Ahead of their double headline show at the Grace Darling in Melbourne this Thursday 21 July, local favourites Josh Murphy and Andy Fry from Sex Face sat down with Cuba is Japan to talk music.
Tell us about Sex Face
Cuba: Our last experience of Sex Face’s live performance can be summarised with the following: An overflowing band room. 200 people dancing on a shaking second story. Blood on guitar strings. Groove. Funk. Energy.
This three piece’s live performance is always a pleasure to experience. Sex Face have been steadily building a reputation in Melbourne over the last year or so. Over this period, the band has released 2 CDs and their live performance has become increasingly impressive. And impressive it should be, the band being comprised of past members of John Butler Trio and Epicure.
Apart from the immaculate precision of Sex Face as a musical creature, the overwhelming feature of this band is a love for music. It’s clear that these three guys really love playing music together. More importantly, they relish every moment in which they get to share a musical experience with their audience. If you like experimental, psychedelic funk and appreciate an incredibly tight performance, it’s definitely an experience you will enjoy.
Tell us about Cuba is Japan
Josh: Cuba is Japan have the ability to play beautiful, gentle and sometimes soft music with the intensity of a steam train. Over the past few years Cuba is Japan have grown in to a band capable of creating intense stories from times past, and they deliver a live show that is these days something of a lost art in the world of aesthetic based bands. Fronted by the quietly spoken Darcy, Cuba is Japan is made up of Cameron Potts (Ex Baseball) James Henan and new addition Rob Bravington. The guys are multi instrumentalists capable of writing and performing songs with instruments violin, bass, keys, drums, guitar and also supplying some beautiful harmonies. Cuba is Japan’s live show is intense to say the least; it has the ability to evoke a range of emotions within the listener, From long lost innocence of childhood through to the rage that can sit quietly within the depth of a person’s heart.
What are your thoughts about playing live?
Josh: Playing live allows for the creation of a connection with your bandmates on stage and the people in the audience, if done right you can channel the emotions of every person in the room to create something that you could never achieve on your own. I love playing in Sex Face, The release of energy, sweat and sometimes blood. I always try to play on a sub conscious level where your head comes last and you are driven to play by your heart, where it becomes not about what you play but how you play it.
Andy: On a communicative level, music is like mathematics. There are things you can say with music that you just can’t convey with words. There are also spatial differences between what we know in the physical world and where your soul can travel when you’re in the middle of a badass groove.
Cuba: Playing live is something that has become increasingly enjoyable for us since we started. Playing to an audience is a relationship like any other, the more comfortable you are with yourself, the more you have to give to an audience and the more capable you are of enjoying what the audience has to give back.
It’s taken us a while to settle on our current configuration and having just brought Rob Bravington into the band as a bass player, we feel like we’ve reached a point where we’re really comfortable as a band. Our live performance has grown from this experience. It’s always a privileged experience to play music with a group of friends and musicians you really respect. Having the chance to share that experience with an audience is even better. We’ve always enjoyed playing live, but it’s genuinely more and more fun every time we do it. There a few things we enjoy doing more.
What do you want people to take away from your shows?
Andy: Our CD’s
Cuba: We’d like our audience to feel something or think about something that they wouldn’t have if they didn’t come to see us play. Music should be evocative in some way or another and we hope that we can take people somewhere that they haven’t been before.
Tell us about the process of writing/recording your album
Andy: We try to capture a performance, then add/subtract parts in the mixdown stages. We don’t like to put down parts one at a time, because then you don’t really get the band functioning as one.
Cuba: The process of writing and recording our soon to be released album Canvas took almost two years. Cam had the original idea to write a concept album the trials and tribulations of a naval expedition in 2008. Cuba Is Japan was formed later that year, but it took a while to settle on the sound that we really wanted. Many songs have been written, discarded and re-discovered during that time.
Canvas is the story of the first circumnavigation of the world by Ferdinand Magellan. Each song on the album is inspired by a scene from the journey. We wrote each song as a kind of chapter to contribute to the story as a whole.
We had the whole album written before we recorded, but we spent quite a lot of time in the studio adding the final touches. We made a conscious effort to get the sound of this album right and a bit of extra time in the studio really made a difference.
Is there a difference between what people can expect to take away from you album…. Versus what they will see live?
Josh: Shit yeah!!
Cuba: There is generally a lot more energy in our live performance. While there is a lot of energy on the album, it is diluted by the more spatial tracks. Our set has become progressively louder and more energetic recently, we’ve found it hard to resist this temptation in a live context.
Describe your writing process and who, if not all, is the core writer of the band?
Josh: These days our songs are generally born of an idea someone will bring to a jam, but its always reworked and fleshed out by all three of us and in most cases ends up having very little to do with the initial idea…
Cuba: Writing is very much a collaborative process for us. In most cases one of us will bring an idea to rehearsal and we will add our own parts. There really isn’t a ‘core’ writer for the band. It’s also a very honest process. We’re not afraid to tell each other what we like and what we don’t. In most cases the writing is shared evenly between us.
We rarely know what a song will be about before we write it. It’s usually pretty early on that we get a feeling for it though, then it becomes pretty clear where it will fit into the story we want to tell.
Is there any improvisation in your music and how do you feel about improvising compared to playing pre written material?
Josh: Most defiantly! If we start jamming and it’s working then we’re likely to head off in an unknown direction, it usually works. I think if you can create something that is spontaneous it’s more likely to have the true input and soul of each person involved. And the fact that it will only happen once makes it all the more beautiful.
Cuba: There isn’t a lot of improvisation in our music. We do improvise a lot when we’re writing, but what we play live is generally pretty rehearsed. That said, there are times when we don’t know how long a song will go for and we allow it change depending on the feeling in the room.
Why music?
Josh: Music is the ultimate avenue for freedom of expression, It allows you to create without rules, formulas or boundaries. It has the ability to slow down or speed up time. It resonates with the very core of us all and allows for communication between people without words.
….And its good for you.
Sex Face and Cuba is Japan play a double headline show at the Grace Darling on Thursday the 21st of July
Each payer will receive a free Sex Face CD at the door and the show will be recorded for a possible release later in the year.
Doors are at 9pm.
