Things move quickly for I'lls', scoring a Parklife spot after just one gig, and their first EP
Thread is already attracting some serious attention.
Thread is a rushed but impressive taster of I'lls' raw ability, packed with rich, atmospheric sounds that drift seamlessly from melancholy to hopeful anticipation.
Yesterday we caught up with Dan and Hamish, two-thirds of one of the most grammatically confusing bands in electronica today. Maybe it was the lazy Sunday afternoon sun or the beers collecting on the table, but during our chat the boys happily strayed from the interview questions, forking off into tangents from Beethoven to the Spice Girls. Here are some places we ended up.
On getting Parklife after one gig:
H: So the guy rang me up at work [from Rats] and I thought he said he was from RACV. So I was like, 'yeah man, I'll speak to you later' and hung up. Then I got a message on my phone saying, 'did you want to play Parklife?' It's kind of that story of right place, right time, mixed with a bit of ignorance on my part.
On being compared to Radiohead's Kid A:
H: I disagree. I think it's got limited
Kid A.
D: The only track I think is particularly Radiohead is 'Take Higher Ground'.
H: And even that's more
King of Limbs. Getting compared to Radiohead is great but you don't want to be known as that band that wants to be like Radiohead. You need to avoid that stigma at all costs I think.
On the shift from jazz backgrounds into electronica:
D: I heard a really interesting interview with Gil Scott Heron, where he was saying jazz for him is just dance music - that was the dance music back then and this is dance now. This is jazz now. Jazz is happening, but it peaked a long time ago.
H: It's a dead art.
D: It's not dead.
H: Everyone in Melbourne's playing straight, man. Swing is fucking dead.
D: Swing is dead. Jazz is a huge genre. Jazz is almost done. The best are done. To answer your question, this is what's happening now.
H: I get an incredible emotive response out of playing electronica. It's so on the brink. That's what's great about electronica. You're doing things that haven't been done and exploring things - that's really exciting.
On 'art music':
H: Art music means something that's not... Spice Girls.
D: That's not fair. Spice Girls are great.
H: Art music is everything from Igor Stravinsky to Bob Dylan. Its music that actually gives a fuck and it's not just about getting famous and making money, it's about saying something. It's honest.
On 'soundscape':
D: I love soundscape, I'm completely into that stuff at the moment. Sigur Ros kind of started me on that. It's nostalgic, chilled music. Sigur Ros do it the best because they're just epic, it's pretty emotive as well.
H: Soundscape is like program music. Program music is Beethoven writing about oceans and stuff, it has an image in mind. I think that's what soundscape is all about, It actually attracts a visual as well as being emotive.
On songwriting:
H: When I synthesise a sound from scratch, it's something really personal, to be honest. It's a weird relationship you get in electronica to the sound. For example, 'Take Higher Ground': we were all frustrated and annoyed. We were down at my beach house and we thought we could record an EP in two days.
D: Ignorance.
H: It's just songwriting, it's random. You can't not bring the outside into your music. The lyrics on the EP all are saying something, as well as the song titles. There's not a piece of music on there that isn't talking about something, whether it's going on in our lives or bigger things, like death. Or someone cutting you off in a car park. Or like 'When I Know'. Me and Simon [vocalist] are both dropouts or deferred uni students, and we were having this conversation about our parents being ashamed of us and feeling like we're not achieving anything. And we started talking about when we're gonna be happy, and when we die knowing our lives meant something.
D: This is why Hamish and Simon can't hang out only by themselves.
On gear-paranoia in electronica:
H: I just don't understand those musicians who won't share.
D: Boards of Canada kind of do it. I was looking up what kind of gear they use and they don't tell anyone. When you go to a gig, a lot of it is enjoying music, but a lot of it is 'what is he doing? What gear is that? 'Who did that noise?' A lot of people use laptops now so you can't see what programs they're using.
H: The best thing to do is just to ask people, because they're musicians. The likelihood is they love doing two things: playing music and talking about music.
D: There's no point in keeping it to yourself, you're halting the progression of music.
H: Don't be that guy who denies knowledge.
On electronica in Australia:
H: We won';t just be big in Australia because there’s no market here! So we've either got to invent a market that's not existent here, or obviously [go to] England and New York where there's a contemporary popular music scene.
D: There's no audience for it. It's not that it's non-existent, there are people here that like it. But compared to America where there's like 100,000 people who like it, there's like 10,000 people who like it here in the whole of Australia. It's a population issue. We don't have enough people to sustain more things. We can only sustain pop culture really.
H: Whereas in America and Europe you can tour to your heart's content. And if you're kind of big you've got a packed house every night, you're on the road for four months.
D: It's harder here, but then again maybe we stand apart here. Then we go over there and we don't stand apart because there are a whole bunch of bands that are really good as well.
H: But isn't that exciting? It's a different problem. I'd rather be over there doing the hard slog, it's just gonna make me work harder.
On what's next:
H: We're always writing. I think what's up next is waiting to decide is up next.
D: It will be more about defining us.
H: I think what you're gonna get is I'lls', you're not gonna get...
D: Radiohead.
Their EP
Thread is available now at
illsmusic.bandcamp.com.
Words: Tacey Rychter