Though he may not be as dysfunctional as Donnie Darko's Frank, the mischievous rabbit that features in indie-synth-pop rockers Selahphonic's new video, 'Ghosts Of 1999', certainly causes some pain.
Hot off a seriously busy 2015, the Sunshine Coast band seem intent on making 2016 equally as prolific, and 'Ghosts Of 1999' is just the beginning. “We've [toured] America three times now, it’s been wild,” frontman Jamie Coyle says.
“It’s one of those things, we just kind of look at the American market and go, 'you know what, there’s 300-350 million people in America and 24 million here'. For us it’s a market worth pushing, so that's where we've gone. It’s been incredible. New York. Playing shows over there, I felt spoiled because all the other Australian bands that are on the bill are much bigger than us and I felt like a kid, man.”
The video for the new single has a few visual clues to its Australian origins, but the track itself? “We wrote the song here but we recorded it in Santa Barbara in this place called Isla Vista, which is just ten minutes above Santa Barbara and it’s just the most surreal place and I reckon that’s why the sounds come out of there like they do.
“We deliberately chose to record there because that little place is the most highly populated area in one square mile in all of America. It’s just this bizarre land of uni students. I think it’s the place with the highest STD rate. It’s wild.
Still from 'Ghosts Of 1999' video“Our last song off the first EP that we did was kind of pretty clean and I can’t help but write pop hooks, it’s kind of my tendency. But we really wanted to add some more grittiness to it and my mate lives in this kind of environment and he calls it the ghetto. It’s his beach ghetto. We recorded in his shed and it has this really kind of super-rough vibe. We did that so the song would sound a lot more like that rather than as clean as it could have been. People already say it's really pop, but I'm like 'man it could've gone so much more pop if we let it'. We went to this particular producer and this particular place to get that vibe.”
The music video for 'Ghosts Of 1999' feature a number of firsts for the band. “We've made a few music videos now, but it was the first one that we put the whole band in. We’ve also never done a performance video before – I hated performance videos – so this was like the guys saying we have to do one, because it’s what you HAVE to do eventually.
“I said as long as we can do some weird, quirky stuff in the middle of the performance stuff, I’m cool with that. I love music videos that make me laugh. We made it ourselves. We filmed it ourselves. We edited it ourselves. We love it. When you’re doing it yourself there’s no hurry and you don’t have to feel pressure so, it was good fun.”
When queried about his dream collaboration, Jamie only has one man in mind. “Is it too presumptuous to say Brian Eno? To be honest Eno is kind of my ideal. I guess the stuff you read about him and the methods he uses, I would LOVE to try to write with that guy. Or to just let him unleash because he is just so ridiculously creative. I always love what he comes up with. I'm sure I'd probably just spend more time wanting to ask him questions and talk about everyone he's met rather than work on my songs.”
Selahphonic join Pete Murray, Ash Grunwald and a host of others (plus local seafood and craft beers) at the Sea N Sound Festival at The Wharf Tavern (Sunshine Coast) 11 June.
