Interview: My Disco

Once upon a time, My Disco was a little known band performing to a palpitating mass of cult punk audiences across the vast Australian continent. Some of the pubs they played don’t even exist anymore, while the Melbourne three-piece’s erosive compound of pulsing rhythm and abrasive guitar has given way to the more clinical torment of frustrated release and endless build-ups.

Their early-noughties recordings, still mapping the agitated post-hardcore noise of their Big Black influence, soon gave way to a more minimal, individual sound in their debut album Cancer. That very foundation of Australian fans garnered in 2006 was all but destroyed two years later with the testing follow-up, Paradise, before going back on the promise of further desolation with the most recent My Disco release Little Joy.

“[Little Joy] is just a different record,” says guitarist Ben Andrews. “It’s vastly different from Paradise and not along the same lines of clinical-ness. Instead of stripping back we got a lot more expansive with our ideas, especially with the production of the record.”

Little Joy certainly embraces a more organic sound, touching on tribal rhythms, Tropicália and the dark disco electronica of France’s Discodeine. Far from being predictable, then, the three band members  — comprised of Ben and brother Liam, plus drummer Rohan Rebeiro — exist in a perpetual state of suspended motion; an itinerant life of endless exploration both physical and musical.

“I can’t really remember… oh wait, it began with a ‘P’ but it was a really crazy name,” says Ben of the last venue they played in Poland, kicking off their most recent European tour. For those who are interested, that’s Powiekszenie in Warsaw he’s talking about, the first ‘e’ being a unique diacritic symbol you won’t find with your MacBook ‘Symbol’ option.

“We didn’t know what to expect but I think we just lucked out with the right promoters. In Warsaw the guy had been doing shows for quite a while, so he was really accommodating. He had a really good space that had a rooftop venue and a basement and a café. In Wroclaw, as well, it was like an upstairs bar that had a cocktail lounge. It was actually a little bit more upmarket in both cases than I thought it was going to be.”

Having had their first taste of the Eastern Europe beyond the cooler side of the Berlin wall, My Disco can check Poland and the Czech Republic off the list of intriguing new destinations. Having already blazed trails across the Japanese and South East Asian underground scenes and with Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia up next, it’s rather lucky My Disco have become accustomed to the wandering lifestyle of independent music from (and for) the Antipodes.

“None of us have proper accommodation or girlfriends and it’s probably because we tour so much that we have a bit of a nomadic existence… This is the only way we’ve ever done it. Doing it all ourselves and losing lots of money.”

My Disco play at The Lexington in London tomorrow night (Thursday September 15), you can buy tickets here.

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