Gold Fields: TAS In Session

Looking for a sparkling summer anthem? A good place to start is the intoxicating single "Treehouse" from Australian newcomers Gold Fields who have a self-titled EP out now.

The Ballarat-bred quintet will release its debut album on Astralwerks later this year. The guys — singer Mark Robert Fuller, guitarist Vin Andanar, bassist Luke Peldys, keyboardist/percussionist Rob Clifton and drummer Ryan D'Sylva —  visited The Alternate Side while Stateside for SXSW and impressively played the Gold Fields EP in its entirety.

Watch the performance videos, including the effervescent "Treehouse," below and listen to Gold Fields in session on TAS on 91.5 WNYE this Friday, June 1, at 11 a.m. EDT and streaming online.

Kara Manning: Was SXSW really your first immersion into American culture? 

Vin Andaner: We were here earlier, in August or September of last year, recording the base of the album.

Kara: That’s right, you [recorded your debut album]  in L.A.

Vin: We didn’t get to see much though. Just the studio and our apartment. We saw San Francisco for about five hours. But this is the first time we’ve gotten to travel and see the country a bit more.

Kara:  Mark, what was the good, the bad and the ugly of SXSW?

Mark Robert Fuller: I think we were really happy with how the shows went, even though one was in a backyard and the other was in an outdoor courtyard. Changeover times are really quick and we didn’t get a soundcheck the whole time we were there. That was maybe the bad. And the rush of it. But the shows always came together and it was lots of good fun. The bad was not being able to get a breath of fresh air into your ears! Sound everywhere. Which is good, but maybe not when there are six different bands playing at once in different bars and you’re standing in the middle of street, trying to talk to my mum on the phone.

Kara: Pretty much everything from your Gold Fields EP has been released as a single down in Australia, correct? Where does “The Woods” fall? One of your early songs?

Vin: This EP is the first four songs we ever wrote.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viDZVgZ_TNc]

Kara: I’m looking at Rob and Ryan, this double percussive assault that you do, and I wonder, [as you built] this band, was the strong percussive element something you guys wanted to do?

Mark: It was. When we first started, we started writing pop music but Ryan has this obsession with really complex percussion. I was listening to a lot of hip-hop and things with big beats. When we actually started the band, Rob had never played drums before. He never even played keys that much and hadn’t been in a band. He started out on a keyboard, gradually built to this.

Kara: I read that four of you had met in high school for the most part, I think Ryan came later, but you began with a country-ish sound? A darker sound?

Vin: No that’s true. Mark and I had been in bands since we were in high school and the last band we were in we came out of and stopped playing that because we weren’t into it anymore. We started writing this dark, country vibe. That made us feel a bit depressed. It wasn’t until Ryan and I started talking about starting something properly. Out of those dark songs that Mark and I had written there was one, “The Woods,” that we kept and the original demo I sent to Ryan and said, “Go crazy on percussion.” He overloaded it with all these cool sounds.

Kara: [For your] album, you worked with an amazing producer, Mickey Petralia, who has worked with Beck, Björk and Dandy Warhols. That’s an amazing leap from [recording] in your bedroom. How did that come about?

Mark: It was the label [Astralwerks]. When we started thinking about doing an album, we didn’t know whether to do it ourselves because as you said, the EP was recorded in Vin’s bedroom pretty much. We didn’t know whether to go that way or try to find a producer. When the opportunity came to work with Mickey, we thought, “Let’s definitely do this.” He worked with some amazing bands. So we took that opportunity, went and flew to LA and the first studio we ever recorded in was Ocean Way in Capitol Studios. Amazing studio to be in, let alone recording in.

Kara: Just a year after you started recording as a band.

Mark: Yeah.

Vin: It’s certainly better than my bedroom.

Kara: Was there a mentor aspect to your relationship with Mickey?

Mark: For sure. We’d only written songs with ourselves and recorded with ourselves so we didn’t know how other people did it. He gave us a lot of advice with the structuring of songs. Even stuff like the tempos of different songs to bring out the best in the actual song. Stuff we wouldn’t have even thought of.

