The banner under which they have revelled is Strawberry Fields, a festival that is not bound by a musical genre, as its festival organisers seek to challenge and excite by booking both established and emerging artists.
Experimental hip hop collective 30/70 have played the festival each year since their inception five years ago and the group’s bass player Henry Hicks (AKAHoratio Luna), says the act’s development seems to have mirrored the organic aura of the festival.
“At first it was an instrumental hip hop band, actually in 2014 we released a nine-track EP under 30/70 that was purely instrumental. I think it’s still available on Bandcamp?”
You may be wondering why Hicks believes the instrumental EP is a revelation for followers of the act and the query is cleared up in the next six words, “That was before Allysha came along”.
Hicks is referring to 30/70’s supremely talented vocalist Allysha Joy, whose soulful vocal rhythms and rhymes act as another instrument across 30/70’s 2015 debut album Cold Radish Coma as well as 2017’s acclaimed album Elevate, and its 2018 sister EP, Elevations.
“Prior to Allysha joining the band our idea was to reinterpret the music of Madlib and J Dilla but in more of a jazz quartet context, drawing on ideas of minimalism and moving away from the ideas of improvised solos and things,” explains Hicks.
Yet when Joy joined the band, a musical osmosis occurred that fused the outfit tight and took them down a different path. “When Allysha came in, it was just an instant lock … she already had all those concepts of rhythm that most vocalists don’t have. So that’s when it really all started for the 30/70 we know today and led to us recording the Cold Radish Coma EP.”
30/70, as a band name, carries many meanings, one of which comes down to some trickery. “Me and Ziggy [Zeitgeist, drummer/samples] and Tom [Mansfield, guitar] started 30/70 in Northcote, we got the name of the band from the postcode but also because we figured we that we would get better exposure because numbers always go to the top of all the posters. It’s a music nerdy thing as well because the timing 30/70 is a jilted triplet – it is sort of our interpretation of swing.”
“So it was a trio, then Jarrod [Chase, keyboard] came along and that was the instrumental hip hop group that released the [first] EP then Allysha came along and that’s the 30/70 we know today.”
Hicks then clarifies why the band might be referred to as a five-piece on occasion, when they in fact have six members.
“Josh [Kelly] came along a bit later,” Hicks explains. “After we had established the core four of us we decided that we were going to be a collective and that way we could learn from all of our friends and have all these different [genre] groups streamlined by the core four, but then all of a sudden the band had 11 members and it was a logistical nightmare so we scaled it back and we were left with Josh on saxophone.”
With this expansion then contraction it would be possible to infer that the 30/70 performing at this year’s Strawberry Fields will be a well-honed musical beast.
Hicks elaborates on this proposition. “I’ll tell you what you can expect from a 30/70 show at Strawberry Fields – some of the most gangsta jazz-infused hip hop, house, bruk (sic) music coming out of Melbourne, original soul crew. That’s what you can expect.”
