Quoted From The Facebook Wall Of Nick McCorriston:

‘So I got to know the lads from The Missing Lincolns way back in 2004, through some sort of contact with Dahahoo and a gig they played at The Ground Floor, a pretty gross little dive bar in the heart of Belconnen, now occupied by a Club Lime.

A bunch of us from our little theatre crowd got way into them, I remember myself, Max, Joel and Hadley romping around to their garage punk ditties often, and they had this swagger and confidence to them that was intimidating.

I pored over a 2 track single they put out, Heavyweight Crown backed with Her Alibi, a preview of an unreleased album recorded in Melbourne. After they put out their Righteous Noise opus, they added a second disc with these sessions, called Deliver Us, and as much as the rest of the band will disagree, this is my fave Lincolns material, the cheeky, innocent, wide-eyed Lincolns that I saw live so many times.

Quoted from the Facebook Wall of Luke McGrath:

‘Nick, Chris and I started this band in what, 2002?? 2003? In any case, it’s been a minute, and we are all still best friends which is crazy and beautiful. The first ‘album’ (a bunch of demos really) we recorded was done in Nick’s folks’ living room in Palmerston. It took us three or four Sundays (back then we practiced every Sunday for a few hours, always broken up by a trip to the Gunghalin KFC). I remember being so incredibly proud of those recordings – that shit bumped!

Then we won a Coca-Cola band competition and got to support Magic Dirt at EPIC, which was epic! It was at that show we met our first manager, who paid for us all to go down to Melbourne and record for a week in a proper studio! That was insane – Chris borrowed a kit from the guy from The Living End, I got to play a dozen different guitars including my still favourite, the Starcaster, and we got used to studio life which was mostly sitting around cracking jokes and reading Vice magazine. We made a couple of videos for it and got played on Rage back to back with The Arctic Monkeys two weeks in a row!

Quoted From The Facebook Wall Of Nick Delatovic:

‘I have a deep-set hatred of nostalgia, which makes me act weird sometimes. When I had the idea for this show I was conceiving it as a way to declare that the best of The Missing Lincolns is still to come, and I know that it is. I was dumbly unprepared for the outpouring of people’s memories from the past 18-and-a-bit years of the band, and their words about the part we might have played in a chunk of their lives. It’s not a comfortable thing for me to reckon with all that time, and it’s a weird thing to have spent the week rehearsing songs with lyrics written by a much younger Nick, who was both more afraid and more sure about everything than me. But it’s been a good reminder for me that I’ve had the joy of getting to make the exact art that I want, with the best people in the world, for years and years and years now. And that I should relax and notice everything that I have more often. Like maybe tonight. When it’s being recorded for posterity. Lol.’

Photos by Tiffany Gleeson

It’s usually safe to assume that your art has no real impact on the world around you. Babyfreeze’s obsession with high-concept gigs, like the arctic pajama party that we held in the Commonwealth Park Amphitheatre to launch our two new records (separate post coming about those) are done as our own selfish attempt to make sense of the universe and are best treated as such.

(Pajama party photos by Adam Thomas)

That said, just as we were hitting the limits of WeirdSpace GigShapes that our own brains and the town around us could offer, The Bubble was erected for a series of events in Haig park across the Spring. Artists were invited to Submit to The Bubble in all senses of the word. Really, how are we to take this other than as the inevitable physical reaction to what Babyfreeze has been putting into the universe?

Anyway, enjoy these shots of the Babyfreeze Electropunk Wellness Club, taken by Zev.

Previous posts have highlighted Luke’s generosity and agreeable-ness when it’s comes to me straight-up highjacking our shared creative projects for whatever high-concept cross-artform nonsense I suddenly decide is going to bring unifying sense to both my art practice and my selfhood. It’s one thing when I’m just turning our band into performance art or making him create the hybrid between live music and music video that no-one asked for. But it turns out that there’s an even more entitled level of pushing the friendship that I can take it to!

Luke has been, even by his standards, churning out sick tracks this last year and a bit. Aside from all the Lion’s Mansion and Tantrums stuff and the Faux Faux record, we’ve got two new Babyfreeze EPs about to come out and he’s ALREADY got enough tracks for a new full-length BFreeze album! So when I was stressing back in May about whether I had enough time to write songs for Hot and Powerful and what the songs would even be like I played it safe and asked him for some beats.

He sent me a track called Mannequin and right away I knew that I was gonna horde it for a very specific purpose. The beat and the hooks were super-2018, which means that they were also super-duper 90s, and the whole thing had a gauzy, bittersweet vibe that reminded me of Velvet Rope-era Janet Jackson and also of eating takeaway with your lover in a loungeroom on a rainy day. It was the ultimate romantic sex-jam, the perfect Babyfreeze track to follow up Creation, and I had a vocal melody for it immediately.

