Test Patterns

For many casual followers, it seemed like Canberra-based indie outfit TV Colours appeared fully-formed out of nowhere in mid-2013 with their killer debut album Purple Skies, Toxic Rivers, but (as is so often the case) the reality of their background is far more protracted and convoluted.

The brainchild of frontman Bobby Kills (better known as Robin Mukerjee to the taxman), TV Colours started out as one guy with a vision setting out to put a band together, who – initially unable to find willing and capable brothers-in-arms —  ended up just making the album on his lonesome. While lyrically Purple Skies, Toxic Rivers verges on concept album terrain —  the narrative following a young guy trying to deal with existential dilemmas amidst the boredom of suburbia —  musically, it’s a strange and distinctive amalgam of rock and punk set to drum machines, wrapped in strange synths and topped off with the odd found sound or sample. Most importantly it’s absolutely rife with overt melodies and hooks, resulting in very track seeming impossibly catchy.

“We’re almost like a cover band of the album really, in a weird way."

In recent times a four-piece band has finally coalesced around Kills to help him better translate this music into the live realm — the live incarnation sounding different to the album but no less enthralling — with the result that TV Colours are now one of the most exciting prospects amidst Australia’s thriving underground scene both onstage and on record.

“I guess it’s because we’re not using drum machines and stuff like that,” Kills offers of their divergent live sound. “We’re almost like a cover band of the album really, in a weird way. I used to perform by myself, and then I went a bit crazy with the instrumentation on the recording and it was pretty hard to reproduce it all by myself, so I got the band in and it kind of changed the feel — it gives things a distinct live energy, which I really like.

“But it was planned to always morph into a band. That was at the very beginning when I was living in Sydney and trying to find people to start a band with — I was having no luck, so I thought I’d just do stuff by myself with a drum machine and hopefully meet people really soon after. But then I just got obsessed with the idea of doing this album by myself to document the period of time when I was by myself, and it just went on for years. Eventually I got there. But I always intended to find other people to start the band with, so luckily it’s turned out that way.”

It actually took six full years for Kills to craft a version of Purple Skies, Toxic Rivers that he was happy with, to the point where he even scrapped two entire versions of the album that he didn’t feel represented what he had in his head. Was this just a result of setting high internal expectations?

“Yeah, pretty much,” he admits. “The first two just weren’t very good and I knew it, and I think other people knew it too; I’d show them and they’d basically shrug and go, ‘Yeah, that’s okay’, so I just kept going. When I did the first one I’d never really been in a band before or written songs, so it was going to suck regardless really because I never had experience doing it. I guess the whole time it took so long because I was just learning how to do it at the same time. I don’t think the next one will take so long.”

Were the abandoned versions of Purple Skies, Toxic Rivers much different in tone to the finished product?

“The first one was heaps different, it was all live instrumentation with guitar and drums and it was all recorded on a four-track so it’s really lo-fi,” Kills recalls. “Then the next one is pretty similar to the version that eventually came out, except it had about five less tracks and the songs just weren’t as realised in comparison to what they became. They do sound kind of similar. Also there wasn’t the big ‘80s angle on the second one — it all changed when I bought this old synth and wanted to put it all over everything. The second one didn’t have that, it was all Sonic Youth-like noise collage things, which I got rid of in the end.”

What about the compelling narrative arc, which has quite appropriately been compared in the past to the story from Hüsker Dü’s epic 1984 concept album Zen Arcade — was that present in the original guises?

“No, not really, to tell the truth,” Kills concedes. “They were just songs about disillusioned city life. I guess that’s the big thing about the third one — it had the big narrative. I listened to the second version just the other day and they were all just songs about not really succeeding in life living in the big city — that was the point of it all back then.

“I’ve always been pretty cagey about it — or I was when it came out — but it’s very autobiographical, probably about my life when I lived in Sydney. But I tried to keep it detached from that in a way so other people could relate to it — not make it too specific to my life when I lived in Sydney. I guess it was more inspired by that time than actually being about it.”

You don’t often hear found sounds and samples in a rock or punk context, and Kills was motivated in this regard by an episode from his past that’s obviously still reverberating in his psyche.

Despite being unable to please this particular teacher, Kills has clearly moved onto bigger and better things and has been delighted with the positive attention afforded TV Colours’ debut.“I just thought it would work really well,” he smiles. “I did some sound stuff when I was in uni, and I guess it was inspired by that — intensely studying movie sound design and stuff like that. It sounds lame, but I was trying to aim for something that would have got me a good mark in that specific class to impress this teacher that was never impressed with me. I guess I was a bit bitter about the whole thing.”

“You never know being in a band from Canberra whether people are going to take notice of it — we’re so out of the loop with a lot of stuff, or it feels that way sometimes — so it’s been awesome that people have got into it,” he enthuses. “It’s definitely a weird place to be playing music, although there’s a cool scene. It kinda comes in waves — it will be great for a while and then all disappear — but at the moment it’s really awesome. There’s heaps of bands playing, and everyone else is in everyone else’s bands, it’s really fun. And there’s heaps of young kids here making music too, which is cool — Canberra’s so small that sometimes a generation of musicians will just seem to disappear and you won’t see them because they’ve moved to Melbourne or Sydney, but at the moment there’s heaps of young kids here making really good stuff.”

And with all of the gigging that TV Colours have undertaken since Purple Skies… dropped Kills hasn’t yet found the time to begin working on the next recorded instalment.

“It’s been pretty frustrating trying to find time between work and rehearsing for shows and stuff like that,” he tells.” I’ve done bits and pieces, but I really need to set aside big chunks of time to — for the lack of a better phrase — ‘get in the zone’ with it. I’ve organised that for next year, so I’m going to work on it pretty hard next year. When you’ve got shows coming up they take over everything in our world, and since the album came out we’ve just been continually playing shows and stuff. I’ve done little bits here and there, but not really. I’m still in a rush to do it — you’d think from the last one I’d have learned that being patient about the whole thing would work, but I’m still like really in a rush to get it done. I’ll get over it I think.”

"I’ll probably try to be good and then say ‘Fuck it!’ and throw up on the plane.”

In the short term, he’s really looking forward to playing all three legs of The Blurst Of Times Festival, even if this has resulted in some logistical nightmares.

“It’s going to be heaps of fun,” Kills laughs. “It’s a really varied line-up and there’s a lot of bands on there that we haven’t played with before, so it’s going to be great. When I was told about it I didn’t really know who was going to be on it — all I had to gauge by was last year’s line-up — but even then I could tell it’s going to be a blast. The only problem is with the Brisbane show that now it’s gone national we have to play Sydney the next day so we’ve booked flights home at 6.30 in the morning on the Sunday — it’s going to be hell getting on that plane. I’ll probably try to be good and then say ‘Fuck it!’ and throw up on the plane.”

The Blurst Of Times line-up features the cream of the Australian underground guitar scene — a group of bands united as much by their approach to their craft as the actual results — and Kills is stoked to identify TV Colours as part of such a thriving community.

“I’ve sort of felt that [there’s a cool scene in Australia] for the last five or six years — a lot of cool indie labels have popped up, and for some reason I feel like Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s Primary Colours had a lot to do with that,” he proffers. “For me at least, it showed a good way to do the right thing being in a band, just having fun and keeping it real. I look back to before that album came out and music felt so hard — the playing of it and stuff — but then that album came out and it was really simple and straightforward and accessible in a way, for me at least. Back then, I hadn’t been playing music that long so it was very inspirational that you could just put a few chords together and do something really cool.”