Monthly Archives: April 2007

24Seven, Interview, Music, Writing

Vents

Leave a comment

Added to the Block Party bill mere months after being signed to Obese, Vents is the latest signing from South Australia’s seemingly massive pool of hiphop talent. With an album dropping shortly, and the tour about to commence, Vents is excited about his future.

Being pretty tight with the Certified Wise crew, but never inducted officially, “well not to my knowledge,” Vent laughingly tells me how he got into hiphop. “Trials (from the Funkoars) was the entry point… that sounds so suss man!” he laughs. “The first big show was Culture Kings in 2000, and that set the ball rolling. There weren’t too many people our age going to hiphop shows back then, and I just got to know them through rhyming at freestyle events and that.”

Through these associations, and his natural talents, he got onto Obese Records as their latest signing. “The Funkoars’ manager gave a copy of the raw, unfinished album to Pegz (current owner of Obese) and he really liked it and wanted to put me on board. It was really that simple!” he grins. “And I’m really happy. From my standpoint I can’t fuck this up now,” he chuckles again. “I’ve got the record, I’ve got the backing, I’ve got the tour. I know that the Funkoars are really happy with them, and they done heaps for the Hilltops.” Production was helped out by the Oars, and Suffa of the Hilltop Hoods and others such as Robbie Balboa from Queensland and Morta from Clandestine guest on the album.

Vents is uncharacteristically shy for an artist when describing his own music. “I think it’s hard critiquing your own music, I think it sounds a bit arrogant and I don’t want to sound like an asshole,” he smirks, “but I guess I’d call it aggressive. I try and give people a buzz and make them take something away from it.” Aggressive isn’t usually a word associated with Aussie hiphop, and guessing there’s more behind his statement, I ask him about his influences. “I’ve listened to metal since I was about 6. I like thrashy metal, old Metallica, Sepultura, late 80s early 90s stuff with lyrics that have meaning. It gives me a rush – it’s real fast and pounds in your head, you know? I’m not really into black metal or death metal from Norway,” he chuckles.

Vents approach to music, either his own and the stuff he listens to, is that good music transcends genres. “I look for music that gives me a buzz, that’s original and creative and energetic, and when people follow formulas you don’t really get that buzz anymore. I got into Public Enemy, Rakim, people who just sounded different and sounded like they had their heart in it,” he says. “As a teenager I listened to only hiphop, and it gets boring after you hear everything. If you go away and listen to metal or punk or whatever, you come back to hiphop and you feel refreshed.”

“There’s a lot more people making hiphop now compared to when I was 16 or 17,” Vents says of when he first started getting into it compared to now, “and I think that maybe the music has gotten worse since it’s become more accessible – more people are working to formulas and originality is lacking. But it’s not just hiphop – I think that anything that gets popular there’s maybe 20% that is good and the rest shit. I don’t try and follow a formula which most new guys seem to do, and to me good music transcends genres so I try to appeal to outside the hiphop realm without selling out, if you know what I mean.”

Vents is excited to be on tour with the Obese crew, looking forward to meeting those he hasn’t met, as well as those he considers friends and mentors. “This is my first tour of Australia,” he says excitedly “I’ve been to Melbourne and Perth with the Funkoars. I’ve never been to Sydney and am keen to check that out, and went to Hobart when I was like 12 or something. I don’t know how much time we’ll get to look around, but I’m looking forward to it.”

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Groove Armada

Leave a comment

Fresh from rocking the V-Festivals around Australia, Tom Findlay and Andy Cato of Groove Armada are stoked to be on the road once again. “It’s been a great tour, we’ve had some really magic gigs actually. The Sydney V-Festival gig was probably the best we’ve ever done,” beams Tom Findlay. “A couple of people left us and joined Faithless, which was a bit of a body blow, so we made some little changes. It’s all rather boring actually,” he laughingly says of the specifics, “but we started rearranging things and now it all makes sense and now feel we’re in the form of our lives.”

Groove Armada’s success has come at some cost; record companies screwed them over, and some friendships had been shaken up. After the release of ‘Groove Armada, the Best of’ album a few years ago, both Findlay and Cato thought to call it a day. “Bands normally retire once they have a best of,” he mentions. But Groove Armada didn’t call it a day, and are back with a new album ‘Soundboy Rock’, and they’ve pulled no punches. “Now that we’re back we’ve got a second chance and don’t really care about it as much, you know?” Findlay chuckles. “We’re not going to have sleepless nights about it, we’re just going to get out there and do what we really believe in.”

