Features / Music

“We had talked about how I was a fan of ‘90s hip hop and Raekwon and RZA and the rest of Wu-Tang guys. They had this really nice sound where they had these organic piano sounds and loops that would drift in and out so we wanted to go for that idea, but on live instruments."

"We’re not trying to make dance pop music but we are trying to make stuff that people will like live, it’s not like serious musicians sitting in the corner stroking our moustaches thinking that we can reinvent the wheel."

“We’ve got a couple of songs but they’re not finished yet. We’ve got five or ten songs for the next one, but it’s probably not going to be released until mid-2014.”

“The perfect venue is really hard to figure out. The sound system has to be really great. Not too loud, not too soft. Essentially, just right.”

“I try to educate the players quickly so that we can do whatever I – we – feel on any given night. [It] depends on what I feel that night; I feel the crowd, sometimes I feel them before they arrive…"

“I’ve been coming here for three or four years now and spending a lot of time here – sort of six months here and six months in the UK generally in a year – and just built it up really, really slowly in Australia, and I love it here."

“Every performance is an adventure, a journey. And you do, you sort of paint a new picture every evening."

“It was heaps of fun to make, and listening to it now – we got the test pressing back yesterday – reminds me of recording it, because that was heaps of fun."

“There will be dark, moody tales, and there will be costumes, always costumes, as I am fairly into presentation and the visual aspect of performance."

“I don’t think something new that we hadn’t thought about came of seeing all the other bands play. We saw a lot of good bands and some poor ones in between."

“I gave [the guest artists] a little bit of a choice. For Ash, I gave him a listen to Hurricane, which I thought was a much better choice for him."

"We’re at a point now, though, where we’re really keen to get it out."