Royalchord, Melbourne

Current band rollcall?
Eliza Hiscox, Tammy Haider, Tim Piccone, Ben Butcher.
 
royalchord has been around since …
We (Eliza and Tammy) started playing music together in 1997 and got serious in 1999. Ben and Tim have started playing with us this year.
 
Let's play Six Degrees of royalchord. What are some interesting musical links you could come up with?
Tammy: I recorded vocals at a house that Jarvis Cocker owns and, by pure accident, met him in the kitchen one morning whilst he was making toast for his son.
 
First song ever written?
Tammy: Gosh, I can't quite remember, no doubt it was about a guy, how it went wrong.
Eliza: First real song I wrote that doesn't make me cringe was on our first album, it was called Notion of Invisibility. It's about losing in a relationship, and learning to live alone, after your first heartbreak. There were some strange songs that I've written before which I, to this day, cannot make sense of.
 
Music making for you began when …
Tammy: I was in The Sound of Music at age six; ever since then, there's been no turning back.
Eliza: piano lessons when mastering A Whole New World, the theme song to Aladdin.

Most unusual sound/instrument you've used in your music?
Bottles on The Good Times, or the creaking door on Mr Light.

Strangest gig you've ever played?
We played a gig in New Orleans where a couple started dry-humping while we were playing our cover of Etta James' I'd Rather Go Blind; it wasn’t really that the gig was strange, more that we'd never thought of ourselves as making music to get down-and-dirty to (not that we mind this, of course). Probably even stranger was playing in Aimes, Iowa, at a Christian arts collective (we didn't know this beforehand). We ended up playing most of the show unplugged, and on the last song wearing wigs, standing in the centre of the room – it was surreal, beautiful, beyond words.

Do you pin up images when recording to help inspire your songs? (Or put up other things in the studio for the same effect?)
We like to pin lyrics up and tend to have pieces of disassembled equipment scattered round, empty beer bottles, pictures of dogs, trees, and always incense burning.
 
Unlikeliest thing to influence your music?
Tammy: I feel like my nieces' reactions to our music influences me just because, right now, they are really into it, which I think is so sweet.
Eliza: Timbaland.
 
Most unconventional topic you've covered in your lyrics?
Sleaziness.
 
If you had to offer any of your lyrics as love advice (or life advice), you would offer …
Life advice: “I will go go go, where my body will take me, I'll surround myself with the hope that’s left in me”
 
Most useful lyrics you've heard in a song?
Tammy: I'm sorry there are just too many to give one.
Eliza: I don't like songs with useful lyrics, or I don't take note of them at least! I love songs which have lyrics that hit you to your core, tell a story or express something so sad but is made beautiful in a song. I think pretty much everything Bill Callahan writes would fit that criteria. Also D.C. Berman of the Silver Jews: "You're a tower without a bell, you're a negative wishing well."

Do you think the country/city/town you live in affects your music in any way?
Definitely! For us, it's almost the opposite, I guess, as we are shifting around every couple of months, so the city we are in tends to have a transient effect on our music; it really takes us into our own world and mixes up the flavours.
 
You would love to record with …
Anyone from Hot Chip, Timbaland, Danger Mouse (dream on!).
 
Favourite person you have performed with/recorded with …
Tim Piccone and Ben Butcher, Andrew Spencer Goldman, Andrew Bencina – all such good, fun, creative, brilliant people.
 
Outside of royalchord, you spend your time …
Right now, pushing paper, daydreaming of travelling once more, playing tennis, walking the dog, playing with my friend's two-year-old daughter, walking, drinking, sleeping.

Next for you is …
A Sydney and Brisbane album launch, then U.S, U.K and European tours.
 
If record stores had to come up with a new genre name to file your music under, it would be called …
Fauxtronica Romantica.



Royalchord's album The Good Fight is full of quiet surprises, and contains one of my favourite songs this year (Mr Light, creaking door sound and all). You can catch the band launching the record this Friday at Serial Space in Chippendale. For more details (and general up-to-date info about the band), head to their MySpace.

