How Halcyon Drive Grew Into A Little Baby

26 May 2016 | 4:15 pm | Brynn Davies

"We get a good balance even if that takes a few hefty arguments!"

When Michael Oechsle made a few tracks in his hometown of Melbourne, he never expected it to become anything other than a small personal project. "I tentatively chose to share a few of those tracks with close mates including Max [Pamieta] and he was like 'Well, let's bloody play them live then!' So it's just grown from there into our little baby," explains Oechsle, who is the lead vocalist and guitarist of two-piece Halcyon Drive.

Their follow-up EP to debut Cruel Kids is Untethered, a blend of "intellectually heartfelt pop" and indie-soft-rock. "We worked with Steven Schram [San Cisco, Cat Empire] on this EP again, and he suggested the idea of setting up our own space to record. So we shacked up in a beautiful old mud brick in the Otways forest last year for a couple of weeks to knock it over."

"The 'studio' location itself was just stunning, and being immersed in that every day was particularly inspiring," muses Oechsle. Being a two-piece, the band ran up against some creative differences while shacked up in the woods working on Untethered. "I like to think we toe the line between [perfection and vibe when recording]. Max is a very — sometimes frustratingly so — detail-oriented dude, and I tend to be more about the vibe. So we get a good balance even if that takes a few hefty arguments!"