Kara: “Treehouse” was picked up by Triple J which is probably the foremost radio station in Australia and then it was picked up by one of my favorite UK labels, the Young and Lost Club which also has Everything Everything and Bombay Bicycle Club. That also adjusted the way this band grew because you took out a loan and toured the UK and took a big risk.

Vin: Yes, our sixth show as a band was in the UK. Sixth show ever for Rob or Luke in a band.

Mark: Yeah, we had been talking to management and trying to get a team together, off the demos that we recorded. So we had a lot of good advice from them. They believed that we could make something of it so we took the risk and went for it.

Kara: I suspect that “Holy No” was one of the songs that you did, since it was one of your first four!

Mark: Yeah, it was. That one in particular was good to play in the UK.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi8UrpXeWq0]

Kara: The name Gold Fields — where does that come from?

Mark: It’s where we live.

Kara: Is that an area of Ballarat?

Mark: An area of Victoria, yeah.

Kara: How far are you from Melbourne?

Vin: An hour and a half.

Kara: So growing up where you were, there was one significant club that got bands coming through, correct?

Mark: Yeah, the Korova Lounge.

Kara: Must have been thrilling for you to play the venue where you saw a lot of bands growing up.

Mark: For sure. I remember the first time we played, like when we were 15, in a battle of the bands in an old high school band and that was a thrill. We were that happy playing Korova because it was the coolest place on earth to us. It’s still good to play it now.

Kara: “Treehouse” is a song that you uploaded to [Australian radio station] Triple J site, [a program] for unsigned bands, right?

Rob: Yeah, Triple J really support local artists and unsigned bands and they have a program called “Unearthed” and they try to help. I don’t know they found us.

Kara: This song broke you open in so many ways. Was it written kind of quickly or was it a form of discovery about how your sound might be?

Mark: I think it was a point that we decided that we wanted to write less depressing music and something that was going to make us happy. Ryan programmed an instrumental on his computer and then brought it to the band. We all liked and took the vocals from a song I’d recorded years ago and put it on top of it and it fit pretty well. We added the “oooohs” and lots of harmonies and guitar parts.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLndITijot4]

Kara: You’re such a good, tight live band even though you’ve not been together that long. Are you relentless, as far as rehearsing is concerned?

Mark and Vin: Yes!

Kara: You did the vast festival circuit in Australia, but where have you grown the most as a live band?

Rob: I think live we used to have a lot more percussion and bass in a backing track that we’d play to in the background. As we’ve gotten used to playing live and better at it, we’ve taken that stuff out and most of it is all live.

Kara: You do a cover of [Underworld's] “Born Slippy” in your live sets. What do you like about that band and what other bands excite you?

Mark: I think [“Born Slippy”] is just an amazing song. Hands down, it’s an unreal song. We were about to go on tour with a dance festival in Australia and we were trying to come up with a cover to play because we knew that the crowds wouldn’t know a lot of our music. That was the most perfect song. With the added percussion and drums that we put into it, it makes it our own, I think. We don’t want it on record, though. We’ve had a lot of good feedback from people [who’ve seen it] live and we’re jumping around on stage when we play it live, but here, I don’t know if it would work so well.

Kara: What other bands do you like? When I first heard you, I thought [you] must like Friendly Fires. You probably get that comparison a lot.

Mark: Yeah. A fair bit. I grew up listening to Brand New. I really loved them. Probably my favorite band of all time. We didn’t think that they had any influence over what we were doing or what I was doing when writing since I was trying to do the opposite — not personal stuff — but then listening back and looking back, they’ve had a big influence.

Kara: Of the songs on the album-to-come, what new material are you most proud of?

Vin: Everything as a whole. We’re all pretty proud. I think people are going to get a surprise when they hear it. I think people think they know what it’s going to be like, but it’s different.

Mark: There’s songs that sort of sound like dark synth-pop songs and songs that sound that sound aggressive and rock-y. I think it’s got a fairly wide span with each song fairly different. It will be interesting to see how people take it.

Kara: Given how much things have changed for you over the last two years, do you ever just look at each other and go, “What just happened?”

Mark: All the time. Those little moments like when we were in [Capitol Records] and someone says, “Don’t sit on that chair. That’s Frank Sinatra’s chair. You can’t sit on that.” I was like, “Where am I?”

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq85tXSaiSo]