More importantly I had flashes of the music video, that I knew would have to be conceived and created at the same time as the song. The video was gonna star myself and my partner Zev and involve us macking on and the whole thing would be a present for them for their 30th birthday. I knew all of that as soon as I heard it, but it took me three months to share this unreasonable package of info with Luke. Nailing the perfect romantic sex-jam lyric aside, I knew I needed to have the video concept at least a bit fleshed out before I asked Luke to go along with it. But what would it be, aside from me crushing on my Honey? Us actually eating takeaway? Cruising around in Zev’s car? Costumes and sets? And how could I keep it a surprise for Zev until the moment it’s happening?

LUKE: The song that became Become started with a chord progression, like most of my stuff. I’m really into ‘neo-soul’ chords at the moment – major 7ths, 9ths, suspended 11ths, whatevers, as long as they’re luuuuush. Those chords are obviously still there on a guitar, but often such hand-stretchers I’ve never utilised them – playing piano or writing midi makes them accessible, and between that and sampling, my songwriting is now in a different place. And that place is often chill – Nick and I joked the next Babyfreeze record might be all ballads, plus Fossil Rabbit and I have started an instrumental ambient funk duo, The Ill Feathers!

Become also incorporates all the little modern pop production tricks and trap flourishes I’ve picked up of late. Taking a cue from master producers like Stargate and others, this is one of the first songs I’ve tried a holistic ‘track and hook’ method – in short, I looped the track and sung some gibberish over the top (imagining I was Dua Lipa helped). I then figured out the notes of what I was singing, and after some re-arranging, that melody became the glockenspiel line you hear woven throughout. It’s a really fast way of coming up with a part – typically a lead vocal line – using it as gilding like we do is a straight-up flex.

When I shared the track with Nick, he was immediately smitten with it, likening it to Jam & Lewis era Janet Jackson. He came back to lay down the vocals sometime later (and crushed it naturally). I love how he floats between mirroring the glockenspiel melody and dovetailing his own around it, beautifully bringing the song together. I added a few production and arrangement tricks to his vocals – doubling them in some parts, adding harmonies in others, some subtle delay and distortion variations – all culled from the Youtube videos on producing I am addicted to, though I’ve eased off slightly on watching them as that time is now taken up with drumming videos!

The final touch was the solo – I had it arranged for Hendrix-esque guitar, but when devdsp came around to experiment with his Eurorack, I thought it might be fun to try it as a beefy modular synth line. It gives it a frosty edge, which I adore. With every bedroom producer using the same plug-ins and synth patches, anything you can use from outside of your DAW stands out. devdsp is getting some incredible sounds out of his rack now and we’re hoping to do lots more with him in the future.

And then there’s the video, which as above, is entirely Nick’s idea. I just showed up at the appointed time and place, knowing it was to be a single take. I kind of amazed myself with the camerawork – given the option, I delegate that kind of high-pressure shot to a Shane Parsons or such. I lucked out into finding (as we were rolling!) several cool framings that I bounced between. Walking backwards to zoom out at the end was spontaneous but I can’t imagine a better closing. Between that and the edit, it was like that old adage about cooking – use the best quality ingredients and do as little as possible to them. The lighting, the talent, the location were all perfect.

To me, this is the closest we’ve come to chart pop and when we’re ready, I hope to give it a big push. It will also be included on our upcoming full-length DISCO ROOM, an album with all my most recent funkiest and fizziest tunes.

And lastly yes, that’s my sweet baby girl Violet doing my producer tag!

Northside Swag Unit performed a three song mini-set in the middle of Coolio and Housemouse’s single launch last month. Here’s a photo I took for the single artwork.The line-up – slimmed to a core collective of myself, Nick, Coolio and Housemouse – have been getting together the last few months for lyric-writing sessions. In that time, we’ve put words to a six track EP, with three tracks produced by Coolio and three by yours truly. It’s amazing hearing what the guys have come up with over my beats, and the trepidation I had for the lyric-writing sessions was completely unwarranted – they’ve been a blast! The songs are coalescing and everyone is upping their game trying to get the biggest laughs from each other. We’re anticipating a first quarter 2019 drop.

Also during the single launch, voice of the year nominee Evan Buckley and I performed a double bum-rush, jumping up to do Housemouse and Coolio’s respective verses on Where Ma Dawgz At?  I had no idea Evan was getting up as well, which made it even better.

Lulu and the Tantrums have played two shows!

When I started learning drums, I expected it’d take a year before I would play with a band. That timeline was halved when Catherine offered Lulu and The Tantrums a late-night slot at Smiths in September. It was the best thing that could have happened for both the group and for my drumming. It forced me to quickly level up, and for us to turn the band from a much-discussed concept into an actual garage-rattling outfit.

Lulu and The Tantrums started over ten years ago, with me cajoling Lou into making a few songs together. The aim was something raw and reductive – I quickly came up with a nice ‘box’ for us to work within: one minute max, a riff and two couplets per song, and each song had to have the same drumbeat and single note guitar solo. From there, we wrote/recorded Fucknuckle almost simultaneously. Lou returned later to find me still futzing around with levels or something – when I suggested we write another one, she countered with, ‘how about you make my dinner, bitch?’.

