| | | |  | A bit about motor ace... It seems appropriate that it was in Tokyo that things started to get weird. That living love song to modern consumption and neon was to be the setting for the first small tear in the Motor Ace fabric. “Tokyo simply pulses, but...
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| Interview | Damo - Motorace
Access All Areas.net.au: Can I say what an amazing comeback you guys have done with your new single ‘Tomorrow’s Gone’ its such a fantastic song and as we’ve seen radio are supporting it in leaps and bounds which is fantastic!
Motorace: Yes thankyou its getting there…
Access All Areas.net.au: So you’ve been out of the spotlight for a good two years, what have you been doing in that two years and why so long putting together the new album?
Motorace: Basically we were in a little bit of pressure with the situation we were in with after what happened, we came home and had split for a while and people were not happy and stuff so we had to take a break. Basically we spent time just getting to know family and friends and stuff because after 5 years on the road or probably more we had to readjust to normality again and get to know our family and friends again and focus on other things rather than music all the time.
Motorace: Dave went and did Johnny lighting with Mat – Mat also took time off and did some songwriting and my Step father is an artist so I did some work with him. We’ve just been keeping busy.
Access All Areas.net.au: You are releasing your new album ‘Animal’ next month which is a huge priority release for your record label, you had your platinum album ‘Shoot This’, do you feel any pressure to follow on with your previous success with this album?
Motorace: Yeah! Well we’ve been down that road where we have had that success and blah blah blah I mean the last single didn’t even reach the top 50 or came in at number 51 I think which is typical Motorace luck but we have no expectations actually to be frank I’m just happy that there’s a band at all. I think that touring and making records, it all goes out window when you lose your sanity and not together. I think the basic instincts of survival start to kick in and yeah I’m happy the band’s back together. I think we’ve got some unfinished business and more music we want to make. I think there is un-travelled territory. The pressure of records and touring though, we’re not really thinking about that. We want to push our musical boundaries, I know it sounds like a wank but it’s the truth [laughs].
Access All Areas.net.au: ‘Tomorrow’s Gone’ is a taste of your new album, does the rest of the album follow through with a similar vibe?
Motorace: No. ‘Tomorrows Gone’ is probably the closest to the old Motorace… I think it has more sound scape stuff and I think the entire record is a touch more atmospheric, it’s something we wanted to achieve with ‘Shoot This’ and we didn’t think we did that since we were under the pump to produce it but this time we had so much fun to make it and so much more time.
Motorace: The last record I think had 4 or 5 good songs whereas this one is a solid piece of work – nothing is bad on the entire record. As a piece of work, I am extremely proud of it.
Knowing the musical landscape and what other people are doing and the expectations... I think it is a different sounding record. Songs like that come every 10 years you know.
Access All Areas.net.au: Your new material seems to have a different sound to your older material, was this a conscious decision?
Motorace: Definitely yeah! The records from ‘Fire Start’ to ‘Shoot This’ to ‘Animal’, I suppose the most dramatic is ‘Shoot This’ to now, its got the same elements just mutated a fair bit.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’ve had some pretty rave reviews for the new single, in some you’ve even been compared to the likes of Coldplay, for example one said that “Coldplay will have to come up with something pretty amazing to top this album”, how does that make you feel to be compared to a bands like Coldplay?
Motorace: It actually does more harm than anything else. It’s nice to be compared to those people but I think, Motorace never came from the cool side of town. We never fit in anywhere or from a particular scene and when compared to a band like that I think It makes it harder for us in some ways, but the admiration is great.
Motorace: We are just a little band in Australia, you know what I mean. I find it hard. Although I do like it just but a little bit uncomfortable by it sometimes.
Access All Areas.net.au: To someone who isn’t too familiar with Motorace, how would you choose to describe your music?
Motorace: I’d say along lines of smooth grandiose soulful and enlightening. I don’t know something like that.
Access All Areas.net.au: You toured quite extensively and non-stop for a good four years, did you ever get tired of constant touring?
Motorace: Yeah I suppose towards the end. Just after we traveled to Japan and then we came back, then went to the UK and it was basically first on a plane for twelve hours, basically had to get in van stay in crappy hotels and after 5 years you have to have so much energy to get over that and we didn’t have it. No way I could do it! As much as you want success overseas and do what you love and I think that tour was at the end of 2003… I was cooked, very cooked, a way cooked chicken at Coles… spinning around a rotisserie.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’ve already been on the tour circuit again in support of this release, how has it been to get back on the road after such a long break and how has your audience differed?
Motorace: In a lot of ways kind of like robust. Playing songs again, its been fantastic playing songs live and getting on stage and I think we’re all warm to each other and whether it comes across on stage or not I’m not sure. But it’s good to get out there and do it. With audience, I hope they are fans and we take them on sort of a journey for each record… the live shows we do for this record will be very visual and it’s very exciting for us because we’ve never been down that road… so it’s very exciting for us to throw in a different element… we’re kind of looking forward to that.
Access All Areas.net.au: When a fan goes to one of your shows, what can they expect?
