Dropbunny… What’s down, doc?
Interview: Dropbunny
Published on September 12th, 2012 | Jonny Abrams
Melbourne rockers Dropbunny recently released their second album IO, so Rocksucker fired some questions over to front man Xero to find out a little bit more about the whole operation. First, though, here is a choice cut from the album; best keep clear if you’re squeamish or just eating while reading this, though…
How would you describe your music, if pushed?
Eek! It’s dark, heavy, with a lot of screaming, white-noise and odd time signatures. It covers everything from math-metal to grunge to electronica with a bunch of other stuff as well, as otherwise we’d bore ourselves asleep. Aside from the standard guitar/drums thing, there’s also violins, bowed double bass and some home-made instruments in places. The girls in our band also do some very eerie vocal harmonies. It’s meant to be a bit of a headfuck.
Where are you based, and what do you use to record with?
We’re based in a little town called Melburn in Australia. We’ve done most of our recordings at Woodstock Studios in St. Kilda, which have a huge amount of fun old radio broadcasting equipment that we recorded with. We basically try to get all the equipment we can get our hands on, plug everything into everything, and see what happens from there.
Are you signed to a label? If so, how did you come to their attention?
No no no, we’re very independent, which is working really well for us as it means people can grab our stuff online, regardless of what country they’re in. The artwork and website and everything that surrounds the music is pretty important to us, and this way we get to make sure it’s all exactly the way we want it.
Is there a full album in the works? If so, what can you tell us about it? (Feel free to be as abstract as you like…)
We just released our second full-length album IO, which is an 18-track monstrosity. It’s simultaneously a lot more experimental and a lot catchier than our last one, so we’re pretty happy with that. It’s basically a concept album, so all the tracks feed into each other,
Where can we hear your music online?
Both of our albums are up on www.dropbunny.com, where you can pay whatever you like for them. Including nothing, if you’re particularly averse to buying music.
Which have been your most exciting gigs and/or overall moments so far?
Haha the album launch for IO was a little spectacular…we normally have a lot of theatrics in our shows, and for this one had a magic trick that didn’t really go as planned. I was meant to slice open a toy rabbit, and pull an enormous ton of red material out, covered in fake blood, which was tied to a bunch of sausages – so you’d just have all this gory meat coming out of this tiny toy.
Unfortunately the table everything was sitting on collapsed half-way through, so the band and the audience were quickly covered in several kilograms of raw sausage meat, so everyone was slipping over in this disgusting mess. It was pretty hilarious.
Got any more coming up? (Gigs, that is…)
At the moment we’re finishing the album tour around Australia, although we’re very keen to get over to Europe early next year. We’ve been to the US a couple of times, and will almost certainly be back late 2013.
Are there any obscure and/or up-and-coming acts that you’d like to recommend or give a shout-out to?
Well our guitarist/synth player Refund does some really cool electronic stuff, which you can hear at http://soundcloud.com/refund . It’s everything from IDM to ambient to noise stuff, I’m kinda in awe of his songwriting prowess. Back to more metal stuff, there’s a Melbourne 3-piece called Broozer who I have a massive hard-on for, they’ve got their first EP coming out soon. You can check out one of their tracks at https://www.reverbnation.com/broozermetal
Finally, if you were forced to spend the rest of your days in solitary confinement, but were allowed to bring the entire works of five different artists along to tide you over, whose would you choose?
That’s a lot of solitary confinement – I should probably email Bradley Manning for tips. But I’ll say Frank Zappa (coz there’s so fucking much of it), the books of Robert Anton Wilson, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, NIN, and The Dillinger Escape Plan (because I might have long enough to actually learn their songs properly!).
Xero, thank you.
For more information please visit www.dropbunny.com
About the Author
Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.
