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De Jah Groove
 To call De Jah Groove's music restless is an understatement, the band careening from one track to the next while they mix a host of musical styles to create their own world fusion party. But even with a seeming carte blanche to experiment, the members still need to find other outlets for their musical creativity, as I find out from drummer Lach Hall.
"We do have other interests that we want to pursue musically. I don't know if you can hear, but in the backgroun, some of the boys are rehearsing for a rock band that they've just started," he tells me as we start a friendly conversation about the direction the group is headed.
"De Jah Groove is sort of it's own thing now, and we don't have to work as hard. It used to be really hard for us to book a tour, say, but now that we've go a bit of a profile in different areas around Australia we can call up and it's not so hard and time-consuming any more as it used to be. So, in a way, it enables us to pursue other areas as well and next year we're all looking forward to doing a few other things, but it's not stopping De Jah."
Indeed, it seems it would need nothing less than an All Points Bulletin to stop De Jah, their current album tour encompassing just about every imaginable location in Australia. As part of the tour, there are a few dates at backpacker bars, gigs that the band particularly look forward to. "People at backpacker's are just there to have a good time, and there's always a better atmosphere," Hall says of the international crowds they play to, before quickly clarifying.
"Or, at least there's a different atmosphere in the room. And why we love doing it is it's a great time to party and in a way it's almost like travelling because you're not surrounded by Australians, you're surrounded by people from all over the world."
The band's members certainly haven't been shy about travelling themselves, and this has provided some of the inspiration for the sounds on their debut album, 'Rock Bottom Jackpot'.
"The boys went away to Brazil - the twins that are our songwriters for the band [Harley and Delaney Stewart] - they went to Brazil for two or three months at the start of this year and they came back with all sorts of Brazilian instruments and a real taste for choro acoustic music for guitar," Hall informs me, before revealing a surprising bit of information.
Before the group's debut album was even recorded, De Jah Groove embarked on their inaugural international tour, though it took a slightly unusual form. "We went to London last December because we won a competition," Hall explains. "It was a kind of a world battle of the bands type of thing. We don't normally do competitions and stuff, but it was just a great chance to visit London. It was just for 6 days, though, so we didn't get a chance to go anywhere else, but that was our first international tour."
Hall himself is off to Vietnam once the current tour is finished in February and the band has some time off. While there, there's every possibility that he'll be just as inspired by the music and instruments he comes across as Clare Bowditch was for her recent album, 'The Moon Looked On'. Of course, no matter what he brings back, he'll be hard pressed to trump the most unusual instrument used on 'Rock Bottom Jackpot'; "on the last recording we used brake drums cylinders to make a percussion sort of sound. I mean, it was kind of inspired by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, but it was fun."
And it seems as if the band's live show is inspired by the energy that the Chilli Peppers bring onstage with them, if not the props - "about half of what we do is a visual thing," Hall says lightheartedly as he explains what the De Jah Groove live experience is like. "For some reason, we've got into this habit of jumping around onstage and acting like idiots, and people seem to like that."
Alexis Buxton-Collins
'Rock Bottom Jackpot' is out now through Amphead.
De Jah Groove play at Rhino Bar on Tues 18 Dec.
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