People Taking Pictures

People Taking Pictures feels like a completely different creative outlet from Psychedelic Porn Crumpets while still sharing that same fearless approach to experimentation. How did the project first come together, and what creative gaps did it allow you to explore that perhaps weren’t possible elsewhere?

I started making lo fi beat tapes and stuff back in 2019, A lot of that came from touring and listening to sampling and hip hop while on the road. I think that year I spent 8 months on tour so there was such a big desire to try something different and break up those long hours of travel and blaring music in pubs. Then it kind of evolved beyond being just beat tapes and I worked with Nelly on a couple of songs on that first album. Its always been at its core a hiphop/sampling project but as my home studio improved I started to record instruments more live and do less sampling as I could get better results from my own playing. It was trying to still get the vibe I was after but with a fully DIY approach. Even to this day its still very DIY but there's a lot more toys to play with and get interesting results in the recording process.

‘Let This Be’ pushes your sound into darker and more aggressive territory while still balancing moments of melody and calm. Can you take us through the writing and production process behind the track, and how you shaped that emotional contrast between chaos and release?

It was really a rough demo that I had recorded into an SP404 Sampler, just some breakbeats and then a single guitar with some 404 effects magic on it. After getting home from the road I just started to try and arrange it and write some of the chorus for it. It wasn't until Nelly (POW! Negro) came round to help me write some stuff we kind of worked out a great back and forward routine with the verses. It felt like a change in the process as a lot of the time with hip hop and features and stuff its just verses or sections being thrown into a song on its own rather than the two styles vocally merging in a verse. There is also a bit of contrast with using bass guitars in the verses and then switching to a sub bass like a sub37 in the chorus, It just goes somewhere the bass guitar can't and really slams the low end on the mix.

Lyrically, the single explores social, environmental and psychological collapse alongside information overload and political tension. How much of the track came from personal experience, and how much was inspired by broader observations of modern life and online culture?

I think anyone with a mobile phone is usually bombarded with bad news in the morning if you read into it too much. I guess both of us felt like things were at a tipping point when we wrote this and since then it's only really escalated globally. The song dives into commentary about things like ICE in the USA as I had some friends who had been directly affected by the injustice and corruption of the system over there. The song at its core is really about being emotionally affected without anything happening to you directly. The video was kind of that message, just people going about their day with no release valve to destress and breathe. There has definitely been a lot of corruption in Australian politics as well and both of us were kind of riled up and angry about things. The song just happened to already meet the level we were on mentally and spiritually when it came to writing lyrics. It was a not so gentle reminder that you are your own reality in some ways and not to get too sucked into the spiral of negativity that the media perpetuates to keep the general population divided.

The upcoming EP SOOP has been described as diving into the chaos of modern existence and the endless ‘bowl of soup’ that is the internet. What was the overarching vision for the EP, and how did you want listeners to feel after experiencing it front to back?

In my own personal life I was going through some huge changes and I felt as though the pressure of everything was weighing down on me pretty heavily. The music industry in particular for me has turned to Soup, it's a mess of people screaming out for attention and obsessed with their own vanity and appearance. So much of the way people consume music and art now is losing its meaning, the depth of listening and watching things has deteriorated, especially with the advancements in AI. The term SOOP was a joke to myself really as AI SLOP is something being thrown around a lot and I think Soup is a great metaphor for the billions of things uploaded every day to various social media platforms. This was kind of our own personal push back on everything, and by using mostly analog processes in the studio and with the videos and photos we wanted to get back to raw human emotion and feeling.

Between People Taking Pictures, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, Superego and Myriad Sun, both of you come from incredibly distinct musical worlds. What has been most exciting about bringing those influences together, and how has the collaboration evolved over time?

It very much started out as me needing an extra flavour and style for the project, I didn't want to just make another psych, indie, rock sort of thing. I think a big strength in music is knowing what you can and can't do as an artist. I know for a fact that I can't really do hip hop on my own as my voice does not naturally lend itself to that. After collaborating on a couple of tracks on each of the last 4 albums it just made sense to work more closely together and properly fuse the two elements of my singing style and Nellys hip hop style. I've always loved how projects like Gorillaz were able to seamlessly fuse genres together in this way and its addictive to keep trying to make things work in music that maybe shouldn't. Seeing how Nelly has evolved as an artist seperate to me is always super influential on the directions I take with this project. Hearing the evolution of the Superego catalogue and the heavy drum and bass elements of Myriad Sun inspire me to delve further into those genres after hearing Nelly's influence on that sound.

Your live shows have become known for their immersive, unpredictable energy, especially following recent support slots with Psychedelic Porn Crumpets and Morcheeba. How are you translating the themes of SOOP into the upcoming national tour, and what kind of experience are you hoping audiences walk away with?

We just want people to get out of their comfort zone with music really. By stepping up the intensity of the live shows with these news songs we are hoping to just give people a kind of release, the same sort of release we get from making and producing the music in the first place. Everyones a bit pissed off at the moment and we are hoping to meet them with that energy.