After several significant changes over the past 18 months, Brisbane band Golden Age Of Ballooning have emerged in a new configuration and with a more experimental sound.
The band unveiled their new sound on their recent EP ‘Illusion Of Control’, released in July.
They will soon release a special edition of the record featuring extra, never-before-heard bonus tracks. “Over the past few years in the studios we’ve tracked a few extra songs and some of those aren’t really single material in our minds, but they sound great and we worked really hard on them,” frontman Chris Boardman says.
{youtube}ojb74ACKFj4{/youtube}
“There are three of those songs then we have two acoustic live tracks as well. Those extra three tracks, for me they’re some of the better stuff on there; they’re a little bit more interesting for me.”
Golden Age Of Ballooning went through an uncertain period of development to reach the sound they’re working with on the new EP, including several line-up changes that Chris says have added another, much bigger dimension to the band.
“Before we started this run of songs I was in another band that moved to Berlin with one of the other band members and Golden Age Of Ballooning was our second band, it was just something we did for fun.
“We were a four-piece then we decided to open it up and we’ve had six people from then on, so we have a new bass player and a new guitarist.”
Chris also says the addition of new members has contributed greatly to the band’s live performances. “It’s a huge sound, a big wall of sound live,” he says.
“Our first EP is quite sparse but everything since we’ve had this wall [of sound], so there’s a lot going on. We actually had two keyboardists and five vocalists at one point, so there were a lot of harmonies. Now we’re just one keyboardist and four vocalists, but we’ve still got a lot of harmonies.”
Golden Age Of Ballooning’s appearance at Jungle Love Festival (SE QLD) at the end of the year will be the band’s final show for 2017, but Chris says they do have plans for getting back on the road early next year.
“Jungle Love will be our last show for a while unless anything else pops up,” he says, “and we’re probably looking at doing some stuff in February and March again, maybe a bit of a tour.
“We’ve been working on two new tracks to play, hopefully we’ll get them up and running, but also a bit of a cover with a guest appearance; I won’t say what it is but we’re very excited about it and hopefully we can pull it off.”
He also says for the next tour they hope to expand their reach and do more gigs outside the east-coast metropolitan centres. “We’ve never been to Perth or Adelaide and we’ve had a couple people ask us to come over, so I’m thinking about that.
“I’d really like to check it out and see their scenes; there are a lot of great bands from both places, so it should be interesting.”