Making a list, checking it twice

Like a lot of people, I've totally fallen for list fever. With all this best-of reflecting that's happening everywhere, I'd love to hear people's thoughts on which Australian records were the keepers, the ones that survived the hype, (and people's hopeless memories). Which underrated gems deserved more of the spotlight?

So I'm doing two list-crazy shows on Local Fidelity - 'Best of 2009' on December 20 and 'Best of 2000-nowish' on December 27. It'd be awesome if you could somehow take part.

If you could single out your pick for 2009 favourite Australian record – it could be an album, single, EP, demo – as well as your utmost favourite of the last ten years, that would be amazing. (If you're able to add a line or two on why these releases have defined your year/decade, that'd also be brilliant.) Please everyone don't pick Since I Left You by The Avalanches (even though it is a killer record)!!

Just leave your suggestions, along with your name and suburb in the comments section and I'll announce & play as many as I can on-air on Dec 20 & Dec 27 from 7pm. I'll also blog about the responses here.

To jog your memory, here are a few names (though I'm sure I've missed lots, so please fill in the musical gaps, if you know any).

2009
A Casual End Mile. AFXJim. Aleks and the Ramps. An Horse. Angie Hart. Apricot Rail. Band Of The Free. Bearhug. Bird Automatic. Black Cab. Bluejuice. Brave Radar. Bridezilla. Broken Chip. Cameras. Castratii. City of Satellites. Cleptoclectics. Clubfeet. Convaire. Damn Arms. Danimals. Dave McCormack. Dappled Cities. Darren Hanlon. Decoder Ring. Denim Owl. Dick Diver. Dragging Pianos. Drama For Yamaha. El Mopa. Erasers. Faux Pas. Fourplay. G.L.O.V.E.S. Grand Salvo. Great Earthquake. Greyhound Lane. Harmonic 313. Holidays On Ice. Horrorshow. Howard. I Dream In Transit. I Heart Hiroshima. Jane Woody & Angel Eyes. Jessica Says. Jonathan Boulet. Kid Sam. Killaqueenz. Lisa Mitchell. Local Fidelity (ha). Lost Valentinos. Love Connection. Love of Diagrams. Martin Craft. Maxine Kauter. Megastick Fanfare. Miami Horror. Mum Smokes. Music Vs Physics. Namatoke. New Weird Australia 1, II & III. Nicola Lester. No Art. Oh Mercy. Orisha. Oto Uto. Peach. Record Producer. Red Riders. Royal Chord. Sailmaker. Sarah Blasko. Seekae. Shady Lane. Shazam. Shock! Horror! Sherlock’s Daughter. Snob Scrilla. Songs. Spunk Singles Club Compilation. St Helens. Super Melody. Super Wild Horses. Tara Simmons. Tarcutta. Telafonica. The Bon Scotts. The Church. The Crayon Fields. The Kritzlers. The Mess Hall. The Middle East. The Model School. The Native Cats. The Night Terrors. The Rational Academy. The Twerps. Umpire. Underlapper Remixes. Unkle Ho. Urthboy. Voltaire Twins. Washington. Williams Break. Wolf And Cub.




