Cinematic Rock

“It was actually Andrew’s [2005] film, Glass Love,” is how multi-instrumentalist and journalist Martin Jones explains his becoming a member of a band called The Windy Hills, fronted by Andrew Kidman. “I fell in love with the soundtrack and I interviewed him and then went to meet him when I moved to Byron Bay and he said, ‘How about sitting in on a recording?’ They were recording some stuff for another surf movie with [guitarist] Tim Gaze and I sat in and had a blast, and started playing keyboards and a little bit of back-up guitar with him. And then Neal Purchase, who was the guitarist at the time, ended up leaving, so I became lead guitarist by default.”

As it happens, after several years of recording as a solo artist, Kidman had put a band together, originally called The Brown Birds Of Windy Hill, around the time he released Glass Love, recording an album, 2009’s Three Sails To The Wind, before transforming into The Windy Hills. 

“The Glass Love stuff was kind of folky and done with a pretty professional studio band, which was sort of very spacious and slow and simple and that’s always kind of been Andrew’s thing. But he’s learning more and more about his instrument and that’s been driving the writing into new territories, so with a permanent, stable five-piece band now, we’re going more into Wilco territory,” Jones chuckles. “A poor man’s Wilco!”

If their album titles – 2010’s Friend From Another Star and this year’s Fall Of Planet Esoteria – are anything to go by, The Windy Hills and Kidman are looking way beyond terrestrial shores… or perhaps not. As Jones explains, the title of the latest album “came in a 2am email from (drummer) Jay (Kruegner), who was doing the mix-downs, and the next morning he couldn’t even remember having written it, but everyone loved it so much, we went, ‘That’s the name of the album!’

“The good thing about the band is everyone can play a bit of everything. I can sit on the drums or the bass if needed and Jay can play guitar, bass and keys. Paul [Brewer], the bass player, is a fantastic keyboards player as well. And Jay does all the recording and he gets it to the point where it just needs to be mastered, basically.”

While he’s committed to the band, Kidman has continued to make films – Last Hope followed Glass Love in 2010 – but it’s his homage to the iconic 1972 surf film, Morning Of The Earth, a film called Spirit Of Akasha, for which he wrote the opening track, To Be Young, that brings he and The Windy Hills to Melbourne.

“We were super aware of how important the music to Morning Of The Earth was – at least as important as the footage – so I think Andrew got employed [as director] because he’s got a good sense of both sides of it, a surf filmmaker but also a musician and a music fan and he was able to help put together a really interesting soundtrack.”