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Gyroscope.
2004 was a year of milestones for Perth's Gyroscope: some incredible shows, some impressive supports for overseas talent, a spot on the Homebake main stage and their debut album 'Sound Shattering Sound' earned them a damned good reputation.
However, ask drummer Rob Nassif about his personal highlight of his band's amazing year and you'll find he counts his blessings a slightly different way. "Actually, I kinda realised we'd made it when I got off the dole," he admits with a distinct chuckle in his voice. "There you go. There's the highlight of my year: Gyroscope becoming successful enough for us to live from the band."
But why not? Gyroscope have been working tirelessly over their many years together, and only recently they've finally started receiving the recognition they deserve. It's only last year that they finally sold out a show - proof once and for all that the band are finally on the punters' radar. And it's about bloody time, too.
However, if things at camp Gyroscope have seemed a little quiet
of late, Nassif was quick to explain the reasons for the bands
silence. "We started writing new material back in October, but
we've really stepped it up a gear now. By the time we play in
Adelaide it will have been three months between shows for us,
but we just needed to take that time to really just concentrate
on writing an album and write all the songs we want. This time
around we decided to write twenty songs, which is something
we've never done before. Until now, pretty much every song we've
written, we've recorded. This is the first instance where there'll
be extra songs... When you have so many to choose from, you
get to choose what sort of album you want to have because you
have so many heavy songs, so many lighter ones - so many of
everything that you can pick and choose from, so you can sort
of see what turns out better and I think that makes you a stronger
band."
Never a band to succumb to the pressures of sticking to the same old style, Gyroscope have always had a wide variety of styles up their collective sleeve. However, the band have promised to be even more unpredictable with the forthcoming album, as Nassif explains. "We've never been a band who have wanted to write one particular type of song or have a particular sound. I mean, my favourite bands when I was growing up were bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana, and although Nirvana still had a definite distinct sound, they could still go from something crazy to playing an acoustic ballad. So we've always sort of taken that idea on board. And this time we've decided to have no limitations... It's just interesting to challenge yourself. Sure, it could turn out to sound like crap but then again it could turn out to be something really good."
Things are looking to be headed toward the latter option though. While most bands may have a singer/songwriter who might present a song they've written to the band to play, Nassif explains that Gyroscope are more of an 'all for one and one for all' band.
"Whenever we're writing, you always have four of us in the room, adding our own pieces to each song. But the songs are a lot better written this time though, I think." We've spent more time with structures and everything else together first so when it came time for Dan to put the vocals down, he had a much better foundation to work with. And all of his ideas this time are better than ever. And there's a lot of different stuff on there than things we've usually gone with. We've only just written another one which is so quick and fast - I think it goes for ninety -two seconds or something. It's just full of energy. But then there's other slower songs that have had more thought in them, so there'll be a good mix."
Ryan Smith
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Gyroscope play at the Enigma Bar on Fri 11 March with Wendy Icon and Line Of Departure (all ages).
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