2000-2009
Adamsaidgalore. Aleks and the Ramps. AFXJim. An Horse. Angie Hart. Apricot Rail. Architecture in Helsinki. Art of Fighting. Bag Raiders. Barrage. Belles Will Ring. Big Heavy Stuff. Bird Automatic. Birth Glow. Bluejuice. Bluebottle Kiss. Brave Radar. Bridezilla. Broken Chip. City City City. City of Satellites. Cleptoclectics. Clubfeet. Coda. Cut Copy. Damn Arms. Dappled Cities. Darren Hanlon. Decoder Ring. Denim Owl. Dick Diver. Dragging Pianos. Drama For Yamaha. El Mopa. Expatriate. Faux Pas. Fdel. Firekites. Gaslight Radio. Gerling. Grand Salvo. Great Earthquake. Greyhound Lane. Guy Blackman. Harmonic 313. Hermitude. Holidays On Ice. Horrorshow. I Heart Hiroshima. ii. Jack Ladder. Jane Woody & Angel Eyes. Jessica Says. Jonathan Boulet. Julian Nation. Kid Sam. Laura Jean. Ladyhawke. Lisa Mitchell. Little Red. Lost Valentinos. Love Connection. Love of Diagrams. Luluc. Machine Translations. Martin Craft. Midnight Juggernauts. Minimum Chips. Mountains In The Sky. Namatoke. New Buffalo. Nick Cave. Nick Huggins. Ninetynine. Oh Mercy. Parades. Pikelet. Pivot. Pnau. Pretty Boy Crossover. Princess 1.5. Prop. Red Riders. Qua. Richard Easton. Richard In Your Mind. Robert Luke. Royal Chord. Sailmaker. Sarah Blasko. Seekae. School of Two. Shady Lane. Sherlock’s Daughter. Sly Hats. Sodastream. Songs. Sounds Like Sunset. Sui Zhen. Tame Impala. Tarcutta. Telafonica. Telemetry Orchestra. The Avalanches. The Church. The Crayon Fields. The Desks. The Devastations. The Go-Betweens. Thehead. The Lucksmiths. The Middle East. The Model School. The Motifs. The Presets. The Rectifiers. The Twerps. The Woods Themselves. Tim Koch. Tobias Cummings. Touch Typist. Tucker Bs. Unkle Ho. You Am I. Underlapper. Urthboy. Washington. Williams Break. Wolf And Cub. Youthgroup.

Red Riders acoustic-ish on FBi this Sunday

Photo by Will Reichelt, willreichelt.com

One of my favourite favourite things this year has to be the XS-sized gig that Red Riders did for FBi last month. It took place in the Acca Dacca Room at Troy Horse Studios, to a roll call of 30 competition winners (and people who shamelessly snuck in, like me).

It was acoustic-ish ("ish" meaning there was still a bit of amp fuzz to rough up all the strums and percussive patter), and it was awesome to hear the band's songs retranslated this way. My Love Is Stronger Than Your Love, when triple-distilled into the quietest of sounds, actually makes you stop a little.

The epic highlight for me was finally hearing The Siren Sings live – it is my above-all favourite from latest album Drown In Colour and it'd never been performed outside of a studio before. There's something about spark and energy of a track suddenly coming to life that really is magic.


Photo by Will Reichelt, willreichelt.com

You can hear this all, finally, on the radio this coming Sunday, 2pm, as part of FBi's Live Feed (hopefully with some of the zingy inter-band banter intact, they are very entertaining guys).

P.S. These pics were taken from Will's blog and I find this comment someone left under the photos hilarious:
Is alex sure his mum didn’t make sweet love to bob dylan?
my god, he’s getting more handsome all the time :)

Another FBI fundraising compilation …

This time, it's the Live Feed album. Not entirely Australian, but all tracks were especially recorded for the station and unavailable elsewhere (and, therefore music-nerd-perfect). Every penny you spend on it helps support FBi. Click here to see which bands made the record sleeve.

Halloween-ish special

On Sun Nov 1, the night after Halloween, Local Fidelity is going to revisit the ghosts of the past and play two hours of great Australian bands that are sadly no longer kicking around. Some of them will be fresh casualties - Young & Restless, The Lucksmiths, Gameboy/Gamegirl, Damn Arms are some of the bands that called it quits this year - while others, such as Sandpit, would have departed a long while ago.

If you have any suggestions for favourite Australian bands that are now just bone-dust, please leave them in the comments & hopefully I can revive them briefly, on-air, on Sun Nov 1, 7pm-9pm AEST on FBI 94.5FM or www.fbiradio.com.

