Ukiyo-E play The Zoo on Saturday night.
In his autobiography, Miles Davis expresses his disapproval of avant-garde saxophonist Ornette Coleman also taking up trumpet and violin. “For him – a sax player – to pick up a trumpet and violin like that and just think he can play them with no kind of training is disrespectful toward all those people who play them well,” he writes.
But fortunately, Sydney’s Ukiyo-e are neither a jazz group or old enough to be judged by the late hornblower. For this is a quintet that makes instrumental music and pinning down who plays what is rather difficult, as the group’s Steve Foster explains.
“Yeah, there’s about three members who play drums, but Matt (Blackman) probably plays them the most,” he says. “We tend to swap the instruments around a lot, but try and limit it when we play live, just so the audience doesn’t wait too long between songs.”
The ‘taking turns’ approach to playing instruments suggests that this is a rather democratic band.
“Yeah,” laughs Steve. “To the point that it’s sometimes hard to get anything done! But, yeah, everyone writes and everyone has their say.”
Although not all music lovers may have noticed, Ukiyo-e made one of last year’s most seductive records, the six-track CD Inland. With spacious rhythms combining with sparse guitar textures and hints of music styles from exotic lands, Inland is a treat not only for post-rock followers, but anyone who enjoys music that marries confidence with fragility. The band has since been working on remixing tracks from Inland, which demonstrates the combo’s embracing of electronics.
“I wouldn’t narrow us down to being influenced exclusively by Tortoise and bands like that,” he says. “We’re interested in a real range of stuff. We’re into all levels of electronic music, from real minimal laptop kind of stuff, to out-and-out Mouse On Mars virtual techno.”
Does this mean a future electronic direction for Ukiyo-e?
“Well, possibly. We have just invested in a computer, which means we can investigate that direction a little bit more,” says Steve. “Now we have a computer, that opens up the possibility of writing songs a bit differently. Certainly, a lot of the time, we get our ideas from someone bringing something in and we jam it out and take it from there. But having a computer could bring things to a different level.”
Other than their remix project, Ukiyo-e also hope to be in the studio within the next month.
“I think we’re looking at an album this time over,” says Steve. “We’re always sitting around playing guitars and coming up with material, so we won’t have a problem with quantity. We’ll just listen to the songs we’ve got and take it from there, I guess. With Inland, we recorded more than ended up on the final disc, so we’ll definitely have enough for an album this time around.”
And with the band about to travel to Brisbane for the first time (where they will play with Rival Flight at The Zoo, as well as a performance at the Valley Mall Rotunda), Steve gives a brief explanation of the sheer stylistic range of a Ukiyo-e performance:
“Well, these days there’s really ambient stuff, but all guitar-based. Everything from the really slow to the really groovy, I guess.”
As one of a growing number of Australian bands willing to explore the possibilities of open-ended instrumental electric music, Ukiyo-e are arguably the most melodic and atmospheric practitioners. Their songs may be free of both lyrics and the attention-grabbing focus of a lead singer, but they never fail to create an emotional response. Go see.
