friends to learn instruments and we just started playing all of these amazing support slots. It's been the same kind of feel with industry folks. I just got bombarded every day from fucking labels and management and shit.”
For the recordings, Miller played every instrument. It sounds like he knows what he's doing; the songs sound completely formed, even well produced; it sounds like practiced professional musicians, but it's not. “I'm terrible,” Miller says of his musical abilities. “I've always had lots and lots of instruments. I can't play them... I have a saxophone and a violin and all this odd stuff and lots of keyboards, and I'm fucking terrible at keyboards, but if I can figure out how to play something then I can look like I know how to play it.”
Regardless, Miller's brought together a bunch of equally (at least in his mind) musically inept friends to bring the recorded material to live reality. “I flirted with the idea for a while,” he says of the possibility of realising Bored Nothing live and solo, “but I guess the fact that I'm actually recording proper band instruments, it necessitated a band. I've done like looping and stuff in the past but I just find it a bit boring and nerdy.
“It's pretty funny really 'cause I can't really play any instrument. I don't know what chords are or anything like that. I have to listen to my own recordings 'cause then I'll know what I've played, then literally make people watch me while I play them to figure them out because I don't know how to describe stuff. Luckily none of my friends know how to play instruments either, so we're just all figuring it out together. It works pretty well.”
They're playing pretty regularly now and have, among their own gigs and album launch shows, Best Coast and Jeff The Brotherhood support slots in January. This all means that Miller's getting out a lot. But it wasn't always the case. “I was pretty much housebound for a couple of years and just bored,” he continues. “Leading up to playing shows I went to a house party in a backyard to see a band called Velcro, some very good friends of mine, and I met like four bands that night and I didn't know who any of them were. By sheer coincidence I happened to have shows booked with them in the future. From then it's hard to not go to every fucking show that I see is going to happen. There's so much exciting stuff going on at the moment, especially in Melbourne.”
The Bored Nothing tunes feel musically well informed – a bit surprising given Miller's in his early-20s. It feels like the result of a lifetime spent exploring music, deconstructing and absorbing constituent parts. It's washy guitar sounds and you think you hear elements of bands like Deerhunter, The Bats, Ween and a whole heap of Chapter-ish stuff like New Estate. You think it but you're wrong. “It's sheer coincidence,” he says of the suggested influences. “I don't listen to new music at all, but I wouldn't say I exclusively listen to old stuff or anything... I have a group of friends and we all go through these phases of listening to one band and last summer when I started making this stuff I was pretty much listening to like Sonic Youth and that's it.
“It's weird now that I'm kind of out in the world a lot more and seeing local bands and stuff and people start showing me things like the Flying Nun stuff, which is really, really great. It's funny, I see all these references that I never knew I had.”
When suggested the widening of his musical interests may affect the more naive elements of the Bored Nothing output, Miller's not convinced it could have any negative effect. “I am a perpetual dork when it comes to making music, I think. I'm pretty daggy so I don't really think stuff's gonna effect me in that way. I really think it's a good thing because if anything it gets me excited and gives me drive to do more.”
From the early EPs Miller left the Spunk people with the task of compiling the track list for the album. It was a trusting move and, as it turns out, they did a great job of it. “I really like the way that it plays, but you have to think of it in context because it really is just a mixtape,” he says. “I like it. It's very dynamic, especially the vinyl. I think the two sides work really well on their own and together.
“I kind of gave Spunk the benefit of the doubt and let them give me a list and then said, 'Yeah, sure'. None of these songs we're really designed to be heard by more than three people, so it's weird these songs would end up on a proper release... It's weird, especially the buying thing 'cause the whole idea of it was to give it away for free, as well... I am a vinyl fiend, so that's always worth exchanging tender for.”
There are still a couple of unreleased EPs under Miller's bed and he's constantly writing. Looking ahead he's hoping to spend time sculpting “something purposefully all to go together instead of a mixtape” for the next release. In case you were wondering, there's no desire to re-release the existing tapes. “You know,” he says, “maybe in the future when I'm found pink and bloated, dead on the toilet, someone will want to put the tapes out.”
Bored Nothing will be playing the following dates:
Saturday 5 January - The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood VIC
Thursday 10 January - FBi Social, Sydney NSW
Saturday 12 January - A & I Hall, Bangalow NSW
