On the eve of the national The Big Blue Tour, two of Australia’s longest serving and most influential indie rock musicians, Jamie Hutchings of Bluebottle Kiss and Greg Atkinson of Big Heavy Stuff, settled down for a discussion on hip-hop, the relative success of their peers and getting it right with records. The discussion kicks off with a mention of Greg’s 13-year-old son.


Jamie Hutchings [JH]: Does he play an instrument?

Greg Atkinson [GA]: Yeah, he plays drums and guitar. He prefers drums but he mucks around with guitar and has been writing songs.

JH: Does he like your records?

GA: He does [laughs], he bloody well has to, doesn’t he.

JH: He’s not into Blink 182 is he?

GA: Yeah, yeah for sure but he gets a lot thrown at him and there are times when he just says, "I hate this, dad”. Still, through him I listen to a lot of hip-hop and it is something that we can share. The new Outkast record has some amazing music on it. What about you? Do you listen to hip-hop?

JH: When I was in America once I bought Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet in a second hand store. I was really interested in what Public Enemy were doing at that time but unfortunately when I got home, I found that the platter was a Roy Orbison compilation. That ended up being the closest I ever got to buying a hip-hop record, though I guess that I like a lot of the music that influenced hip-hop, like James Brown.

GA: I think that there is so much crossover these days that influences are getting blurred. There was a guy out here recently called Buck 65 who is making really interesting music, it is sort of Tom Waits delivery over the top of a DJ Shadow background with a folk thing in there too. It’s a great hybrid. I guess that’s what music is all about, it’s something that we are all supposed to share and grow from.

JH: I always reckon that Something For Kate’s first album was heaps, heaps influenced by Big Heavy Stuff. That must feel good to hear your influence in someone else’s work [laughs], even if they do leave you in their dust.

GA: Look, I think that in the real sense, that is what music is all about. The only reason we get competitive is because some people succeed and others don’t. We’ve been in all those different states; there’s been many bands that have left us in the dust. Bands that start off supporting us like Something For Kate or Pollyanna. It happened so many times but I don’t worry about it anymore and it certainly doesn’t affect our music.

JH: Well, we’ve been trying to leave you in our dust for years but we just can’t seem to get on the horse, let alone disappear into the sunset.

GA: [laughs] It just seems to depend who has a release out at the time. Whoever has a new record out gets the attention.

JH: You guys seem to have some big breaks between records though, obviously because you have a lot of other things going on in your life. Still, every time you bring something out there are obviously plenty of people who are still interested.

GA: Yeah, we do find that people lose a bit of interest during the breaks so we find it pointless to play too often in between records. Still, the break gives us time to really do our best with each record and when you release an album every three or four years you have to approach every one of them like it’s your last, because it could be your last. We get in the studio and it’s quite amazing, it’s well and truly home. I feel that for us, this is the best record we’ve ever made.

JH: How long did it take you to make it?

GA: All up about a year, but we were still adding to it in mastering… just ‘cos you can. We used to use mastering to fix things, now we seem to be using it to finish things.

JH: Mastering is black art but it is so incredibly important. The last two albums we have done we have mastered twice either to fix things or to re-sequence. That’s the thing I always find the hardest about finishing an album, what songs to put on and what order to put them in.

GA: Oh, it’s a drag, it gets to the point where you have so many opinions that you feel like you don’t know and almost like you don’t care and as soon as it is done you feel like there are things that should have been changed. Wayne Connolly chose the track listing on our last album because we got to the point where everyone in the band thought that each other’s ideas were shit and Wayne came up with something we all liked first go.

JH: I reckon that is just so important that you really just need to spend time on it. A friend once told me to think of it like classical music, where movements are structured in waves. He said that if you can cluster songs together in groups of three, then arrange those groups into the front, middle and end then you are a long way toward getting the job done. I thought that it was a good approach.

GA: You’re right. I mean, it is like writing a set list. You need to take people on a journey and that means keeping them interested. If there is too much rock people stop listening and too much slow stuff will have them nodding off.

JH: [laughs] It helps keep us interested too!

GA: [laughs] Now that’s important.


Transcribed by Paul Culnane for www.bigheavystuff.net.