Last year Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin of The Drones formed a new band along with Lauren Hammel and Erica Dunn.
“We'd known Erica for a while because she plays in a band called Harmony, over in Melbourne and they've toured with us a couple of times. And I had seen Lauren with High Tension yonks ago, and when we were looking for a drummer she was the first choice,” Gareth says.
“The band would be about a year old, and we pretty much started doing stuff straight away. The girls come over on the weekends and we just start banging stuff together any which way. It's like we've been in a mad science laboratory for a year.”
The band is called Tropical F*ck Storm (TFS), and their upcoming debut album has an equally unusual name – ‘A Laughing Death In Meatspace’ – and is released 4 May. “'Meatspace' is what people in Silicon Valley call the real world,” explains Gareth.
“They look down on it, and that’s their idea of a negative connotation.
“And then in Papua New Guinea there was this thing, up until about the 1970s, called 'A Laughing Death'. If you ate your dead, which they did instead of burying their friends and families, then the protein from the brain would latch onto your DNA and you get the human version of Mad Cow Disease. And as you're dying you laugh. You sort of go into these paroxysms of laughter.”
When discussing the album, Gareth refers to it as an “aural disaster”. “[Humanity] has got an evolved instinct to fear everything.
“The song 'The Future Of History' is about that IBM computer beating the world's best chess player. People talk about AI taking over all the time. That's classic humanity, that we think we're so good that we'll make something to destroy ourselves.
“On one hand, there are pretty definite topics that songs are about. When I look at it, I'll go 'well that's about this and that'. I want people to know what they're about, but at the same time it's not up to me to say and people can interpret it any old way. It's about whatever you think it's about.”
Gareth finds TFS different to The Drones and other, previous projects in several ways. “One thing would be, that Erica and Laura are keen because they haven’t been around the block as many times as everyone in The Drones has, so their enthusiasm is rubbing off on us. It's more smashed together, bashed together.”
TFS will tour the country in May. “In the past year, we've done a bit of touring, we went to the States and did a huge tour with Band Of Horses and King Gizz [King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard],” Gareth says.
“Just playing with this band is fun. It's just new, I've rediscovered an enthusiasm. And The Drones gigs are really f*#$ing long, they're like an hour and a half; and as much fun as it is, it's like running a marathon. Whereas, this is fresh and we're not playing for as long. It's just reinvigorated. It's just a massive party really.”
‘A Laughing Death In Meatspace’ is released 4 May.
Tropical F*ck Storm Tour Dates
Thu 3 May - The Foundry (Brisbane)Fri 4 May - The Cambridge Hotel (Newcastle)
Sat 5 May - Oxford Art Factory (Sydney)
Thu 10 May - Howler (Melbourne)
Fri 11 May - Howler (Melbourne) - SOLD OUT
Sat 12 May - Howler (Melbourne) - SOLD OUT
Sat 19 May - Badlands Bar (Perth)
Sun 20 May - Mojo's (Fremantle)
Sat 26 May - Theatre Royal (Castlemaine)
Fri 15 Jun - Dark Mofo (Hobart)
