Back In The Saddle

At 26, Dane Brown is a music industry veteran who was at the forefront of Australia's hard rock scene at the turn of the millennium alongside his Sunk Loto frontman brother Jason. Still playing together in current five-piece project Electric Horse, Brown considers how different their approach to music is now.  

“We did a lot of supports back then with bands like Deftones, and Sevendust who we got to actually tour through the States with,” he says of his industry introduction. “We were pretty young kids when we started out; I was 13 I think when we first started touring. We did that pretty much full-time as a job for ten years as opposed to [Electric Horse] – we're all working, half of us have got families, mortgages and everything, so it does make it a lot harder to try and get out and do a lot of shows, but at the same time it's really pure because we're only doing it for fun more or less. We're still putting in a lot of effort writing and trying to do shows; we're actually halfway through writing an album at the moment, but definitely doing it because we're best mates and having a ball with it really.

“After releasing Between Birth And Death which was Sunk Loto's last official release, there was obviously a lot of pressure to follow something that's been written up five stars in metal magazines and things like that… We obviously don't feel anywhere near that kind of pressure and we just really do it for fun, but I think we're gonna surprise a lot of people...” he admits, noting plans for a September debut album release.

Interrupting the writing process with a quick run of shows alongside Gold Coast compadres Helm, Brown explains the progression of Electric Horse since their debut EP Translations dropped in 2010.   

“I guess we're still finding our style. You can still hear those tinges of kind of metal-y aspects to it and I think that this [new] stuff is definitely just going in a lot more straight up rock'n'roll vibe. I guess steering towards more the melodic, very Australian pub rock style with a bit of a twist on it as opposed to a more metal-y sound. We're definitely gonna be playing a few songs when we head out and do these shows.”

Though Brown has experienced the highs and lows of being in an internationally recognised band with major label backing, it seems he's far more content these days for music to be an enjoyable side-project, as the naming process for Electric Horse reveals.

“We've got a tendency to be a pack of idiots to be honest,” he laughs. “When we first started I think one of our guitarists did this gnarly squealy on his guitar and said, 'That sounded like an electric horse'. We argued and thought this was the most ridiculous thing ever and [there was] no way that we could call a band that, and just realised that we're stupid enough to do it, and we did.

“It's kind of good that it represents that we're definitely not taking ourselves too seriously as well. As far as writing our songs and delivering a really good live show, obviously that's our number one priority, but on the other hand none of us really take life too seriously and we're just trying to have as much fun with it as we can, and get along and play jokes on each other. It's been a lot of fun so far and hopefully we can keep doin' it for a while.”