Prop: Seas Them.

Prop play The Zoo on Saturday.

Hailing from Sydney, electronic-laced, jazz ambient live act Prop mixes eclectic, vibrant and modified sounds in a free falling improv environment. Think vibraphone tribal, bass heavy atmospherics or soulful funk and you’d be halfway there. Factor in the knowledge that the group consists of Sydney Conservatorium of Music (among other institutions) graduates and runaways, and they all have several other musical day jobs of varying prestige levels that have gained this 4 year old collective a definitive fan base and wide spread critical acclaim, and it’s beginning to sound like Prop may be on to something big. The gang recently scored a Federal Govt Arts Grant (at least lil Johnny and the Boys are good for something) to tour and promote their debut release Small Craft Rough Sea (available on Silent Recordings).

Bass player Dave explains how he squeezed a brass razoo out of the anti-Arts Howard Govt.

“All five of us with our manager put together the application to basically get some money together to tour the major cities of Australia and regional areas on the way. We just basically put it to them that we had a new concept in music, we are all young guys who were all coming from the formal education system, like the Conservatorium, so we’re all doing stuff that most people from the Conservatorium don’t do, but I guess we had a good application and they liked what we were doing so they bought it.”

Touring the East Coast isn’t half of it, the group expect to head to the UK later this year for the Enchanted Garden multi-media and electronic arts festival, one of many prestige gigs they have landed. Dave admits that the variety of audiences and gigs they attract can sometimes make for interesting bedfellows, they’ve supported artists as diverse as Tortoise, Will Oldham and Sonic Youth and were recently confirmed for the Stereolab support in Sydney, a group Dave feels a close synergy with.

“I think with us, because we’re used to doing varied venues and therefore we have lots of different audiences, we’ve had to adapt some of our music to that, but then again we still do our own thing. We try to being out the tracks that suit the gig, like some of the stuff is quite ambient, that’s the main problem we have sometimes, a lot of it is real listening and sometimes sound systems at festivals make it a bit hard. Because we use acoustic instruments like marimba and vibraphone, so straight away it’s not like a digital plug in.”

Dave reckons it’s this diversity that makes Prop a group to watch.

“I think our sound has been developing constantly, it keeps changing with each gig.”