The singer was taking time off from rehearsals in their room in Stratford in Brisbane. It’s an exciting time for The Butterfly Effect. While they’re looking forward tossing ideas around for their next album (“we’ve got about 17 songs, we hope to have about 20 to 22 by the time we go into the studio in January”) they’re also about to celebrate their tenth anniversary with a tour. They’re planning to pull out some of the older gems which they haven’t done onstage for years. On their last tour, TBE did a piano/vocal version of Beautiful Mine which went down a storm. Boge doesn’t think that will necessarily be revived. But he’s pushing for an acoustic rendition of their 2005 single Phoenix.
Formed in 1999 – guitarist Kurt Goedhart and bassist Glenn Esmond went to high school together – TBE brought in drummer Ben Hall. Triple j picked up on them early, but TBE’s fierce live shows were (along with Boge’s alienated lyrics) behind their rapid rise. As they barked on ‘Landslide’: “The paths we choose/ The chance to change/ We turn our backs against the waves/ And if we seek/ Hope to find/ Someone out there, somewhere left behind”.
Boge recalls, “No one else in Australia was doing that music in those days. We took elements of The Deftones and Incubus but we made it our own. We were at the front queue of that movement of new Australian bands that included Cog and Karnivool, and to a certain extent, the Gyros.”
TBE shows were so intense that Boag would meditate before the shows to focus on the energy to be unleashed. Onstage it could become bloodbath. “I’ve torn my calf muscles jumping around. Being on the head by a guitar is always an occupational hazard for a singer. The boys have all been electrocuted. Benny’s had bits of stick flying into his face, having a shard of wood stuck in your eyeball, now that’s a hard one. He’s smashed his hand on the rim of his snare, there was blood and stuff everywhere!”
So TBE adopted AC/DC’s approach – if you want blood, you got it! “Totally, I’ve always loved the way we present ourselves live. In the early days we went as hard as we could while playing as proficiently as we could. Through the years we’ve mellowed in that we want to play as best as we can. Especially after Imago, we realized that 80 per cent of the audience wasn’t moshing but sitting or standing watching us. Besides, Cog and Karnivool, those guys don’t move, onstage yet their shows are so intense. We didn’t get that until 2006.”
For their next album, TBE are learning the lessons from their last album Final Conversation Of Kings from 2008. It was much lauded for its experimentalism, but Boge says only five tracks work for him now. They were tired from tireless touring, they weren’t communicating in the studio, and they went in before the songs were ready. Before the sessions, Goedhart insisted no piano be used. They’d also tried out a vocal ensemble for one track. “They stunk, we paid them their $50 each and got them out of the studio.”
This time around, Boge says, the vibes are good and they’re focused on what to do. Last time around there were a lot of ‘fuck-you’s’ thrown around the room, but we got through that!”
