Issue 499

Midnight Juggernauts "When we released 'Dystopia' we were seeing lots of things for the first time and we didn't have as much planned out," reminisces Andy Szekeres, one-third of Melbourne-born electro-rockers Midnight Juggernauts. "We put it out in Australia and didn't really know what we were doing with it outside of Australia, and I guess this time having done all the touring we have done over the last couple of years and with the (new) album coming out we know we have the next six months touring solidly back and forth in Australia and to Europe and the US and then we go back and do it again." Such is the life for the group, whose second album 'The Crystal Axis' is seeing global release almost (if not quite) simultaneously around the world. It's a far cry from the release of 'Dystopia', which was staggered as the band hit each new territory and a gameplan was developed for cracking the country with each pit-stop along the way. But, he's keen to point out, there are no expectations as to how the album will be received. "I don't really think about that," he asserts. "The main thing to think about is that having gone through that massive touring stint (when 'Dystopia' was released) we know what to expect in the sense of being away from family and friends for a long time, which is not always easy but you've got to do it. We're excited because it's a different record and we're looking forward to being able to play the tracks because it's a lot more of a 'live' sounding record." There's no doubt about that - where 'Dystopia' had a sense of otherworldliness with the way that was created, 'The Crystal Axis' is a lot easier to pin down. The influence of prog rock is apparent from the get-go, with much of the album rocking on sonic grooves that the band use as the base template to create the sound. "I think that we spent so much time touring in 2008 in particular, and we got a lot better as a live band," Szekeres says. "We started as a band who didn't really like to rehearse, but we ended up working really hard on that aspect and that really just carried over - we wanted to take that sort of thing into the studio and spend time recording together in a room and working with takes to make them whole takes rather than cutting up things too much. "We do listen to lots of prog rock," he continues, "but once again that seems to happen live - we're playing or jamming and the audience gets drawn to these prog tangents and we really enjoy getting into that kind of world. Some of the songs are still pop kind of tracks, but they have these sections that go into different areas which we do like." When you think of the big prog rock acts of the musical world - acts like (early) Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd - their best albums have a sense of escapism to them. Szekeres agrees that that part of the attraction of the sound, with Midnight Juggernauts jamming out much of the material heard on 'The Crystal Axis' as they went along, is getting lost in the sounds. "You've got to lose yourself," he explains of the process of musical evolution for the album. But how to know when to stop, look, and listen to what you have, and determine the best path to take? Quite simply, he believes that you don't always know: it's something that has to run its course. "A lot of the songs on the album had longer parts that made up the songs," he explains. "The main parts of the song we'd have an idea as to what we wanted to do, and then the other sections would drift off, so a lot of the first recording sessions we did for this are 20 minute sections, and then we went back over them to make them make sense. It's a bit self-indulgent and all over-the-place, but that's what was fun about it." 'The Crystal Axis' is out now, with Midnight Juggernauts coming to The Gov on Thu 12 Aug. Andrew Weaver