| | | |  | Paul Mac is one of the leading figures in Australian electronic music. He also a conservatorium graduate and a multi ARIA award winner. Paul received his first ARIA in 1995 for his work with underground dance pioneers Itch-E & Scratch-E. In the later...
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| Interview | Access All Areas.net.au: Congrats on your second solo album release, are you excited to get back in to it on a solo basis?
Paul Mac: Yeah! Yeah definitely I think I really like this batch of songs and I seem to have defined my sound more this time round, I mean the first one I loved and thought it was a great album but I think I was putting my talent in water and wanted to know what to do on my own. With this album, I love it, I like the vibe about it and the emotion on the songs, and the new studio is working really well and working with a new batch of singers, which I am digging so I am pretty happy.
Access All Areas.net.au: Your second album’s called ‘Panic Room’, can you tell us a bit about that release?
Paul Mac: Yeah I suppose after the first album, kind of more people heard it than I thought were going to and at the end of that I wasn’t too sure on what to do next. When you’re writing stuff at underground level which I’d been doing for ages with Itchy and Scratchy, you do what you want and you don’t care because you think that not many people are going to hear it and it’s more for fun I suppose and I’m still writing for fun but getting more success than I thought it would be and then it’s “where do I go next”, and then I took time out to go and do the Dissociatives which was a perfect thing to do, like a holiday away form my project – I spent a year and half with the Dissociatives but I was still writing songs on my own when the headspace was clear, so it was good. Once I was done I had a bunch of songs and it was just trying then to pefect the music and get back in to it - finding the vocalists is the fun part… Luke Steel, liked his voice and he was up for it; Sarah McLeod, I’d written this song and one night we happened to be at the same party, and we were good mates and it was “do you want to come back to the panic room to test this song out?”. It was like finding people who could voice out your songs and it was very exciting.
Access All Areas.net.au: With your first album ‘Three Thousand Feet High’, you wrote the album entirely in Katoomba up in the mountains in NSW. For this album, you moved to a basement studio. Where do you think you will you end up for your third album?
Paul Mac: I don’t know. Who knows! I think it’s healthy to change environments when writing, it changes your set of stimuli. I don’t know yet, maybe overseas.
Access All Areas.net.au: This is your second solo album, how do you feel that you have progressed since the first album to this album?
Paul Mac: I think that kind of the more you do you, the better you get at certain things and I’ve learnt a lot from The Dissociatives… that album we produced ourselves in my studio… most of it – I learnt and I got better at production so this album sounds a lot better, but when I started writing it it was more just, I really started to get into concept of it not being so messy like with the first album I wrote lots of melodies and to me they were all beautiful and I wanted them all in but this time I would work the start of the song and like “I’m going to listen to this” and I got better to sculpting the whole song I think. Technically I think it is more interesting and a richer sound and emotionally focused on lyrics to say exactly what I wanted to say. I wasn’t rushing it – some songs I just let the lyrics evolve for a year before recording. Waiting for perfect line to drop in.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’re releasing a new single later this month called ‘Love Declaration’ and its different to your other songs where by it is more of a love song rather than a break up song, can you tell us a bit about the single?
Paul Mac: I actual had a joke with Peta Morriss about it, on the first album all her songs were break up songs and talking about the nature of them, it’s easier to write from an angry space than a loving space I think. So I kind of set myself the task of writing get together songs instead of break up songs and I just had it at the back of my mind and when I was in Amsterdam, having a holiday actually, I was sitting by a canal and looking at the surroundings and bang it sort of fell out… it was nice to do something positive and feeling good and not angry and it took forever to get the right voice for the song… then Aaradhna came and I just thought she is the one!
Access All Areas.net.au: Considering most of the songs seem to be as you stated in your bio “break up/ f%$@ you/ get out” type songs, why did you opt to write a song that contradicts the rest of the album, and then in saying that how did you write a song like ‘Love Declaration’ whilst being in the frame of mind of break ups?
Paul Mac: I think… I like to put myself out of my comfort zone and not do the same thing all the time... plus I wanted to write lyrics that were more grown up I suppose. If you listen to most of the sort of love songs or break up songs or whatever, they come from unhealthy spaces… it’s like “without you I’m nothing” or “not compete until we’re together”, more childish “stay out, get out, its over” kinda thing and its always adolescent headspace and this song I tried to get out of that. The lyrics to this song are not sort of lovey dovey lyrics the angle is kinda cool and its like “yeah I’m still thinking about you; yeah I’m still in love with you and yeah there might’ve been times where we’ve been apart and yeah I’m coming back but with no big expectations and we’ll see what happens”. I wanted to write from a real place instead of a more romantic vision of what love is but rather my angle of what love could be. I tried to do that for a lot of the songs.
