Fourwords chat with Melbourne’s Total Control, one of the many acts on this year’s Laneway Festival. After releasing a string of singles and their debut record Henge Beat last year, the band have already accomplished some pretty sweet tours overseas. As Daniel Stewart tells us, 2012 is the year for the Total Control guys to make an impact on their home shores. Thanks for the chat, how’s the Laneway tour been so far?
We only played Brisbane, we didn’t play Auckland, but yeah it’s been good!
I know Brisbane got battered with some pretty heavy weather, did that affect you guys much?
Other than playing with your body being completely saturated… nah it was fine! It was cool, we had a good time.
The Laneway tour is one of the country’s big travelling tours these days – had you done many major Australian gigs before this?
Not with Total Control. Mikey [Young] had before with Eddy Current Suppression Ring, but Total Control hasn’t done anywhere outside of Melbourne and Brisbane and Geelong, actually. This is the first time we’ve been able to hit Adelaide and Perth and Brisbane.
It’d be a bit of an eye-opening experience then I guess, being on a line up with so many international acts as well.
For sure, for sure.
For those of us who’ve never seen the band before these upcoming Laneway gigs, how would you describe the Total Control live show?
I guess, we’re not theatrical, if I can say that. It’s always hard to describe your own band, because whatever you say, you’re going to sound like a bit of a wanker; which isn’t a problem, I don’t mind if I sound like a wanker, but I’d rather sound like a wanker when I’m describing other things other than myself! I guess what we do is, we play our songs with an emphasis on extraneous things like performance or you know, audience interaction beyond giving them the songs as best we can. Like I say, it’s a difficult question to answer…
On this sort of line up, would you say that you’re one of the harder, edgier bands?
Well yeah, we noticed the other day, watching other bands, we’re definitely aggressive and have a raw sound. That is going to be one that will stand out but whether or not that’s going to be something that appeals to people or not… We’re pretty happy to be able to play with a lot of bands that we’ve never heard of and I can guarantee that most of those bands have never heard of us. It’s cool to see where we are put into context next to those bands. There are a lot of good-looking band members out there!
I must admit that I only cottoned on to Total Control about mid-way through last year.
That’s not surprising; we’re pretty lazy in getting people to cotton on to us. Until this album came out, we didn’t do any press or anything like that.
I guess that is sort of testament to the value of word-of-mouth, the only way I was able to dig up info on the band was mainly through other people’s reviews and blogs.
Yeah definitely. I guess one thing I really liked about getting into music was that I didn’t really know anything about any of the bands I was getting into and a lot of the stuff I was getting into was obscure, like 80s American hardcore stuff. A lot of people that you’d heard stuff about, you couldn’t find information about them anywhere, this was before the internet. It was just a different way of thinking about things and one thing with this band that I like is that it’s not really easy to know stuff about us, without actually hearing about us. It’s hard to just search us and suddenly find this wealth of information. A lot of the bands that everyone likes, I don’t know that much about them, and even though there is this wealth of information about them and documentaries and stuff…I think about Scott Walkerand I love his records a lot and there’s this documentary that I’ve been really resistant to watch, simply because I like the idea that there’s this really mysterious figure that I can only relate to through his tunes, you know?
Your music is a great mix up of influences from punk through to electro and synth based material. How would you describe the change and development in the bands influences since you all got together?
We’re really song-based in terms of how we write stuff. At the start, it was Mikey and I writing songs and then Mikey, James and I; we’d just write songs and go with whatever way of recording we wanted to do it. It would either like a bedroom electronic song or it’d be a thing where we’d pull a four-track out and record guitar and drums and stuff. It was always, and it still is in many senses, centred on how the song is going to sound best. Some songs, we like to leave as an electronic thing because it’s just going to sound better, it’s just going to be better for the song in the long run. A lot of the songs we’ll write like that or someone will write with an electronic beat on synths and they end up turning into guitar-based songs because it’s something that we’re a lot more familiar with and it sounds a lot better. As far as inspiration and influences go, it’s remained consistent since the start and we’re just rolling in whatever direction we do.
Are there any genres/sounds you still want to tap into and explore deeper?
Um, not really anything that we’ve discussed and planned… I’d say that you’ll never hear of us writing a country song, for instance! We love country music, but I can’t see us writing a song like that or like an urban folk song. I’d say we’d stay away from hip-hop and RnB too! [Laughs] But more guitar-based rock music, I’m sure that we’re going to draw from and especially early disco and techno stuff we’re always going to be into.
I guess, between the five of you, there’s a wealth of material to pull from, in terms of musical tastes and experiences?
Yeah, the other guys especially, they’re always playing incredible tunes that I’ve never even heard of. I definitely benefit from being around people who are very, very into music!
The band did some touring through the US late last year. What was that experience like, considering that the US punk/electro market is, I’m assuming, slightly larger than it is here?
Well we toured there in 2010 with The UV Race and that was an awesome tour. This one was with Thee Oh Sees and because they’re a lot more established over there and they already had an audience, it was like playing to their audience and a few people who may have heard of us. That was incredible, they’re really good friends of ours and they’re a really hard working band. As far as the tour went, most of what I was stoked on, was being with people who worked really hard and didn’t complain and we had a good time every single night.
I read somewhere on the net, in a piece for some American music publication, that half the surprise which came with seeing the band live and hearing the singles and record, came from the fact that the band is Australian. Why do you think this idea is so out there for some people?
I think a lot of bands from Australia are doing this kind of stuff. I really, really do like the idea that we can put a record out and tour and people still can’t find enough information about us to know that we’re from Australia! That’s fun.
What else is in store for the band this year?
For the rest of the year… Well we’re playing the Golden Plains festival in March, which is pretty exciting because we’re playing with Roky Erickson, who is pretty incredible. After that, we agreed not to make any set, concrete plans. We’re still deciding what we’re going to do. It’s been a really hectic year, so it’ll be cool to get a bit of grounding here again, in our own country.
That’s good, I mean, we’re still only in January. You don’t need to have any concrete plans at this stage…
Yeah, for sure.
Thanks for the chat, I’ll come check you guys out when you roll through Adelaide!
Yeah definitely, come say hello! Thanks very much!
Sweeeeet! You can catch Total Control killing it at Laneway next Friday (Feb 10th). I hope you’ve got your tickets cause we definitely have ours, the day will be maaassive! If you stupidly haven’t got tickets, head to the Laneway Festival page to grab yours asap!
