TTT: A Fresh Start

After four-and-a-half years together, TTT have made a fresh a start with a new name and a long-awaited debut. But as DOUG WALLEN discovered, they’re still being dogged by comparisons to Gang Of Four. Photo by CALLUM PONTON.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] It’s been a long time coming, but the first album by Tic Toc Tokyo – now TTT – has arrived. Lands finds the Melbourne four-piece expanding upon its past slate of “angular” post-punk with much gloomy atmosphere and new wave quirkiness. Despite the early evidence of lead single ‘Animal’, there’s not so much the spectre of Talking Heads over it as PiL and Wire, while the name Gang Of Four will continue to dog the band. But gradually for TTT, those are passing signposts on the way to someplace new. And Lands does occupy its own logic-defying universe, with singer-guitarist Simon Gibbs, guitarist Marty Umanski, bassist Adrian Vecino and drummer Nic Oogjes gelling like never before. Tight, textural interplay contrasts with a drifting undercurrent, at times reeking of dread and decay. It’s a heady, adventurous record that belies the band’s humble beginnings and points the way towards future greatness.

Discussing the album in a long telephone interview, Vecino pinpointed his approach to playing bass, illuminated the album’s foggy feel and weighed in on the band’s perceived influences, name change, and seeming affinity for garish paisley shirts.

How did the band first come together as Tic Toc Tokyo?
Simon instigated the band. He said he had some ideas for songs. I had never played in a band before and I had just been learning to play bass for a few months. One day we attempted to have a jam and it was pretty abysmal. But we decided to give it another try, and it progressed from there. Simon knew Nick and Nick came on board as drummer. Nick knew Marty from his work, and Marty ended up playing guitar. So it all came together from not very much at all.

And the band self-released Lands but it’s being distributed through MGM?
That’s right. For the first EP and single we got distribution through MGM. We have done everything independently, not having management or anything. The Arts Victoria grant was the first time we had someone external helping. It was one less thing for us to handle. And logistically, it’s not really hard to get a record out if you manage to get distribution.

Will it be coming out on vinyl?
That’s something we’ve talked about. The first run is CD. I think it’s pretty close to the limit of what we can fit on the vinyl, so it might be a matter of remixing something or maybe removing a song.

“We wanted to have an interesting image. We don’t really like the idea of looking like four dudes just hanging out doin’ stuff."

As the bassist, do you think there’s an emphasis on the rhythm section in TTT?
I suppose, to a degree. Maybe that’s something that’s developed over time. I suppose the use of drums has changed. Fairly early on, Nick brought in a rack of rototoms, so that started giving the drums a different sound and different prominence. That’s influenced the way we use drums. Sometimes Simon or Marty will play the rototoms separately. It gives a different feel, layering the drum sound like that. And as the bass player, I’ve become a little more conscious of making the rhythms a bit more focused. But I’m quite into having quite an expressive bass sound, instead of just having like a low-end filler thing. I like the idea of having a bit of character to the melody of the bass.

The album can be repetitious as well as exploratory. The band will often get a lyric and just work away at it, but at other times you go off into new territory.
The repetition is something people picked up on a little bit, which is maybe something we’re not completely conscious of or making a focus. The emphasis on rhythm you talked about sort of lends itself to that, like having a locked idea or pattern that goes through the sound. And then things happen around that or move around that. And with the lyrics, that’s part of the idea as well. The lyrics are definitely a prominent part of the music, but I don’t think we’re really a narrative-lyric sort of band. It’s more based on theme or mood. It’s a bit more fragmentary. With the guitar as well, Marty’s playing has become a lot more textural, moving away from the idea of a main riff that’s the melodic narrative of the song. It’s more about the contrast behind the sounds, moving around one motif or exploring different aspects of it.

There’s also clarinet, trumpet, and group vocals. That’s a lot of tools to choose from.
Nick just got a trumpet as a hobby and brought it into rehearsal a few times. The way we work on a lot of songs in rehearsal is just sort of a jam. Someone might have an idea, and we might start playing along and see what comes out of it. The trumpet started to come into some of the songs, and Simon used to play clarinet at school. They just found their way into the songs. With the vocals, Nick and Simon both contribute vocals and sometimes even Marty. It’s just playing with the sounds of vocals and overlapping them, maybe repeating them and having the interplay between them.

