The First Record I Bought:
Recurring Dream: The Very Best of Crowded House. I was nine and Neil’s positive lyrics and smooth melodies really appealed.
The Last Record I Bought:
Anna Meredith’s Varmints. Nautilus blew my mind so couldn’t wait to get my ears around this record. Some crazy and powerful music.
The First Thing I Recorded:
I had a band called Billy Jean Demos. I recorded the drum loops out of a multi FX guitar pedal and chopped them up to make rock beats, then plugged guitar straight into the mini-jack input on the old home PC. I eventually got a drum kit but it didn’t have a kick pedal so I’d just whack it with a shoe.
The Last Thing I Recorded:
Oly, Nick and I went to a house on the NSW South Coast for ten days and recorded Portraits of People Places and Movies. I had written the shells of songs so we borrowed a bunch of studio gear and instruments from friends and made it happen. Since then we’ve gotten Wade Keighran (The Scare, Wolf and Cub) in on bass and Joe Driver (Belles Will Ring) on drums for the live show and they definitely bring a lot to the table.
The Record That Changed My Life:
There’s a few, but the two biggest would probably be Talking Heads’ Remain In Light and Rowland S. Howard’s Pop Crimes. I saw Rowland’s last Sydney show and it really made me re-address what I wanted to do and write. Remain In Light introduced me to Brian Eno and a whole world of production techniques which we’ve used on this record.
