Gyroscope

Constant touring. Playing through injury. About to begin writing their third album in four years. On the road since September last year. The list goes on. So I put it to Zoran Trivic, guitarist for Perth's Gyroscope - how do the words 'hardest working band in Australia' sit with him?

"A few people have said that!" Trivic laughs. "We'd like to take it. I know that there's a lot of hardworking bands, particularly in our field of work and around our age group. We don't really rely on massive money coming from a huge record company, so the only way to do it is just to get out there and tour really hard. Being from Perth kind of multiplies our situation, so we always have to be on the road, and always on the east coast making ourselves known. But it's worked for us, we've done some good groundwork, and I think we're gonna keep going."

But what of that injury? Gyroscope's unshakeable mission to deliver the goods live was cemented in May, when on possibly the band's biggest ever tour with The Living End, frontman Dan Sanders had a cast on his arm - but was still swinging that guitar as hard as ever.

"We were in New Zealand about two weeks prior to that tour," Trivic explains. "We were doing a show in a really small club, and it had a really, really low roof above the stage. I think Dan sort of swung his arm upwards, as he sometimes does on stage, and his knuckles went straight into solid concrete roof. We were freaking out, because it was two weeks prior to The Living End tour, and also two weeks prior to us making an appearance on Rove, so it was like, 'holy hell, what are we gonna do?' But Dan's a bit of a trooper, and almost a week down the track he decided that he could keep playing on it.

"He's a bit of a nutcase really. The doctor said don't do anything with it for like six weeks, and we said to Dan, 'you know, we don't mind if you take six weeks off as well' - because at the end of the day, we don't want to be 30 or 40 year olds and Dan's got this hand that doesn't work anymore, you know? For the sake of a few shows with The Living End right now, it's not worth it to have this huge problem later on in life. But the thing is, he didn't want to let anybody down, and I guess he felt a bit of pressure to pull the shows off. We told him to go easy, but I reckon he still went pretty hard with it."

Casts removed and month-long rests enjoyed, Gyroscope are heading back out on the road for the last time before they retreat to Perth to begin writing album number three, which Trivic confesses as to having no idea what it will sound like. They've toured a hell of a lot for 'Are You Involved', but Trivic remains emphatic that now is not the time to skip a Gyroscope show. "Following this tour in July we're not setting foot on another state's soil for the whole year, so that's another six months that we're gonna be writing and then next year we're gonna possibly be writing for one or two months, then going into the studio to record. It's most likely that people probably won't see us for close to a year after this tour.

"We've got a few new things that we've added to our set. We've also got a couple of old songs that we're bringing back in a couple of different textures. We know where our highpoints in our music in our set are, so we're not going to turn around and do like an 'MTV Unplugged' or anything. But, we try to keep every set fresh, and just try to keep an alive and exciting show that the people that know us and come and see us kind of expect from us. I think we just really wanna finish this era for this album in style, so I think it's gonna be a good show."

Matt Vesely

Gyroscope play at the Adelaide Uni Bar on Sat 22 and Sun 23 July. 'Are You Involved?' is out now through Warners.