Our second song was Make My Dinner Bitch.

We recorded ten songs (including a cover of Ramones Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue), and burned to CD a single copy of the ‘album’, gifted to Nick for his birthday that year. At his party, we played it twice through as everyone pogoed around the living room.

Lyrically, we were shooting for the stupidest, most obnoxious, ‘you can’t say that!’ stuff we could muster in the moment. Like early Beastie Boys, or Ramones, or Serge Gainsbourg, or Odd Future, or how Vice magazine used to offend both sides equally. Let me tell you, some of it has not aged well. At all. Which is fine, we only made it for ourselves and a handful of friends that understood the intent. Shoot forward ten years and it presented us with a dilemma when the idea came up to do the band ‘for real’ – will we do the old songs? Re-write the lyrics? Or what?

When I started drums, I had the Tantrums (or something ‘Tantrums-like’) in mind as a first goal. To my surprise, Lou was keen – she wanted to challenge herself to try something out of her comfort zone. I asked her who she wanted on guitar, and her first choice was Nick. He was on board straightaway, and has been nailing it ever since – it’s fun to be playing in a band together where we are both taking on unfamiliar roles, but leaning on that musical shorthand we’ve had for years. His guitar playing sounded good at the first practice, but he brought the Swollen Pickle to the next session, and well, now we have The Tantrums Sound. The weak link is me – having a looming gig was just what I needed to focus my practice. The tricky part wasn’t necessarily the beats themselves, it was getting them up to punk-rock tempos. Practicing for the gig accelerated my up-skilling and confidence on the kit – I’m much further ahead than if I was just tinkering away on my own. Still, I’m at that point now where I know enough to know how far I still have to go. But I’ve always believed the only way to learn is to do – and I can officially say I’m a drummer now!

It became obvious quickly that even if we played all the old songs, we didn’t have enough material for even half a set! We needed new material regardless. The first new song we wrote is School Reunion. We knocked it out in the half hour before Lou went to her actual 20 year high school reunion – she was dressed up ready to go and had time to kill before her ride showed. I love writing songs with Lou because it gets me out of my head and takes me down avenues I never would have thought – take the bridge to that song, ‘Driving to the function room, Alanis on the deck / Driving to the function room, Alanis Morrisette’. It’s a reference to the throwback high school playlist Lou intended to play on the way, and when combined with ‘function room’ – what a depressing phrase – it perfectly encapsulated the nostalgia and awkwardness of the night. In a million years, I would never have come up with that on my own!

The floodgates opened and we are honing in on about 12 new songs now – playing the old ones became moot. In the end, we’ve kept two – Fucknuckle and a zippy little number called I Like It In The Ass (I told you we were taboo-busting provocateurs of the highest order!). The new songs are more ‘us’ in any case, mined from our years of inside jokes and shared references. They draw on all my old touchstones – I’ve even snuck a country song in there! The original restrictions have fallen by the wayside too – in fact, and not without some irony, some of the newer ones are more expansive than nine-tenths of my catalogue. The latest song we wrote has a pre-chorus, an alternate chorus, a bridge and an extended singalong outro! For my part, I think it’s a reaction to all of the loop-based, computer-bound music I have been doing – being able to switch things up is a breath of fresh air. And as a drummer, it’s easier to play that kind of stuff than to program it.

A handful of practice sessions under our belt, we hit the Smiths stage at about a quarter to midnight on a Wednesday night. Catherine had booked an eclectic range of acts, with us to finish. Lou was paranoid she would forget the lyrics. Seasoned professionals that we are, Nick and I knew fucking up on stage is just par for the course, but our sage-like advice was the last thing she wanted to hear. It was a receptive crowd, and I am pleased to say we – especially Lou – crushed it. People were on-board from the start, laughing and singing along immediately. Chris Gleeson filmed the set and I have watched it repeatedly, beaming – I am so proud of all of us.

Our next gig followed in November. Our love for Coolio Desgracias and Housemouse is no secret – when they asked us to support them, it was a bucket-list level achievement. We expanded the set with three new songs – two originals (our best yet), plus a cover of The Scientists’ Frantic Romantic. I am so late to Frantic Romantic, discovering it serendipitously only this year in Japan.

Lou has already grown in leaps and bounds as a performer. At the first gig, she stood stock-still, hands in pockets. I gave her a few ‘challenges’ in our following practices, like telling her she had to keep singing while jumping around on the furniture. By her own admission, this foolishness worked – she was much more free and confident when we hit the stage. I, on the other hand, was more nervous than last time – Coolio (aka Simon Milman) is also my drum teacher, and I didn’t want to disappoint sensei. I definitely made more boo-boos than the first gig (often the case with second gigs!), but pulled through. The new songs were instant hits – the crowd was singing along to Riesling For Living by the time the second chorus rolled around.

This band is so much fun and I’m excited to see where it goes next – personally, I would love LOVE to record an album next year!

Photos by Adam Thomas.