“In the beginning it was just me and my brother,” he says, reflecting on how this ten-piece act was cobbled together. “He’s the producer and I’m the sax player, and we’d made a few songs through the computer, really dubby stuff. We got a few more horns in over the first year, got a flute player a year later, and then a year or so after that the robbery happened and then the rhythm section started rolling along. It’s funny, a lot of bands who start out wanting to be a ten-piece are like, ‘OK, we’re going to need this, this, and this instrument.’ Whereas it was just two of us fooling around and it all started to snowball. You’d meet someone who’d be really into you, so you’d just say, ‘Well, come along.’ So over three years we somehow went from two to ten. It was totally unplanned.”
That robbery may well be recalled as the defining moment in The Vibraphonic Orkestra’s life. Having come within a whisker of releasing their EP, thieves ransacked the studio where the record was coming together and the fledgling band were left with empty hands and troubled hearts.
“The band has been through a lot of metamorphosis, really. It’s a bit of a saga. We had a four-track EP recorded, and our studio got rolled one night and all the files got pinched from the hard drive. The release was ready to go, we were booking everything and we had to go back to square one. It’s taken a bit of time to recover, and we’ve changed. We used to be an electronic act with horns, and now it’s a full live set-up. We had a gig ten days after all the shit got pinched, so not enough time to rebuild all the tracks. We thought, ‘Fuck, well we’d better get a drummer so we can still do the gig,’ and it just gave another energy to the whole show. So we decided to keep it that way – ‘Let’s leave the computer behind and go live.’ It’s been a rollercoaster since then, but it’s definitely changed the band for the better in a crazy, unexpected sort of way.”
Hearing them now, it’s hard to say exactly what style of music they have grown into. Their sound is a blend of Afro beats, of dub and funk, a smattering of ska. Whatever you call it, their songs are big, and prior to taking the winter off to develop their debut album, you can experience them for yourselves at the Gasometer this Saturday. Between The Vibraphonic Orkestra, supports Stellafauna, Isaac Chambers, and multiple DJ sets, it’s going to be one hell of a night.
“We like to make a full night of it when we do a launch. We don’t like to finish and then that’s the end. We like to be able to have a bit of a party afterwards as well. So we always try and look for somewhere we can keep kicking on until three in the morning, so there are DJs booked in to rock the house for us afterwards. Our show is pretty high energy, but weird as it is to say, the band wouldn’t be that way now if that robbery hadn’t happened. I’m kind of glad, because we’re a much better band. Particularly for the audience, the live experience is much better. People are up and dancing straight away.”
BY ADAM NORRIS