Access All Areas.net.au: The Dissociatives, are there any plans in the future to pick up from where that left off?
Paul Mac: Oh completely! I have been hanging out with Daniel [Johns] all this week and all of last week. We want to keep returning to it, it’s our fun outlet really because you’ve got your band and your solo career and people have these certain expectations of you and you have certain expectations of yourself and with the Dissociatives, it’s a blast of fresh air for both of us. It’s a fun outlet that we have on the side. Daniel is still doing what he wants to do and me too. We are planning the next one and where we can go and take it but it’s free floating - when we have time. It’s something we’ll keep returning to.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’ve recently done a collaboration with the Gorillaz, are there plans for any future collaborations with any other artists?
Paul Mac: Yeah those are more random, that was in December and the phone rings and it was their record company asking if I wanted to do a remix of the Gorillaz and I was like “yeah completely”! I love the Gorillaz I’m a huge fan and love what Damon does so those ones you never kind of plan, they just seem to happen. There are no plans yet but lets see what falls out of tree.
Access All Areas.net.au: What’s the plan after this album, more albums, more tours in Australia?
Paul Mac: I really don’t know… the whole touring thing I love with all these vocalists, a large band, backing vocalists, it’s really expensive and so I can’t do it for long. Everyone’s got to get paid and it’s hard to break even let alone make money out of it so I do it more for love and getting the songs out there. It depends how this next single and this tour goes, if it does well we might do another batch.
The new single is instores March 4 and tour dates are:
Thur Feb 16: ANU Bar, Canberra
Sat Feb 18: Good Vibrations, Sydney
Thur Feb 23: Wollongong Uni
Fri Feb 24: Queensland Uni
Sat Feb 25: Southport Hotel, Gold Coast
Thu Mar 2: RMIT Uni, Melbourne
Sat Apr 15: Great Escape Festival, Sydney |
| Biography | Paul Mac is one of the leading figures in Australian electronic music.
He also a conservatorium graduate and a multi ARIA award winner. Paul received his first ARIA in 1995 for his work with underground dance pioneers Itch-E & Scratch-E. In the later part of the nineties Paul became Australia’s pre-eminent remixer, working with artists such as Silverchair, Powderfinger and Natalie Imbruglia.
In 2001...
Paul’s acclaimed debut gold selling solo album “3000 Feet High” was released. The album featured the #1 multi format anthem “Just The Thing” (feat Peta Morris) and the top 5 airplay hit “The Sound Of Breaking Up”.
Paul was awarded “Producer of the Year” at the Australian Dance Music Awards. He also received the APRA Award for “Most Performed Dance Work”.
In the same year he was named “Dance Artist Of The Year” in Rolling Stone’s Readers Poll.
In 2002...
Paul was again acknowledged by his musical peers at the Dance Music Awards, in this year receiving the “Outstanding Contribution to Dance” award.
He also received his second ARIA Award (Australia’s Grammy) for his work on “3000 Feet High”.
And he was again voted by Rolling Stone’s readers as “Dance Artist Of The Year”.
In 2003...
Paul took a holiday! He travelled. He also started writing for a new solo album.
In 2004...
Paul and Daniel Johns formed The Dissociatives and went on to sell over 100,000 copies of their self titled album. The Dissociatives received six nominations at the 2004 ARIA Awards including ‘Best Album’ and ‘Best Group’ while their visual guru, James Hackett, walked away with the awards for "Best Artwork" and "Best Video".
And now in 2005...
Paul has put the finishing touches on his much anticipated sophomore solo album, PANIC ROOM [also the name of Paul’s studio].
PANIC ROOM will be released in October 2005 and Paul plans to tour with his 12 piece band including an appearance at HOMEBAKE ‘05
Remixes of the album’s title track are currently being played in clubs across the country and are already appearing in the TOP 5 of many club charts.
The first single from PANIC ROOM is a beautiful piece of melantronica titled SUNSHINE EYES. Featuring the vocals of Peta Morris the song is about seeing the reflection of that love smile in your lover’s eyes. |
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