The story starts at Fort Street High School, whose musical pedigree includes Josh Pyke, Unkle Ho (The Herd) and Joelistics (TZU) among others. Both Solo and Adit were heavily involved in bands, ranging from Jazz through to Rock and along with fellow school mates Spit Syndicate, they got turned on to Hip-Hop around 2000 when it was making big strides in Australia.
Horrorshow have been riding a wave of activity since their second album, Inside Story, came out in October last year. It’s a pretty impressive achievement for the Sydney group of Adit on production and Solo on vocals who are still in their early twenties.’
The story starts at Fort Street High School, whose musical pedigree includes Josh Pyke, Unkle Ho (The Herd) and Joelistics (TZU) among others. Both Solo and Adit were heavily involved in bands, ranging from Jazz through to Rock and along with fellow school mates Spit Syndicate, they got turned on to Hip-Hop around 2000 when it was making big strides in Australia.
In 2007, at 19 years of age, they started focusing on collecting tracks for an album. They were noticed by respected Australian label Elefant Traks the following year and The Grey Space was released in mid 2008. Since then they have been working hard to build up a good fan base in Australia.
After a successful national tour supporting Muph & Plutonic they released their new album Inside Story in October last year.
“It has been a pretty big period for us,” says Solo. “We did a tour with Muph & Plutonic before we released our most recent album. We were actually recording the album whilst we were doing that tour. Since the album dropped it hasn’t stopped!”
But all of that activity is a good thing and Horrorshow have done some headline tours of their own this year. “The two national tours of our own helped us connect with fans all over the country and brought new people on board. It has been cool.”
For Horrorshow, the importance of being part of the Elefant Traks crew is huge and their role as mentors has imparted much needed knowledge: “It’s awesome man. These are people who live around a similar area of Sydney and when we were younger we were always going to see Urthboy & Hilltop Hoods gigs. There is a good little team there. They do a really good job of looking after us.” Solo pauses and then continues, “They have been around for over 10 years and building it incrementally. They have experience under belt that we would never think of and they taught us a lot about putting on a tour and getting a record made.”
“In our early teenage years we were exposed to Hip-Hop and graffiti. There has always been this tradition around my area and particularly at my school there were people who were MCing and Djing. I guess we inherited that and ran with it.”
That sharing culture is central to hip hop in Solo’s opinion: “I think it’s really important in Hip-Hop. There’s a whole element of knowledge and things you are supposed to learn about why people do it that is handed down.”
Horrorshow toured Europe for the first time earlier this year. It happened through a combination of luck, hard work and accidental coincidences: “Urthboy went on his own tour playing festivals and club shows. Adit already had a ticket and I just thought it was too good an opportunity to pass up on. Through some contacts over there we ended up organising more shows. Then we were playing a festival in Darwin with Hilltop Hoods and they suggested that we get on board with some of their gigs.”
“It was a lot of luck, planning and emailing people!” laughs Solo.
Horrorshow played in London with the Hilltop Hoods and with Urthboy in Munich: “Munich was different – it was cool. We did a smaller gig on a Wednesday night and opened for him. I always love to play with Urthboy.”
It was a return to their days of building things in Australia: “There were lots of passionate German kids but it was very much ‘back to basics’ for us after headlining in Australia.”
Flicking back to the present, Horrorshow have brought that work ethic back home with them: “We just have to keep working hard and playing lots of shows!”
Horrorshow play Pyramid Rock Festival feat. N*E*R*D, Chromeo, Arrested Development and many more at Philip Island from Wednesday December 29 To Saturday January 1.
