With a chilled, indie-rock sound, Parkside Orchestra take the natural vibes of their home town, Byron Bay, and translate them into a fusion of blues and psych-rock.
Recently crowned winners of the National Campus Band Competition – joining the ranks of Jebediah, Grinspoon, Eskimo Joe, Augie March and The Vines – Parkside Orchestra are the latest band emerging on the indie, Australian music scene. “It started at university,” Freyja Hooper says, the band’s drummer.
“We are all uni students at Southern Cross University at Lismore; a few years ago I was looking for a bass player and a guitarist so we could jam and it turned out to be awesome so we kept it going.”
Southern Cross University bands are no strangers to the top step of the podium having won the NCBC title five times, though Parkside Orchestra’s win is just as sweet as the rest. “We’ve been playing together for three years doing uni shows and jamming, but as a band playing originals we have only been going for three months,” Freyja says.
“None of us saw the win coming, we’re over the moon,” she continues. “There was definitely some great bands and Australia has some incredible upcoming acts so we were totally over the moon. We didn't even believe until that night, it was surreal and awesome.”
With the title the band have secured studio time, which they plan to use to create their first, industry-standard recording. “Winning gives us a focus and a direction to record and have a show that is up to industry standard,” Frejya says. “It’s an awesome opportunity to get our music out across Australia through a number of different platforms.
“We’re going to be heading in to the studio early December; and we're playing Mullum Music Festival and the Bangalow Homegrown Music Festival in November.”
With their win, Parkside Orchestra have high hopes for the future. “Our ideal future is to keep playing music, writing and recording creative and original music that we can all be happy with and focusing on getting our product out their and selling out shows, just doing it all, really.”
