“The mission was the album,” he says of last year’s self-titled debut. “The reason the project came together was because of that one thing. Over a period of time, more and more members joined with the goal of completing the record and just that. When we initially started writing it, there was only the three of us from Scary Mother, then once we got to the stage we had a few more people onboard, we felt we could have a go at actually recording the album. That’s when we invited Lucius [Borich, drums] and Lucius suggested Jon [Stockman, bass]. Lucius and I had already played around putting down the groundwork for that record years ago when he was still in Cog but time was a big problem back then. When the album started approaching the finishing date, Lucius had more time and him and Jon came onboard.”
Currently comprising three former Scary Mother members – Gillespie as well as Antony Brown on guitar and Tobias Messiter on keyboards – the addition of ex-Cog drummer Borich and Karnivool bassist Stockman pretty soon saw tags like ‘supergroup’ getting thrown around, according to the singer. Considering the title to be somewhat pompous at best, Gillespie says it’s the last thing the band considers itself to be.
“Look, we didn’t even know how the album was going to work out in the end, let alone think about forming some kind of super-group,” the singer laughs. “The album turned out a lot better than anyone thought it would, simply because of the genius of Forrester Savell. He put in a lot of hard work to make the songs sound like they were made all at once from beginning to the end, like they were coming from the same place – when in fact it had been the opposite! In reality, the songs had all been recorded in bits and pieces all over the place, across so many different environments and using so much different equipment and stuff. Thanks to him, it all actually ended up sounding like it gelled together quite well. The fact that the album was also received pretty well in the press was nice but getting it done and finished was the biggest relief. The record had been in the making for some years and because of that it was also hard to actually climatise to the fact that you couldn’t change or tweak anything anymore, it was done, we had to let go of it, it was over.”
Except it wasn’t really… Well, not as far as a follow up was concerned, that is. As Gillespie puts it, Floating Me’s debut album may have been the original reason the band got together but it isn’t likely to just end there, thankfully.
“I’m really excited about the fact that we now have a band that actually feels like a band because we are not just writing and recording, we’re actually getting out there and playing gigs too. The live element has certainly made it feel a lot more official and real. We’ve been really looking forward to writing more new material. What we were interesting in finding out the most with this album was how all of our experiences in songwriting in the past would sound once we put our heads together. We’ve all got backgrounds in bands and everybody in Floating Me is a songwriter in their own right. I’m really hoping that we get a quick plan happening both in terms of writing and playing more live shows. It’s definitely time for us to recharge and get stuck into new material, for sure.”
According to Gillespie, the band is especially very much open to gigs in 2012. Kicking things off with the upcoming Rock The Bay Festival at The Espy, the singer says he’s particularly looking forward to catching up with former touring mates Dead Letter Circus.
“Last year was quite a prize for us because everything was a first-time experience for us as Floating Me,” he recalls. “We were very lucky to get onto some really great support slots in the process, like with Shihad and Dead Letter Circus. So far it’s been a pretty quiet start to the year because we haven’t really played any shows in the lead up to Rock The Bay, except for a New Year’s Eve show we did in Sydney. As far as the shows go, this is all we can see on the immediate horizon but I’m sure a lot of things will pop up very soon, which is another reason to just use this time as much as possible to put bits and pieces of writing together.”
BY BIRDIE
