Hey. Who are we speaking with and what’s your role in Kalacoma?
I’m Alan, I play keys and operate a crazy mothership of buttons and knobs. It’s all very confusing.
Your live performances are said to be incredibly innovative. Tell us about your onstage sonic manipulations.
Basically our rig revolves around a setup of live looping a mixture of drums and electronic beats, which then runs through a bunch of effects, which we can mess with in real time on the fly. All this happens free of a backing track or a tempo set by a computer so everything you hear is built in real time and is incorporated into the composition of the track. This also makes it super fun to jam because we often create rhythms which are strange and unexpected, and every time we play things are a little bit different which keeps it interesting for us and the audience.
Your sound almost seems contradictory to itself – it’s where experimental trip hop meets a vintage tone, where electronica meets acoustic. How does your unique sound complement your original performance style?
Our main aim is to marry contrasting elements into something that feels cohesive. Even though some of that stuff you mentioned sounds pretty disparate, the way that they work together is actually really great. Because our tastes are pretty eclectic too we like to take different palettes from different places and glue them together. In the words of Dave Chappelle playing Rick James on Chappelle’s Show: “Unity!”
Can you name for us some of your greatest influences?
Well I guess on a bigger scale, Radiohead and Portishead have always played a pretty influential role – yeah, on us and a million other bands. I could reel off a heap of different acts, but acts like James Blake, Battles and Grizzly Bear are pretty up there. We also listen to heaps of boom bap and beats stuff like Flying Lotus, Shlohmo, Lapalux, J Dilla, Madlib et al. They’ve got such a sick tonal element that we love. Also local dudes like Hiatus Kaiyote, I’lls, Rat & Co and some of the cats on Good Manners and Solitaire are real awesome too. But hey, you could go on forever.
What’s on the cards for Kalacoma in 2016?
We’re kicking off 2016 with a residency every Wednesday in February at the Evelyn, which is pretty much our second home. We’re also putting some finishing touches on our latest EP, which we’re super excited to drop. We’ll definitely be playing things off that and trying some new material for these shows too. We might also be leaving our shores for a bit at some point.
