| My Disco My Disco is not like your disco. It is a spartan a/rhythmic hanger, populated with toms too close up and razor riffs, the occasional yelp in strine and an electrifying afterglow. Not cosy listening, but adrenal, intense. They are three Melbourne men, brothers Andrews, Liam J. and Ben W., plus sonic sibling Rohan S. Rebeiro, and they are launching their first full-length LP 'Cancer'.
My Disco have certainly been paying their dues, having a couple of international tours behind them and their coming, month-long US tour is half as long as the previous American adventure of seven weeks. Notably, the band also made it a priority to tour closer to home.
"We went to four different countries - Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. We played, I think, about twelve shows in about three weeks. We definitely were interested in our first international tour being somewhere not very well trodden and when you are not a very well-known band, it can be very hard to get interest from Europe or America. Certainly, South East Asia were very appreciative and it took a lot of organising - about a year of organising - but the experience was great. We love the region, the food and the people are really hospitable, especially in Indonesia," recalls Andrews.
"Indonesia was the last leg of the tour and we played a lot of places. We played this town called Bandung and the people who helped organise the show took us up to an active volcano where everything smelled of rotten eggs and we bought tempeh on the side of this volcano for ten cents. It's got really great coffee and it was just a really great time," he enthuses.
"We played with noise bands, indie bands and rock bands, all sorts of different groups pulled together to put on a show. We played one show in a night-club in Jakarta and a show in Bandung that was in a library/DIY resource centre."
The adventurous spirit of My Disco also extends to releasing on all kinds of formats and, while touring Asia, tapes and CDRs of My Disco recordings were put out because "It makes sense to have a release when you are on tour," Andrews states.
After a couple of 7" singles and an EP released independently in Australia, My Disco once again hit the road here at home in support of the album 'Cancer'.
"It is a bit of a personal conceptual album. It revolves around my brother who is in the band who had hodgkins disease, which is cancer of the lymph nodes. He struggled with that for about a year and that was around the time we went to America and then he went through chemotherapy," Andrews explains.
"We had to do the recording in accordance with whether he was well and a lot of the time when he was in hospital the band took a hiatus. We wrote a bit of it before and 95 percent of it after and so a lot of the subject matter was related to what he went through, which is pretty personal. The lyrics themselves are a bit vague, I mean, you wouldn't necessarily know what it was about."
It is not the lyrical content which strikes on first listen, but the edgy groove of the limber, sinewy bass, leading drums into looped phrasing with gritty washes of guitar and timing tricks, each of three elements on their own prehistoric-sounding path of well ordered brutality.
While the band has taken their name from a Big Black song, Andrews downplays the influence of frontman and long-revered producer Steve Albini.
"At the time of naming the band, we really needed a name and I happened to be listening to a Big Black record," counters Andrews. "I really admire his approach to sound and how unique it is, so that is always there. But it is not something that we think about."
This admiration has translated into a brilliant, Albini-inspired, clean-though-unpolished sound and My Disco are sure to follow suit with an exciting live show.
Narelle Walker
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My Disco play at the Rocket Bar on Thurs 12 October.
'Cancer' is out now through Stomp.
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