I was aware that I was going to have a busy day when I got back to Melbourne so I popped a roofie on the flight in order to sleep. I don't like using drugs to get to sleep. I fear becoming dependent, but sometimes it is essential. I arrived as refreshed as one can be from a long-haul flight and went directly home in order to dump my luggage and have a relaxing and much needed shower. I pride myself on my personal hygiene. I'm a very clean boy. The air in the aeroplane cabin makes my skin feel sticky. I can't stand it. A shower is the best remedy. I like to have one as soon as possible after stepping off a flight. I soap myself thoroughly and fastidiously scrub every nook and cranny. I feel much more as ease afterwards.
The reason I needed to be clean, aside from it being something everyone should be vigilant about, was that I was going to my good friend Jon's house in the afternoon. Jon and Alex have a band called ii. Their Last.fm profile describes their sound as guitar-based atmospherics, noise, instrumental pop and sound art. They have just recorded an album of their best songs and required some help with the constructing the final product. With the cds and the packaging being produced separately, it required some serious manpower to put them together. And as manpower is something that I have in abundance my services would be more than useful to them. I am always keen to help out fellow musicians. I especially like to assist those musicians that I feel an affinity with; bands with an ethos that has some correlation with my own. Like most musicians with an original vision, Jon and Alex subscribe to the do it yourself, or DIY, ethic. In order to be most connected to one's art one needs to be involved in as much of its production as possible. Having some record company bigwig putting their cds together for them is not their style. They feel it disassociates them from their music, and by extension, disassociates them from their fanbase. This is exactly how I feel in relation to my own music as well. Bigwigs from major record labels are always coming up to me and saying: "Hey Grant, we want to put out an album of your best songs. What do you say?", and I say to them: "If I wanted to put out an album of my best songs I would do it myself. Because that is the ethic I subscribe to." They don't understand. Why do something yourself when you can have someone else do it for you?, these bigwigs think to themselves. They don't understand the culture. They don't understand the pride we have in our work. They're just jealous cowards trying to control. They distort what we say and try to stop what we do, because they know they can't do it themselves. But we rise above.
After leaving Jon's place I headed to The Empress. Another Jon, Jon Ringhofer, aka Half-Handed Cloud, was playing a show there. Ringhofer was out in Australia as part of Sufjan Stevens' band and fortunately for me decided to play a show of his own in Melbourne. I stumbled across Half-Handed Cloud through the new Why? EP which contained one new song (The Hollows) and a series of remixes/covers by other artists. One of these artists was Half-Handed Cloud doing a medley of songs from Why?'s previous album Elephant Eyelash. I was immediately taken with him. He plays somewhat shambolic and rather twee lo-fi indie-pop. His lyrics are delivered in a squeaky falsetto and mostly concern his Christian faith. The supports for the evening were The Icypoles who were very entertaining and cute, and The Motifs who I had seen several weeks ago at the Edinburgh Castle and wasn't particularly impressed, but I was more than impressed last night. However, the highlight of the evening was undoubtedly Half-Handed Cloud. He set himself up on stage in a little instrument fort that contained a snare and tom, guitar, omnichord, banjo, a little keyboard, a trombone and a dictaphone and proceeded to play his songs in the most charmingly goofy manner, frequently swapping instruments, occasionally mid-song. It was a delightful spectacle.
After the performance I bumped into discerning Swedish songsmith and recently moved Melbourne resident, Jens Lekman, who had also been in attendance. I had seen him perform about a week and a half ago at The Toff and so I used the opportunity to inform him of just how much I enjoyed his show that evening. We talked about the gig we had both just witnessed, Jens' upcoming tours of Europe and the US and how he was settling in to his new home in Melbourne. Although we didn't discuss it directly I felt there was a definite prospect of some future musical collaboration between the two of us. He may have been a little to shy to ask me straight up, but as we talked I got the sense that it was something he was considering. Jens is also one to take a very hand-ons approach to his music, he has an ethos very close to my own and as a result he is someone who it would be very easy to form a partnership with. Although we didn't get to brainstorm this new musical project last night, I'm sure that we will bump into each other again around town soon enough and be able to formulate a few interesting ideas then.
No comments:
Post a Comment