“We auditioned Barney two weeks later, ‘cos Matt and I were off to the States to do a couple of shows. So we’ve just gone from there, and we wrote a bunch of songs, and really honed our sound down.”
That sound has been beautifully captured on their brand new EP, Sex City Lovers, which was produced by production wunderkind Forrester Savell and contains six dark, but ultra-catchy electronic rock tunes that slowly but surely get under the skin of the listener. Jimi and the band couldn’t be happier with the results of their combined efforts.
“Yeah man, we’re pretty stoked with how it’s come out,” he enthuses, “when we wrote all our songs, we demo’d them all, and he (Savell) was our first pick. We loved his work with Birds Of Tokyo and Dead Letter Circus. So yeah, we were stoked; he just came straight back and said ‘I love your tracks’, so we were really happy.
“Exit The System, the opening track on the EP, in Forrester’s words he said it was a ‘hit’,” he continues with a laugh, “so that was really reassuring for us. We basically left it up to him to choose from a batch of songs, as to what was going to be on there.
“He was pretty influential on the sound of the whole EP, and the whole cohesive feel to it. So all the songs matched up, but in saying that, being diverse enough that you’re not going to get bored.”
The band have kicked off a tour in support of the album, and it pulls into M-Town next Wednesday June 15at The Empress Hotel. Jimi and the band are very much looking forward to returning to Melbourne and described their live set for the uninitiated: “Basically we bring a shitload of raw energy to the table,” he describes, “it’s basically what you hear on the EP, but times about a hundred. It’s a massive cavalcade of sound, and a lot of the electronic stuff that you hear on the EP, we’ve actually sampled that. So we try and replicate things as much as possible in the live sense but obviously, again, with a heap more live energy.”
Beyond the current tour, the band have major plans for themselves moving into the medium-to-longer term future, including a follow up recording, a possible relocation and even some international goals.
“We have a bunch of new songs that are really exciting,” he explains, “we’re looking to record a new EP, probably at the start of 2012 we’ll record a new EP, and just keep evolving our sound, and keep driving it forward. Always trying to do something that’s different to what’s on the Australian music landscape… another goal is to get out of Brisbane!
“We want to move to a more rich musical environment. We’re looking at Melbourne, but we’ll just see how things pan out. We’re looking at doing some stuff in America as well.”