Their uncompromising first single is Get Down, a grime number that signals a fresh direction for the duo. “The singer is a woman named Stush who’s actually on the road with us now, and she’s great,” Findlay says. “She’s from Croydon in South London and she’s probably never left South London let alone the UK, and she’s having a ball out here – amazed and slightly shocked by it all I think,” he chuckles. “We wanted to give a dance number a grimey sound, and we wanted to give our down tempo numbers a bit of bliss, you know? It’s been about not making any compromises and really going for it.”

“Both Andy and I went off and did our separate things and neither were very successful,” Findlay laughs, “but we enjoyed doing them and it reminded both of us how hard we worked to get Groove Armada to the point we go it to, and it refreshed everything. And Andy moved to Spain, so we’re not in each other’s faces so much anymore.”

The tension between the two abated, and the guys found some common ground to work with. “I think the older you get the better you get at managing conflict, and as long as it doesn’t get poisonous I think a bit of tension can be a good thing. There is a bit of competitiveness that drives us on,” he admits frankly. “With me in London and Andy in Barcelona we were effectively writing the album separately, there was definitely a sense on one-upmanship and that’s not a bad thing. It pushes things on. But we are good friends, and we united for two months at the end of the album, united for a common cause. That’s what this album is; it’s got that edge, but at the end we come together to make it happen.”

A couple of things that sadly didn’t happen were a team up with the Stone Roses’ Ian Brown and the Pet Shop Boys Neil Tennant. “We were really keen to work with Ian Brown this time, he’s kind of a mate and a nice guy, but we didn’t quite make that happen which is a bit of a shame,” Findlay laments. “And I’d quite like to have Neil Tennant on a track, I think it would be quite funny,” he smirks, adding that both collaborations may still happen.

Groove Armada’s Soundboy Rock is out on May 5 through Sony records.

24Seven, Interview, Music, Writing

The Hilltop Hoods – MC Pressure

Leave a comment

The Hilltop Hoods began the hard road to fame a good 10 years ago, and have gone from strength to strength, winning awards, obtaining platinum albums, playing around the country, performing for a television audience, as well as opening the doors for more Aussie hiphop artists to jump in the spotlight and shine. But their laid back manner and modest nature contradicts their dedication to their art.

After performing with a string quartet at the ARIAs, the band decided they wanted to do something a little different from the norm. Possibly inspired by the Simpson’s Lollapoolza episode where, in a stoned haze Cyprus Hill decide to play with the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hilltop Hoods have decided to record the Hard Road with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, and release it as the Hard Road Restrung.

“We were approached by the ASO to do some work with them over a year ago,” Pressure explains, “but due to time constraints we had to turn them down, but that’s where the idea came from originally to use a String Quartet. So instead of us doing their project, we offered ours to them.” They decided to use a string quartet for their ARIA performance to give their fans and the wider television audience something different.

“We had a local (Adelaide) guy who works for the ASO, Jamie Messenger, to compose a score for ‘The Hard Road’ for us to perform just with a string quartet. We were really happy with his work, and got him to compose scores for the rest of ‘The Hard Road’ album for a String Quartet and we took it on tour over the New Year break. That went really well, so we got Jamie to re-score it for a 32-piece orchestra for an album.”

Well, that answers “how”, but what I really wanted to know was why? Why did the Hilltop Hoods, who are probably the last people you’d expect to form a union with any kind of orchestra, do a Metallica and record their album with one? Have they gone mad? “This is something we wanted to do ourselves as artists, from an artistic perspective, just to branch out and try something different for the remix album, but we’re going to go back to making straight up hiphop after this,” Pressure reassure me.

I wondered if there was any special preparation they do with the orchestra for their one off show that launches the album. “Being that the people who play for the ASO are all professional musicians – they play 40 to 50 hours a week – we’re only doing one rehearsal with them because that’s all it takes,” he explains. “They take the sheet music and take it home and learn it off by heart. We get together the day before for a dress rehearsal and take it from there.” But he quickly qualifies it with, “We (the Hilltops) rehearse our side of things, plan it and put it all together well beforehand, but we only get one dress rehearsal with the orchestra.”

Pressure is aware that there will be some resistance to the show. “There will be some people who will turn their nose up at it and it’s not going to be their thing,” he says, “but I think many will come along to check it out and will leave pretty impressed with what they’ve seen because this doesn’t happen very often. It’s going to be a bit of a spectacle!” Unfortunately it’s only songs from The Hard Road, so there won’t be any HornBleed Section, but there is one new track that’s been recorded as a bonus song.

Of course, this means their next ‘proper’ album probably won’t be making it to stores until next year. “The next album is just started to get underway. Suffa and Debris have a few beats, and we’ve written a couple of verses here and there, but we haven’t actually started recording the new album at all,” Pressure confirms. “We’re just putting ideas down so it’s kind of on hold for the moment because of the remix album. The night of the launch we’re also filming for a DVD, so we’ve got a fair bit on our plate for this year.”