History Repeats

Zillions frontman and PhD history student Nick Craft talks to JOSH JENNINGS about life after Sidewinder, the occupational hazards of DIY recording and his new album 'Play! Zeuxis: Xight? Zeen…'.

What aspects of the album most float your boat?

I’m pleased with it all, to be honest. It was done in such a piecemeal fashion – a few weeks here and a few weeks there six months later. But by the time it all got finished, it kind of felt like I could listen to it quite objectively, and I’m really pleased with the way it sounds. Seeing the art put together was cool as well. I do all these little drawings just because I can’t help myself, so to see them all put together to make the art was really cool.

Did you encounter any headaches making the album?

Rohan, who plays drums and did most of the engineering for the first part of the album, and I were working mostly by ourselves with no real budget to speak of, and kind of bumming around the Mornington Peninsula trying to make a record. That’s a fantastic thing to do, but it’s very easy to do that and not get anything finished off, and that’s the main problem with ProTools and things like that.

The modern disease of recording artists is they can never get anything finished off because they work at home. They work on equipment which is pretty cheap and it lends itself to aimless perfection in a way – you never know when something’s finished. So I guess one of the headaches is that we realised at some point that we really had to get into the studio because it’s a kind of occupational hazard to have seven days to do something and have people that you’re responsible to. You have to say, at some point, that’ll do, let’s move on.

Lots of bands head off to fairly remote places to record. Do you think there are any genuine merits to that?

I think it’s a work ethic kind of thing. It’s often easier to do things when there are no distractions. Having said that, we had nobody cracking the whip, so when things weren’t working we could go to the beach, which was a blessing and a curse in ways. But the other problem with bands going off to the beach to make records is that often they come back writing cod reggae or doing blues jams or something. But I don’t think our record really suffered from that because we went down there with a clear idea of the songs we were going to do.

Your press release describes the Zillions sound as “beautifully tangled, yet somehow classically poised, songwriting, lush and strangely bent orchestras of guitar and a meeting of clanging punky riffery with glorious quasi-classical melodic turns”. Does that mean anything to you?

The modern disease of recording artists is they can never get anything finished off because they work at home.

I think it’s quite good. I didn’t pay much attention to the press release, but I think that sums it up quite nicely. It beats the descriptions that I’ve been able to give about it with people. I think what I like to do with The Zillions is to have hints of being kind of classic in the sense that it runs in the guitar pop tradition.

You’re completing a PhD in Renaissance history at Oxford. Does that experience inform what you’re doing musically in any way, and vice-versa?

I kind of fell into this accidentally. I didn’t really mean to end up in Renaissance history, as I didn’t really imagine I’d end up in music when I was 17 or 18 years old … I think the way this record has been put together … it’s 10 songs that I think have a feeling of a wholeness or a pacing to them. Although you certainly don’t need to do a PhD to learn that, I think the actual way the record is weighted probably indicates that I’m thinking a bit more about this kind of stuff or that it matters to me a bit more to have these things weighted or continuous.

Can you compare the experience of playing in The Zillions with that of Sidewinder?

In Sidewinder we came out and wanted to be successful and we wanted to go out there and hit the road. We played a huge number of shows and played every place that we could or were told to play, and we had a great time doing that but I don’t think I’ve got the same kind of aspirations.

If The Zillions turned into a great success tomorrow I’d be quite happy, but I’d be mystified to how it happened because it’s really a different kind of project. I started Sidewinder with my brother when I was just 17 years old and I think having been through the 10 years of that and then gone away and thought nothing of music for five-or-six years and then started doing The Zillions, I think I really appreciate the fact that I can put out records or that someone would want to put out my record. But there are huge numbers of differences. The fact that I don’t do it full-time and the fact I have no wish to play certain places ever again just for the off chance that I might break my band and become hugely successful. It’s a whole different ball game.

ZILLIONS ‘PLAY! ZEUXIS: XIGHT? ZEEN’ LAUNCH

Sunday, December 7
Oxford Arts Factory, Sydney, NSW

Sunday, December 14
Troubadour, Brisbane, QLD