A new single, a national tour, festival slots and a popular Triple J Like A Version – 2015 has been a massive year for indie-psychedelic Brisbane band, The Belligerents.
Although they share members with a collective of Brisbane bands: The Jungle Giants, Orphans Orphans, Moses Gunn Collective, The Furrs, Morning Harvey and Family Jordan, The Belligerents have managed to find the time to write and self-produce their own EP. “It's definitely a lot more mature than our older stuff,” declares bassist Kon Kersting.
“And it's pushing a lot more towards that psychey kind of direction we've been doing for the past couple of singles.
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“We found out what kind of music we like and what music we really want to be playing and that's what this EP is about; all songs that we're really into and that you'd want to listen to you. It felt like it wasn't 100 per cent us with the last couple of EPs; and it was self-produced, so there's no influence from everybody else, it's just the five of us recording it and putting it out.”
In addition to producing it themselves, Kon also engineered the record at his studio. “The first song we self-produced and released was 'In My Way' and it seemed to connect with lots of people and lots of people seemed to like it, so we said 'well, let's do the rest of the EP like this'. So that's what we've done. That's the biggest thing that's changed in how we make music and put it out.”
The songwriting process for this EP also reflects the friendly and laid-back attitude of the band. “Most of the guys live together, so it's more like 'hey, I wrote a song!' And everybody listens to the song and gets really excited. Everybody supports each other.”
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2015 also saw the band performing Triple J's Like A Version, with their cover of Fat Boy Slim's 'Praise You' gaining the attention of the music luminary himself, praising it as “great work” and “love this cover”. “It was pretty awesome, we were all pretty drunk when that happened.
"We were playing a show that night in Brisbane and we were getting loads of notifications and one of them was from Skint Records which is Fat Boy Slim's label, and then Fat Boy Slim tweeted at us and then posted on our Facebook. It was pretty crazy but it's the best sort of outcome you can get from it y'know, to get the approval of the dude you're covering!”
After their national tour wraps up, The Belligerents plan to record their debut album, and are already deep in the writing process. “It's got about 40 or 50 songs… so we're trying to cut that down to 10 or 12.
“Early next year we're going away, we've got this farm that we go to and I think we'll go there, write the chopped album and record it all ourselves again and put it out, so that's the next big thing that we've been waiting for for six years.
“You only get one shot at the debut album and I think now we've got the potential to actually do it and it might actually be good. Before that it probably wouldn't have been very good. So yeah, that's what’s next.”
The Belligerents Tour Dates
Fri 20 Nov - Northcote Social Club (Melbourne)Sat 21 Nov - Panacea Festival (Tatong)
Fri 27 Nov - Jungle Love Festival (Sunshine Coast)
Sat 28 Nov - Jack Rabbit Slims (Perth)
Fri 4 Dec - Solbar (Sunshine Coast)
Sat 5 Dec - The Foundry (Brisbane)
Fri 11 Dec - Newtown Social Club (Sydney)
Sat 12 Dec - Festival Of The Sun (Port Macquarie)
