Regurgitator

Regurgitator are used to doing things a little out of the ordinary. Since their 1994 debut the band has lived in a box, recorded in Thailand and Brazil, and more recently composed a soundtrack for a live screening of an anime film. Now for their next trick, Regurgitator is making the album disappear. Kind of.

"Well I don't know about that," laughs bassist/vocalist Ben Ely. "But when you make a song, you want to share it with people in an immediate way. So this is a cool way of doing it: we write it, record it, mix it, then we put it straight online for people to hear."

The Gurge' are paving the way for their peers by not pouring the energy into popping out an album. Instead they're kicking back and releasing tracks online, as they come. 

"It's nice to be able to put your stuff up there. We don't mind if people get it for free: you just want people to hear your music. We probably will do an album when we get enough material, but for now I guess it suits our short attention span," Ely explains. "Quan [Yeomans, the other half of the Regurgitator creative axis] and I are talking about having a release day on the first Saturday of the month and release a minimum of two songs. I think we work better under pressure anyway: it's good for us to have deadlines so we do something."

Already the tracks the band has posted are a sign of things to come. Without belonging to an album, each song has its own sound. It's pretty clear Regurgitator love to genre hop, which sounds like an extreme bloodsport, but is far less dangerous.

"Oh, we genre hop. Our better albums are the ones that genre hop quite extremely. Our stronger albums like Tu Plang and Mish Mash are kind of pretty heavy in the genre-hopping, and the more we write diversely the better it is for us as a band, so I think it works well to not write consciously for a record."

One of the new songs, ‘Distractions', sees Ben vent his frustration about our reliance on technology. "At the start of the year, I felt overloaded with so many different portals; film, computers, mobiles. I thought when is enough enough? We're all just distracted with technology, it's frustrating. A lot of the big issues don't get addressed because we're too plugged into our pods. It's like The Matrix."

Stepping back into reality, the band continued their impressive run of extracurricular activities when they rescored the soundtrack to Japanese anime film Akira. The pressure was on, not least because Anime fans can be ruthless.

"Totally – plus the soundtrack is already amazing, so we were nervous. It's very Japanese with Taiko drums, instrumentation, melodies. So we did the opposite of the music: when it was quiet we tried to have loud bits, we wanted to do a different take on it."

The performance was a succes and the Opera House crowed were wowed. It turns out the Akira gig was not only good for fans, but for the band too.

"It was fun, and that's the only way we can keep our band going, keep it interesting for ourselves, is to do projects like this," Ben admits.

Now Regurgitator, the band who'll try anything, are already looking to the future.

"We're toying with the idea of making our own silent films, and composing score. Quan just got a nice camera, so were thinking of directing our own films and composing a score to go with it. It makes it just about the music."

Regurgitator are all about the music, the band are now free of the major label shackles, and seem all the better for it.

"People are discovering that you don't need a ten million dollar budget from Los Angeles to make your record," says Ben. "If you got a good idea that counts for more then a million bucks."

In that case it's safe to say Regurgitator are doing just fine. Thomas Mitchell

Regurgitator play with Rat vs Possum and Laneous & The Family Yah.