Voltaire Twins, Perth

Current band rollcall?
Current band rollcall (and what instruments/roles you play)?
Tegan Voltaire - synths and vocals
Jaymes Voltaire - synths and vocals
Jye Satti - live drums

Voltaire Twins has been around since …
Saturday morning mini synth jams suddenly got serious. Somewhere along the line, we became a band.

Let's play Six Degrees of Six Degrees of Voltaire Twins. What are some interesting musical links you could come up with?
Tegan once accidentally met the band The Eagles, but didn't realise it when she worked in a coffee trailer many many years ago.

First song ever written?
We wrote a song called Burn about brothers and sisters. We ditched it years ago, but we've recycled bits of it into a few different songs now.

Music making for you began when …
Primary school recorder was our first foray into music. After that, Jaymes played Trombone in the School band and Tegan sang in the school choir. We got a piano in year ten and learnt the keys.

Most unusual sound/instrument you've used in your music?
In primary school Jaymes once made an instrument out of a hose and a funnel and some other garden instruments. Tegan made a guitar with a shoebox and elastic bands. Jaymes did a remix that had this weird sound in it that sounded like a duck quacking backwards in a hallway.

Strangest gig you've ever played?
We once performed a Valentine's Day show dressed as Marie Antoinette and Louis the 14th. Wigs and everything.

Do you pin up images when recording to help inspire your songs? (Or put up other things in the studio for the same effect?)
We're actually in the studio recording as we write this. There is a big photo of Russell Crowe in the toilet. Ponder THAT.

Unlikeliest thing to influence your music?
Billy Ray Cyrus.

Most unconventional topic you've covered in your lyrics?
In the early days we had a song about a postman - but it was the centre of much contention, so we dropped it.

If you had to offer any of your lyrics as love advice (or life advice), you would offer ...
Fight then leave, never say please.

Most useful lyrics you've heard in a song?
Sing your life.

Do you think the country/city/town you live in affects your music in any way?
Perth's small - there aren't that many venues and big events going on all year round, so I think you do have to be a bit more creative and make things happen yourself, sometimes.

You would love to record with …
David Byrne, Giorgio Moroder, Arthur Russell

Favourite person you have performed with/recorded with …
Jerry Bouthier did a JBAG remix of our song D.I.L, which was really amazing.

Outside of Voltaire Twins, you spend your time …
Tegan: Mainly playing SNES, DS, making dress-up costumes, eating cheese Twisties in bed.
Jaymes: eBaying, DS, DJing, dressing up as various animals.

Next for you is …
A trip to Melbourne and glamorous Sydney just before Christmas!



Voltaire Twins were one of the many amazing bands who contributed to the Local Fidelity compilation fundraising CD earlier this year. The band has since released its first single, D.I.L., a punchy, whipsmart electro number which comes with some very fine remixes, such as the aforementioned JBAG makeover and the awesomely named Boy-Crazy Stacey mix. To find out more, head to the Voltaire Twins MySpace.

Jonathan Boulet, Sydney

Current band rollcall?
Jono Boulet - Guitars/vocals
Ravi Gupta - Guitar/vocals
Rebecca Shave - Keys/vocals/percussion
Dave Rogers - Bass/vocals
Tim Watkins - Drums
You - handclaps/vocals

Jonathan Boulet has been (musically) around since …
Always been writing music, put first album together a couple years back just after high school was done. It was just a collection of songs I recorded over the years.

Let's play Six Degrees of Jonathan Boulet. What are some interesting musical links you could come up with?
The guitarist from my other band (Parades), his hairdresser is the the ex-girlfriend of one of the guys from the band Cult of Luna.

First song ever written?
I used to do a bunch of electronic stuff, and I've got hundreds of four-bar loops that I made with my keyboard during high school. But the first one I ever released to the public would be a song called Storm's A-Comin'. That was the first track I recorded properly, the first time I got some good microphones and an audio interface.

Music making for you began when …
When we started our first band with the guys from Parades, we were in a punk/hardcore band. All we ever wanted was to be known as the wildest, craziest band around. So the aim at every show was just go as nuts as our bodies would allow.

