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Clue To Kalo.
 "To have a record out, and for people to be responding to it and writing about it, was something that I wasn't used to," explains Mark Mitchell, who on stage is Clue To Kalo's frontperson, and on record... well, is Clue To Kalo. "It kind of paralysed me for a little while - I felt a kind of responsibility, which I hadn't felt before, about doing something that was more meaningful."
Basically, Mitchell released his debut album, got a buckletload of attention (mostly overseas), became nervous and started procrastinating. "So there was a lot of time when I wasn't really making much music, I was spending a lot of time thinking about the music that I wanted to make. I didn't ever receive any overt pressure from Mush [his US label] to have it finished, but I remember from high school that the fact that there's that deadline, you can think, 'oh well, you know, maybe I'm not going to do it on time.' Just having that deadline there made me spend a lot more time on it than if I didn't have it. But at the end of the day, it did really help me, it helped me to knuckle down and get it done."
When I ask about the actual process of making Clue To Kalo's latest album, 'One Way, It's Every Way', Mitchell gets even more excited. And for good reason - this is pretty exciting stuff.
"No-one really plays instruments, per se. I just got a lot of different sounds from friends of mine. For example, with Vic [Conrad], who plays a lot of sounds on the record, I actually just went around to his house and mucked around with a lot of his instruments for a while, and we kind of recorded a lot of what he was doing, and I took it home. And that was everything from little musical phrases to isolated notes which I could take home and reuse or re-pitch, and create melodies out of. So nothing was written, it was very much just messing around with those things and see what sounds we were getting, and then taking it home and bringing it into the technology that I was using with a computer to make music. It was about being able to hear or make certain things out of them, to alter them to fit something that I might hear in my head, or something that might fit the song that I was working on. So it wasn't really traditional in the sense of people playing certain melodies that I'd written, although I do want to do try that, I think."
Having recorded this album, Mitchell is looking forward to enjoying even more success. In fact, after being lauded overseas he's hoping this time that he can capture a bit of a market here in his hometown. What might surprise you (it sure as hell shocked me) is that his life in Adelaide is quite a talking point in the overseas press.
"Do you know the [UK] magazine' The Wire'? It had a review of Stephan Panzac's album, who does stuff under the name Inch Time, and he's a friend of Curtis [Leaver, CTK's guitarist]'s, and I know him as well, and he was making music here and I think he's living in Berlin now. But he had a review in 'The Wire', it was a really nice review, and it talks about the close-knit Adelaide electronic music scene. It actually has a reputation overseas as being a close-knit supportive environment...
That's news to me. "Well, I hadn't heard about it until 'The Wire' mentioned it. I don't really know. If you look at some of the artists who may have been mentioned in 'The Wire', I think Cornell's been mentioned, maybe I've been mentioned... but it's on my press release in Europe that I'm from Adelaide, and it's on Stephan's press release that he's from Adelaide. If you go to our sites, we link to each other. And Curtis plays on Stephan's record, and he plays in my band, and Cornell plays on my record, and it's very much, everything's interrelated."
In other words, Mitchell and his close friends are now known internationally as the 'close-knit Adelaide electronic music scene.' "Well, maybe that's it. But it's nice, though... I think people still like the idea, especially press people, of the scene in the small town. People love this idea that there's something good going on that they're somehow excluded from."
Ben Revi
 | Clue To Kalo launch 'One Way, It's Every Way' at Jade Monkey Fri 9 Sept. |
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