If you haven’t heard Spoonbill’s music before, Moynihan will do his best to explain it with his mouth. “I make lot of weird noise like ‘beummmmsputberrrrbagup’ – people think you’re accentuating when you make those sounds but that is how Spoonbill actually sounds,” laughs an upbeat Moynihan.
Moynihan comes from an intensely artistic family with music and art always being in his life. As a student, Moynihan topped his year in Industrial Design at RMIT but has never really followed that profession any further then the occasional design of a lamp or a house (we’ll get to the house design later).
Making challenging and intense music has always been Moynihan’s passion and he has become somewhat of an icon in the outdoor rave arena, having played Burning Man twice and countless outdoor festivals. Moynihan discusses this unintended success.
“When I first released my first album in 2005, basically I was playing pubs and clubs coming from the live music scene so it was quite a different atmosphere to the underground doof sound but I just picked up and ran with and then I started getting booked for all these underground festivals.
“Initially I was like, ‘What the hell is this scene?’ but you know, it has been brilliant. I haven’t looked back. What I really like about it is that it is quite unpretentious, quite uncommercial – anything goes,” states Moynihan, a childlike sparkle in his eyes belying the fact he is in his early thirties.
The ‘raviest’ track from his new EP is the suitably entitled Big Dipper. This song travels the full vicissitude of Spoonbill’s incredibly intense and varied sound, additionally a hallmark of this song and the theme of the entire EP is the quirky voice manipulation. Moynihan sets out how he achieves this seeming manipulation of the very human process of speech.
“Big Dipper makes people go nuts when they hear it live – it is really bassy. The main feature of this song and thread that runs the entire way through album is the voice-like sounds that erupt throughout the track.”
Moynihan now tells how this common thread of voicelike sounds led to the title of the EP. “The reason I called it Boca Fiesta is that it means Mouth Party in Spanish and every track has a lot of voice manipulation and talky synths. They’re not vocoded but filtered synths – modulated in the same sort of frequencies that we create with our own voices.”
The most un-Spoonbill sounding song on the EP is the hip hop driven Stacking The Feedback. The source of its new sound is that it was collaboration between Spoonbill and US musician Vibe Squad.
“It totally has a hip hop feel that makes you think of lowered cars, that gangsta feel and that came from working with Vibe Squad. He came over here a couple of years ago and we recorded that. It only took one day and I think it was so quick because we both have the same set up on Q-Base and use a Moog and a Virus, so it was really easy.” Moynihan goes further into the synergy. “So we felt at home driving the system – It’s a really successful fusion between what I do with hip hop edge. I have been influenced by hip hop but more trip hop so it was interesting work with him and produce such a different track for Spoonbill.”
Not one to shy away from a challenge, Moynihan is in the middle of building his own house and studio in the hills surrounding King Lake. With his industrial design background he actually designed the house himself, as he explains industrial design and architecture are very similar.
“I designed the house myself because as you know I studied industrial design. Industrial design and architecture are very similar; industrial design is just designing generally smaller objects but it is all the same fundamentally. It was pretty easy fitting that mould,” says Moynihan. However, the jewel in the crown of his architectural manifestation is, fittingly, his recording studio that is being built separate to the house.
“I have designed a big wave studio that is on actual tree trunks that were felled from the property. It is separate from the main house. The wave design optimises production because you sitting in the lower end with the speakers and that’s what you want with the kind of trapezoidal shape – so you don’t want parallel walls so there’s no acute angles and with the shape of the roof you won’t get any peaks or troughs,’ state the hyper-informed Moynihan.
Lastly, Moynihan enthusiastically plugs his double headline show with friend and studio mate Opiuo.
“Both Opiuo and I are performing as full live bands with performers and a new light show. I have an acrobalance duo coming on stage for Pirate Squid Bot and a new video show. It is going to be awesome!”
BY DAN WATT