Most unusual sound/instrument you've used in your music?
Cupboards, doors, coconuts, cars driving by. I sampled a British cousin saying 'wicked' once just 'cos I really liked his accent.

Strangest gig you've ever played?
No strange gigs yet. Mainly because I haven't played any as yet. But I'm sure I'll have some kind of answer once I'm done with Tame Impala …

Do you pin up images when recording to help inspire your songs? (Or put up other things in the studio for the same effect?)
Not really. Sometimes it's fun having lava lamps and such. We've had this crazy star projection thing before, though. You turn all the lights off so it's totally dark, then when you turn this thing on, it projects thousands of stars onto the roof and walls. It's really crazy 'cos they're moving really slowly … but it doesn't help because you're too busy being blown away that you can't get anything done.

Unlikeliest thing to influence your music?
Punk/hardcore music. I can't really cite specific songs or parts where the influence show through, but I know it's there. There's alot of great ideas and vibes in that style of music and it's always good to be open to anything.

Most unconventional topic you've covered in your lyrics?
That's a hard one because, for most of my lyrics, I'm not even sure what they are addressing.

If you had to offer any of your lyrics as love advice (or life advice), you would offer …
Nil.

Most useful lyrics you've heard in a song?
"In the wake of our existence, in our parades and in our dances; touch, see and behold the wisdom of the party program. Essential in our lifetime and irresistible in our touch, the great spirits proclaim that capitalism is indeed organised crime and we're all the victims. This next one is called Refused Party Program."

Do you think the country/city/town you live in affects your music in any way?
Yeah, for sure. The environment you're in, in general. I'm getting really sick of this garage and I think it affects the way I write music. Like I can't get inspired to write fresh sounds when I'm in a place that I know so well. So when it comes to writing the next record, I'm definitely going to do it in another room.

You would love to record with ...
A massive crowd. Like, hundreds of people recording the vocals at the same time. That would be epic.

Favourite person you have performed with/recorded with …
Seekae, Megastick Fanfare, Ghoul, Bearhug and Sherlock's Daughter. All super-promising bands on the up and up.

Outside of your solo music, you spend your time …
Skating, writing music, Parades, Snake Face, trying to be artistic.

Next for you is ...
This Tame Impala tour, followed by some intimate Sydney shows, and the official release of the record.

If record stores had to come up with a new genre name to file your music under, it would be called ... (feel free to come up with the craziest-sounding-yet-most-accurate name)
"This music is OK."



A CD burn wrapped in an old journal called Modern Medical Counsellor was my introduction to Jonathan Boulet. Then 19 years old, he’d dropped off a demo at FBI’s Music Open Day late last year. It was sealed together with masky tape and had a computer-printed set list. After All was the first song I totally fell for and I loved it even more when I later discovered the shuffly percussion came from him jumbling cabinet drawers open and shut. Continue Calling, with its Animal Collective-esque pop-racuousness, was the single we played on FBI.

Earlier this year, his music got picked up by a New York label, Evident; made the run of coolsy music blogs, and Community Service Announcement became wonderfully unavoidable. A great great song that was part of the new self-titled album, repackaged with additional songs from that first demo. I asked him to come onto Local Fidelity for a chat and song and he brought an army of people, a kick drum and great stories to tell. (The coconuts referred to in one of the answers above are actually from a coconut bikini that his grandad wore at a Hawaiian-themed party. Perfect.) I’ve never seen so many people packed in the FBI studio, and they all hollered along beautifully to Continue Calling, it was a test-tube version of the live performance that he wanted to do on a real stage. And now, after shunning venues for so long – exiling himself so he could experiment with how to recreate his inviting music live (and I mean literally ‘inviting’, because he wants your voice to meld in the noise coming through the amps), Jonathan Boulet is finally doing a run of shows and what a start: supports with The Middle East and Dragging Pianos, Tame Impala and El Perro Del Mar. I cannot tell you how excited I am.


Head to his MySpace for all the essentials. You'll want to keep track.