INTERVIEW: City Calm Down

CITY CALM DOWN have had a busy year. Having recently signed to record label I OH YOU, the Melbourne quartet have since released their first single ‘Pleasure & Concequence’ and announced a Launch Tour for their EP Movements which will be released on November 2.

Sam Mullaly is responsible for the synths, saxophone and sequencing in CITY CALM DOWN and is just generally a nice guy. Having just filmed the music video for ‘Pleasure & Concequence’, we talked to Sam Mullaly and found out what he’s been up to.

How’s your day been so far?

Pretty good, [we’ve] been working on the ‘Pleasure & Consequence’ film clip. We shot it on Saturday and I’m actually editing it all and putting it together.

You’ve been refining your sound for a while, how did you go about that?

We had a shitload more time! (laughs) So having signed on with I OH YOU has made things a bit more real. I  guess we reached a little bit before that as well were we started to experiment with stuff rather than just do the norm. I think with any kind of craft you kind of have to build up your skills and then you kind of get bored with those and then you change things and figure out what you should mix together. Whereas previous releases the pre-production work has just been like, a secondary thing to our past jobs or whatever, and we might go a night or two a week. This time just the bass player and myself were actually in the studio every day for about three months, and that was just post-production, so we’d already written the songs, 90 per cent of the structure was written, and we just played around with the sounds and got everything working exactly how we wanted it to. [We} played around with some different techniques like re-amping stuff, which is where you create a sound on a synthesizer. We used a lot of analogue gear as well so it’s kind of hands on stuff that’s not on the laptop it’s actually with pieces of machinery. And then you re-route that into an amplifier, and that sort of creates a different sound within itself and you can create layers with it, which is how we got a lot more of the sort of [the] angry, brooding vibe.

How would you describe the music scene in Melbourne?

It’s going pretty well, it’s been a little bit more quiet for the past little while but there always seems to be lots of really, really good bands that are still in that sort of small scale, getting to that large scale size and from a bands perspective or kind of, a behind the scenes perspective, it’s really friendly. Almost everyone will know each other probably from my experience, if you’re at least in the same genre of music you know a lot of different people. For example we’re really good friends with the people from Northeast Party House, Chet Faker lives next door to me, he’s a good friend of ours. He comes around and plays cards and stuff, and yeah everyone knows each other and it’s a good outlet. I think it’s a really strong artist collection, it’s good to be able to talk to people about all the things you’re experiencing because it’s a completely new ball game for people like us when you have a label that’s interested in you for example. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do [so] it’s good to tell other people and so it’s a pretty close knit community.

Who’s been your favorite band to support so far?

I would say it would either have to be Snakadaktal or the North East Party House guys. The North East Party House guys are pretty crazy, the party just doesn’t happen on stage it actually happens. Like, with that crap you see on stage that continues backstage into the rest of it. They’re pretty good guys, they’re pretty fun. Our producer Malcolm Besley who worked on this record actually is in North East Party House.

Did you expect ‘Pleasure & Concequence’ to be as popular online as it is?

No, not at all! It was actually put out first because I think it represents our sound really well, but we didn’t necessarily think that it was gonna be the most popular one if that makes sense? The second single that we’ll release around November 2, was gonna be the first single  and I think that might appeal to a wider audience we really wanted to give an introduction to the band that was perhaps more of a mature representation of what sound we’re trying to achieve. This one I think does represent that better than the second single, it’s a little bit more poppy, it’s still dark, but a little bit more fun. So we weren’t expecting the kind of response that we have got. We’ve just found out yesterday that added it [Pleasure & Concequence] to rotation so that’s kind of cool. About this time yesterday our label contacted us and told us we’ve been added to rotation which we weren’t expecting either. We were hoping to get a bit of action on community radio, which we got in Melbourne and Sydney, and all of a sudden Triple J got behind it.

Speaking of the internet, what are your most visited websites?

Well my other profession is a graphic designer, so I go on a lot of graphic design websites and stuff. In terms of music, a lot of mixes I guess.. .can I get back to you on that one? (laughs)

What’s the weirdest thing that’s happened to you at a gig?

I had some guy try and give me a beer while I was playing, like put his hand on the keyboard. In places, patrons can kind of come up to the stage, like the side of the stage. I play to the side of the stage and I could hear him yelling because it was a soft part of a song like, “here have a f***n’ beer!” and I smiled at him, and then he came around to the other side of the stage and moved around so he was sitting behind the keyboard stand, and then I just saw this hand coming up over the keyboard trying to get my attention, and he knocked some of the knobs which pretty much just made everything go haywire. I’ve also had a girl dance into my keyboard stands. The stage was small, it was absolutely jammed, and this girl sort of jumped up on the stage and before anyone could get them off, she was dancing and slipped a little bit and grabbed onto the synthesizer and almost started pulling the whole thing down on top of her, which would of hurt her a lot ‘cause it’s pretty heavy.

How did City Calm Down originally get together?

I know Jack and Jeremy from school [and] Lee, the drummer, just started recently. Our last drummer left, so Lee’s been the new addition for about three months or so, but Jeremy and Jack I’ve known since school, Jack actually went to my school [and] been one of my best mates since high school, and Jeremy we knew just through parties and stuff since year eight. We’d see him on the weekends and Jeremy and Jack actually played in a band together through high school, from year eight or nine until just after year 12 when high school finished. At around that point, I bought a synthesizer and was just playing around and experimenting with sounds and stuff, and their band actually, partly broke up and we’d just play and started jamming I guess. We have this recording of all the stuff that we did, and it’s horrendous! Some of it’s just really funny.

If you weren’t playing music, what would you be doing?

Probably design. They’re more of my two sort of passions, music more so that graphic design, but I actually run a small studio, a graphic design studio, so we do a lot of web design stuff and a lot of graphic design like our websites and our album artwork, the Movements EP artwork, was all done in the shop. And the ‘Movements’ video was produced through that, in house, so we’re sort of working on this ‘Pleasure & Concequence’ video now.

If you could describe Movements in three words, what would they be?

I would say: dark, white, dance

CITY CALM DOWN will be supporting TOTALLY ENORMOUS EXTINCT DINOSAURS this holiday season on the UK dance icon's debut Australian tour thanks to I OH YOU

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TOTALLY ENORMOUS EXTINCT DINOSAURS AUSTRALIAN SUMMER HEADLINE SHOWS 

With Special Guests CITY CALM DOWN

Saturday, December 29 2012 | Corner Hotel [18+] | Melbourne, Australia

Tix: $35+ BF PRESALE

Tickets available from Corner Box Office – www.cornerhotel.com - 03 9427 9198

Thursday, January 03. 2013 | Oh Hello [18+] | Brisbane, Australia

Tix: $35+BF PRESALE

Tickets available from Moshtix - www.moshtix.com.au - 1300 438 849

Words by Lauren Payne, check out her street on POSSE.COM

MORE INFO ON THE TOUR HERE