You have the sole writing credit on the instrumental track ‘Interlude’. It’s right in the middle of Lands, like a pause between two sides.
That wasn’t planned at first, but it came into it when we started to sequence the songs. Originally, we were planning to have a few more interludes linking the songs. The guy [Adam Calaitzis] who runs the studio [Toyland] is a drummer and is quite interested in percussion, so he had a big tub of percussion instruments and some drums lying around. So at the end of the last recording session, we had like 20 minutes left and there was no tape left. We had the idea to just jam something with percussion and see what came out. We were planning to use that long track and cut it up to link the songs, but once we started mixing the record and sequencing the songs, we realised there was already quite a lot happening on there. We thought that might convolute it. The interlude [heard on the album] was just something I did at home straight into the computer. I did it all with bass: the different tracks are just made up of different bass songs. I took that song ‘Hinterlands’ that it leads into and did a bit of an extended intro that led into that.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] There’s a real fogginess to the production, which fits the album design you did.
Yeah. The artwork was done by myself using paintings by Noël Skrzypczak. She’s a Melbourne-based artist and just a friend. That idea of fogginess … I suppose the production has come out a little bit that way. That maybe came out of the layering of different songs. We were quite conscious of wanting the idea of texture in the sound. We wanted a certain amount of punchiness, not really a slick sheen. When we were thinking of artwork, we had that idea as well. We wanted something with a bit of texture that alluded to that. The artwork we did for the last two releases were quite flat and graphic, so we had the idea to make this one a bit contrary and quite vibrant. We came across Noël’s work again and it fit that feeling.

There seems to be a lot of influence of ’70s post-punk and older stuff on the band. Do you feel like you’re almost reclaiming some of those influences?
I don’t know. That’s interesting. We all co-write the songs together, and most often the songs just come out of a jam. To be honest, it’s something we’ve never talked about in the songwriting, referencing any of that.

But as listeners, are you fans of post-punk?
We’ve got quite different musical tastes. I definitely like some bands from that era, and we sort of all do. But I think Simon is quite into vocals and likes stuff like Patti Smith, so that brings a vocal perspective. Marty’s a big INXS fan and likes Guns N’ Roses. I don’t know; I can see why those comparisons come up. I’m not necessarily comparing us to bands of that era, but the fact that the music is based on quite simple ideas and repetition … I feel like that’s where a lot of those comparisons come from. And just trying to work with different sounds. But I find that when people talk about bands from that era … there was an album review that compared it to B-52s and Gang Of Four and Public Image Ltd. Those are quite different bands.

I think Simon’s voice sounds a lot like John Lydon’s voice in Public Image, but some of the rhythms will remind people of Gang Of Four and Wire. None of those are bad things, obviously.
No, of course. Like I said, we do definitely like that. But it’s never been a conscious thing. The way that we write songs and what we’re interested in as a band, I never want to feel like we’re trying to recreate something. When we started playing, we played quite a few times at Ding Dong [in Melbourne]. Every time we finished playing, one of the DJs would play [Gang Of Four’s] ‘Damaged Goods’. At the time, I literally had never even heard of Gang Of Four. It wasn’t really something that was on the band’s radar, but it’s funny that those things came up quite early. We didn’t get the joke until quite a bit later.

So people wind up thinking you’re more influenced by something than you are.
When you hear something, you normally relate it to things that you’ve heard and draw parallels. But sometimes it’s interesting the things that come up, which aren’t necessarily things we thought about or have even listened to or liked. Some people can get a bit prickly when you bring up influences, but I don’t feel that way. If you love music, you probably have strong ideas about things you like or don’t like and you are influenced by things you like and don’t like. I think that’s all part of it.

What was behind the decision to change the band’s name?
A few things. There was a period where we felt like we were getting a lot of crap for being a “Tokyo band”, but that’s probably passed now. When we started the band, we thought a long time about the name. We liked that it sounded a bit unusual and had an interesting vocal sound. It was quite an upbeat-feeling name. But over the years, we used TTT quite a bit as an abbreviation.

Another part of it is feeling like we’ve taken a bit of time to do the album. It has been almost four-and-a-half years since we started as a band. Initially when we were talking about changing it, I wasn’t too fussed about it because we used TTT anyway. But people have acted quite surprised. It’s a bit surprising that people saw it as a big change when we didn’t think of it that way. I think it was a good thing to do. After four-and-a-half years, it feels right that we’re putting out our first album [as TTT]. It feels like a little bit of fresh start, or a new marker point at least.

That’s how it seemed when the single ‘Animal’ came out along with news of the name change and the paisley press shot.
It’s funny, the reason the press shot came out at that time is because we’ve never really had one, and we needed a band photo for the album.

Why the paisley?
I don’t know. That’s a funny thing as well. That’s something that people really picked up on. When we had the idea for the album artwork and even the sound of the album, we liked the idea of something textural and maybe clashing as well. Like not bad taste, but even something a little off-balance. [We had] the idea of having the ugly shirts and the different clashing patterns and then a really upfront, normal photo, almost like a family portrait. It’s quite normal and straight-faced but everyone is wearing horrible clothing.

And y’know, it’s not necessarily horrible. You kind of pull it off.
We’re not trying to be funny funny or anything, but it’s a playful idea. We wanted to have an interesting image. We don’t really like the idea of looking like four dudes just hanging out doin’ stuff.

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Lands is out now via MGM. TTT’s play Gangbusters at Bar 32 in Canberra tonight (May 5). For more tour dates click here.