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Gyroscope.
Forget Wolfmother; forget Powderfinger; forget End Of Fashion: Perth's Gyroscope are this nation's premier rock band. Always renowned as a formidable live force, last year the band came into their own in the studio after recording their second album 'Are You Involved?' with American super-producer Mark Trombino. What emerged was a hard-hitting, complex and poignant punk-rock masterpiece that took repeated listens to reveal its depths. Finally, after countless tours and a well-earned break, frontman Daniel Sanders has managed to get his own head around the beast that is 'Are You Involved?'
"I've had long enough now to listen to it and really understand it a bit more," Sanders tells me.
"It's kind of weird. At that time of our musical careers we went down and we wrote the album that we wanted to write, which is quite hard: being the second album, usually all the pressure's on... We just thought fuck it, you know, we've been doing this for eight or nine years now and we've always done what we wanted, why would we change with pressure? We're confident enough in what we've been doing to just go 'fuck it, let's just write what we wanna write'.
"Now I really listen to it with enjoyment more than analytical stuff like I used to, like 'ooh shit, that bit there sounds a bit dodge...' I listen to it now and I go, 'wow, this is a really good sounding record.'"
The resulting album saw the band step back from its post-hardcore roots and the emo scene that they were wandering into. Sanders notes that they have both won and lost fans, but is nothing but stoked about the kind of critical acclaim 'Are You Involved?' received.
"It's the best pat on the back you can get. It's just like your boss coming up to you and giving you a raise. We don't get too excited or anything like that, it's just really cool. A couple of high fives around the table and we're stoked."
After a brief holiday over the new year, Gyroscope are eager
to get back into touring. They're playing a short tour in March
around Australia to support the release of the Fast Girl/Beware
Wolf maxi-single, before jetting otf to the USA to play
one of the world's most diverse music festivals, the South By
Southwest festival.
"It's not the be all and end all for us," Sanders says of breaking the overseas market. "[But] now, having connections with internationals via the States or whatever, that's an opportunity you just have to take up. You don't focus or plan to go that way, but once the iron is hot, I suppose you want to strike it as many times as you can over there."
The Australian tour is no stop-gap though. The presence of even more new material this time around is extremely promising, especially after the tours in the latter part of 2005, which still concentrated on older, more direct songs.
Sanders explains: "It was kind of a transition stage for us, I suppose. That was our attitude: let's just slowly put [the new songs] in, 'cause we still have fun playing the old ones, so we've never been in a rush to supersede songs or anything."
Evidently, it's no simple task getting the more complex sounds
from 'Are You Involved?' across live, like the amazing Raindrops
and Mistakes And Ladders - both new additions to the
set list for this tour.
"It's a bit of hard work in the rehearsal room: you're sweating away, especially with the vocals," Sanders laughs. "I've done myself a bit of a job there writing so many vocals, I now have to reproduce them and write them so Brad [Campbell, bass] can do some backups and all that sort of stuff. It wasn't too hard at the end of the day, it was just a bit of homework."
If you have never seen Gyroscope live before, then now is your chance: don't miss out on what will be an amazing show. And, if you have seen them before, don't worry: no Gyro show is ever the same.
"If you put in 100 percent in each time it's gonna be different each time. With us anyway, nothing's set out in concrete. That's our confidence; knowing that if we're going to put in a show it's going to be money's worth each time."
Matt Vesely
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Gyroscope play all ages and over 18 shows at the Enigma Bar on Sat 11 March.
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