Motorace: New songs, they can expect a proper show like all the big bands that even we enjoy like The Nerve, you know big stadium bands but we try and do that on a smaller scale with great sound and visual aspects. Just to put on a really good show, a bit of rocking out and a bit of space and a whole heap of different feels and stuff.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’re album is released next month, what are your plans after that?
Motorace: I think the plan is that Japan will release this record; they released ‘Shoot This’ which was good. So we’re releasing this at the end of September over there which will be great. We’re making inroads to Canada and stuff but I don’t want to jinx that. I think we’ve got a bite there but you know, when we were young, we had plans to take over world so I think we’ll have to do one country at a time.
Access All Areas.net.au: Outside of touring, what is it that you like to do to just chill out?
Motorace: Movies, I am a big movie buff and actually went and saw ‘War Of The Worlds’ – I hate Tom Cruise and think he’s a wanker but I love special effects and I love Sci-Fi and thought it was cool the way it was done.
Motorace: I like spending time with friends and family and stuff and my girlfriend and just hang out you know and at the same time I like to go and see bands and like any other person really. |
| Biography | A bit about motor ace...
It seems appropriate that it was in Tokyo that things started to get weird. That living love song to modern consumption and neon was to be the setting for the first small tear in the Motor Ace fabric. “Tokyo simply pulses, but that can be overwhelming when you're feeling the way I was back then,” says the band's singer/songwriter Patrick Robertson.
It was October 2003, after four years in which Motor Ace experienced a chart-topping album, a pair of gold records and sold-out national and international tours. Back home in Melbourne following the band's performance in Tokyo for the 2003 Fuji Rock Festival, Robertson called the other band members to a meeting at a local bar and handed each of them a letter, which, in effect, indicated he was tendering his resignation from Motor Ace.
“I wasn't in a great place,” he explains. “The letter basically explained that, although I loved the band, I felt that I had nothing positive left to give to it. I had begun to despise touring and the inevitable demands from those surrounding the group was becoming unhealthy on a personal level. I also felt that the musical impetus of the band was being diluted by the obligations that success brings. Whether accurate or not, it was my state of mind at the time. So I had a look to see what was left.”
Free from the bonds of those associated pressures, Patrick retreated to his home studio in a crumbling cottage in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy. He began experimenting with musical ideas, enjoying the thought that he had no obligation other than to the music itself. He immersed himself in the technical aspects of recording and sequencing, which added to his sense of freedom and possibility.
“It felt like I was working on a soundtrack,” he explains. “Conceptually, I enjoy the idea of music being used to enhance a different creative vision or form - such as film or visual art. It's a much less egocentric pursuit than a band. I took this imaginary approach when writing, and it opened up much more interesting musical possibilities”.
Robertson's creative vision was soon to develop another dimension. After leaving the arrangements for a period, Patrick returned to them and began to experiment with vocal ideas. Lyrics started to form.
“I was beginning to hear songs, good ones,” he recalls. “And even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't hold them down. It felt to me that the only way to do the music justice was to work on it with the band; to tap into the musical understanding that the four of us have when together as Motor Ace.”
Bassist Matt Balfe and guitarist Dave Ong contributed their own songs to the process, which seemed natural companions to those Patrick had written.
When drummer Damian Costin, who had spent the year making music of his own with some old touring mates, returned to the studio with Motor Ace in November, he was in the process of reassessing his musical ambitions. Over the weeks that followed he recorded some of his most sensitive and intuitive playing, which reaffirmed his desire to keep making music with the band.
And it is instinct, rather than reason, that informs the music that has now become Motor Ace's third album, Animal. Just as an animal only knows how to act on its feeling in this moment, in the now, Animal is the sound of those irrational, deeper recesses of consciousness, of thoughts we can't quite catch, of unspoken nuances of feeling.
Says Robertson about the new music: ”On the surface, rock music is at an exciting point at the moment and there is an undeniable energy that we haven't seen for quite a while. But dig a little deeper and I think we find very little of substance behind it. For the first time in a while, it feels like rock has actually hit a point of stagnation”.
“I think that rock isn't moving forward as a form because we seem to be looking too much to the past for inspiration. What I crave generally and what I hope Animal has achieved, now that we can look back on it, is music that represents a forward step in the evolution of the form”.
And as for the evolution of the band itself, you only have to take one listen to Animal to clearly understand that Motor Ace have captured a space where music and art coexist. In that sense, Animal is more than a collection of songs; it is a gallery of sounds and words that demands to be heard.
Robertson describes his decision to take on the production and engineering duties for the album as a natural progression.
“A large proportion of the record was taking shape before I realized it and a lot of the textures came as a result of sitting down and trying out lots of different approaches to recording. I had a really strong sense of what I wanted to achieve sonically speaking and spent many hours in my studio chasing it”.
On a whim the band sent a three-track sampler of the songs to one of their favourite mixers/producers, Grammy award winning David Bianco in Los Angeles. He replied almost immediately saying he was astounded by the tracks and would come out to mix the whole record.
Perhaps, in life, there are no real endings. Just as an old love never truly dies, or energy is never extinguished, but simply changes form, it is possible Motor Ace was never in any serious danger of coming to an end. It just needed to be pulled apart and then allowed to find its own way home. |
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