Yacht Club DJs have been starting parties, igniting shenanigans and are something of a cult act both here and overseas for several. “We’ve done a lot, but I think we’ve still managed to maintain a kind of underground status, and I like that,” says Gaz.
There are some drawbacks, however, that are associated with having a well known stage name yet its members be relatively unknown. Playing a sold out Karova Lounge, they walked onstage and were greeted with an angry and confused girl in the front row: “Are you fucking kidding me? That’s the dude that’s always sitting down the street having coffee. I paid $20 to see this?”
Starting this Friday on the Gold Coast and hitting Melbourne’s Prince Bandroom the following week on Good Friday, live shows are on the way. The Oddity Number Five tour will see Yacht Club play some of their brand new mixtape of the same name live for the first time. In addition, fans will also get to hear some of the first ever fully original music created under the Yacht Club name weaved into sets.
Undertow is the band’s first single from their forthcoming EP that drops this Friday. Featuring Josh Haire from Gaz’s former band Them 9’s on vocals, the new track has no samples. However, it still sounds very much like a Yacht Club production, perhaps due to the fact that original production has already snuck into their mixtapes. “With Yacht Club, there’s always been a degree of original production in it – if we can’t find a drum beat, we’ll just produce one.” Melding live instruments with production equipment and programs produces results akin to The Avalanches, minus the samples.
One of the main drawcards of Yacht Club is the diverse range of songs they play which others wouldn’t. They act as a vehicle to let people dance and get sweaty to music they may be too bashful to admit they actually like. Some of the songs contained in their mixes are considered guilty pleasures, which Gaz says is a “bunch of bullshit”.
“If you like it as a guilty pleasure then you genuinely like that music. I think after a while you work out it’s boring to only like one genre.”
With a fresh tour about to start, so too will the famous antics of the pair. They are renowned for drinking bottles of spirits onstage, drinking out of shoes, swinging of rafters and then impressively backing it up night after night. The prudent question is how? “You definitely get into modes. You basically have a responsibility to people to be onstage. Touring kind of snaps you into gear.” Gaz claims the behaviour on the road is a perfect contrast to his life much of the time when he’s at home. “The rest of the time, I live in the country, I stay at home and try to stay fit, and only drink every couple of weeks. We generally work so hard leading up to a tour that we treat touring like a big holiday where we can go play awesome shows.”
Without touring, a heavy night of drinking will put Gaz out of action for days. “I got drunk on Australia day and it took me three days to get over it.”
Lastly, are there any surprises for the tour? “We built an actual proper stage, so we look a bit flashier, less like a ghetto house party,” Gaz laughs and sighs when he realises he’ll pick up this issue of Beat at his local pizza shop to read the article. “Oh no, the guys there will give me so much shit for saying we’re flashier.”
BY ALEXANDER CROWDEN
