Hot Freaks Focus: Horror My Friend

Answered by: Joshua Battersby 

What bands are you most excited to check out at Hot Freaks and why?

All the acts on the line-up are incredible. For this festival I’m quite excited to see Hannahband. Their LP Quitting Will Improve Your Health is A+ and they are a joy to watch live. Also I just listened to Gunns and they are rad too, and Pat Chow’s album is sick. To be honest I’m most excited for every band.

Fellow SA rockers Grenadiers are also on the bill. There seems to be a lot of great talent coming out of the state right now – what other Adelaide bands should we be keeping an eye on and why?

Yeah, there are a stack of bands! To start off with there is a rad collective of bands on Swirl Records. Groups on the swirl roster include but aren’t limited to Siamese, Goon Wizarrd and Astro Dad, all of whom are incredible. The label is masterminded by members of the aforementioned bands and there is great scene growing around Swirl and it is very cool to see!

Some other bodacious hometown bands include Young Offenders, Blush Response, The Dunes, Slick Arnold and Larsen.

You guys visit Perth frequently – how would you compare the WA music scene to other states in the country?

The WA music scene seems super tight knit. Every time we come over and play, it seems members from the bands we played with previously are now spectating and members from the audience are now playing. Seeing as Perth is isolated from the other capitals it appears there is a lot of local inspiration and bands/musicians all look up to each other, which is cool as I feel this is what gives the Perth scene a unique sound.

I think Adelaide is somewhat similar in this way, and that is why Perth has a real homey vibe to it. But even still, I find it hard to compare Perth to other cities in Australia as I like to think each city has its own thing going on and that’s what makes having the opportunity to tour so exciting, being able to delve into a variety of music scenes.

Places such as Sydney and Melbourne are cool as I guess seeing as there is a greater population, live music venues are spread out over a grand spatial scale. I get the feeling there are scenes within scenes in these cities, which was kind of daunting when we first started touring but we have found everyone we meet along the way to be super helpful in suggesting places to play/bands to play with/people to drink beers with.

Why do you think boutique festivals like Hot Freaks are so important to the scene?

Festivals such as Hot Freaks are important as they fill a niche in the music scene. For example in Adelaide there have been times in the past when the scene becomes somewhat homogenous in shows the it produces. As in, a punter can know what to expect from a gig before even attending it. But this why boutique festivals are so important as they create diversity in the lineups and are often held  at venues that are a bit left of centre, which is exciting for both the punter and the bands playing and helps buck this homogenous trend.

Recently in Adelaide we have been lucky enough to witness a bunch of cool curated festivals such as Party Party, Scumfest, Stonecutters and and all the mini fests that appear under the Umbrella Winter sounds banner. We are super excited to be given the opportunity to come over and play Hot Freaks, it boasts a diverse lineup within the punk/garage scene and I have never been to a show in skate store. I may even bring over my old Globes and do a pop shove it over the drum kit.

Tell us a little bit about your most recent record, Stay In, Do Nothing.

Stay In, Do Nothing came out in Jan 2016 on Poison City Records. It was tracked in Melbourne at Hot House Studios and at Sound Park studios with Jez Giddings and Richard Bowers, Rich also mixed the record. As much as we wanted to I don’t think we ever really thought we would ever get to the point where we could afford to record an album, luckily our financial woes were taken care of with a recording grant. We were pretty surprised with the reception we received for SIDN and it has enabled us to continue to tour/play shows/meet good peoples/see great bands, which is just fine by us!

What are you working on at the moment?

At the moment we are working on getting a bunch of new songs ready to play live. Most of our live material we have played for the last year has been purely from Stay In, Do Nothing so we are keen to start playing some newbies. We are also recording a couple of said newbies at Capital Sound studios with old mate Jimmy from Grenabeers.

You can find more info and tickets to Hot Freaks here.