‘Sydney Feels So Sectarian Now’: No Art, Making And Unity Floors

Despite sharing bills and social circles, Sydney bands No Art, Unity Floors and Making don’t sound the least bit alike. MAX EASTON sits down with members of all three ahead of No Art’s East Coast tour, on some of which the other two are supporting. They discuss each band’s songwriting and recording methods, genres like “knee rock” and “post-bass” and the city’s increasingly divided network of venues and rehearsal spaces.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] The mingling of No Art, Making and Unity Floors as friends and common members of Sydney’s DIY line-ups has been formed over a half decade. No Art’s lingering swoons are in stark contrast to Making’s stilted and aggressive deliveries or the exuberant guitar-drums duo of Unity Floors (pictured), but it’s their likeminded approach to music which makes them feel a part of something singular. From their friendships grown in Sydney’s insular scene to the similarities in their approach to recording and releasing, the three acts have more in common than suggested by their scant recorded evidence.

From the drunken enthusiasm that followed a Custard reunion show at Enmore’s Vic on the Park last weekend, a circle consisting of members of each band spoke excitably about No Art’s East Coast tour in support of their 7” Dead Arm – a tour where Making and Unity Floors will perform support duties in Bateman’s Bay and Brisbane, respectively. Under the blue-and-purple hues of Custard’s lighting rig, it was decided to put this discussion to print, recapping five years of three bands and close friends to yield a snapshot of their lives in Sydney’s sprawling music scene.

Four days later, over a case of beer at the round table of a Newtown sharehouse generously donated by infamous ex-Brisbanite Josh Tucker, a frequently distracted two-hour recording was made, condensed and edited for readability below.

LIST OF PLAYERS
No Art: Trish Roberts, Vivian Huynh, Charles Buddy Dabooul (not present)
Unity Floors: Gus Hunt, Henry Gosling
Making: Chris Davies, Pete Kossen, Matt Taylor (not present)

It felt like the three of you, at some stage, all started appearing on the same bills. Did you feel like there was a point where the three bands felt like a part of something?
Gus: I don’t really know, there was a night at Black Wire. I remember a night where Henry and I were watching with Chris, Pete and Matt [all of Making] watching someone from the back. Actually, Henry is responsible for the whole No Art thing, because he liked them so much.

Trish: We didn’t know Charles or any of the other bands before we started playing. The first time we met Unity Floors, Gus thought Vivian was the nice one.

Vivian: Yeah and how wrong that was. I don’t remember talking to him, but that’s a common theme with me.

Gus: Should someone say something controversial to get the clicks going?

Vivian: Maybe that Unity Floors are actually the bad band. They’re not the nice guys after all.

Gus: Well yeah, you gotta set up the story. So you start out as a nice band, then you surprise them with your new intent.

“It’s been great to have someone to bounce ideas off … but he hasn’t said anything is a bad idea.”

You all released [records] independently initially, but Unity Floors have gone with Popfrenzy for the LP. Were you approached for that?
Henry: They asked us to do a bunch of supports early on, then they asked if we had something coming out and that they’d be really interested to hear it. We had no idea what that meant; we just went, “Cool?”

Vivian: You were being seduced.

Henry: Yeah, we had no idea.

Gus: I can’t remember how it happened, but I think Greg [Clennar, of Popfrenzy] just appeared. But it’s been great to have someone to bounce ideas off. We can ask him what he thinks about something and he’ll say, “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” But he hasn’t said anything is a bad idea yet. I don’t know what that means.

Just keeping up morale.
Trish: I wonder how you make decisions with just two people in the band. We always need a third to make a decision.

Henry: It’s usually Gus coming to me.

Gus: Yep, it’s me freaking out and going to Henry, who then gives a logical and calm answer that’s intelligent.

And the rest of you are pretty happy releasing on your own?
Pete: Oh yeah, it’s easy.

Gus: Really? I found it really hard. Really hard.

Chris: What’s hard? You’ve got the internet.

Gus: Things like getting the vinyl pressed. We spoke to those guys and they asked, “What’s your matrix code?” I remember filling out the forms for the guys who were pressing it and writing: “???? I don’t know, whatever you guys think.”

Pete: And now that’s on the inside of all your records.

Vivian: I have no idea what’s on ours.

Well it’s sitting on the table.
Vivian: Ah, who cares.

Pete: It’s got a barcode on it and everything. What’s that do?

Vivian: It’s gonna be in record stores, Pete, so…

Gus: Why doesn’t it have a QR code?

Trish: Ugh! You are the only person who has ever used a QR code!

“We just lowered our standards. But you have to do that, I think.”

Making, you’re ready to release something soon? It’s been 18 months... [Laughter and silence] No? Yes?
Pete: We’re closer today then we were three months ago.

Vivian: How so?

Chris: We just lowered our standards. But you have to do that, I think. Towards the end we thought, well, this version sounds pretty good, we’ll just go with it. We were trying to make it absolutely perfect before that.

Gus: We ditched a lot of stuff off ours.

Henry: I think we did 15 tracks and ditched four.

Gus: For B-sides and rarities…

Vivian: All killer no filler.

Henry: That’s what we were going for.

[Gus pulls out a bottle opener pinched recently from a bar and opens another round of drinks.]
Trish: That bottle opener, it’s so minimalist. It’s like Unity Floors.

Vivian: Unity Floors aren’t minimal!

Trish: Well, how would you describe Unity Floors?

Pete: Amateur post-rock. Post-bass. My bass is on that record actually, Gus played it.

[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Nice Fit by unity floors

Vivian: What kind of bass player are you?

Gus: A bad one. I just played root notes.

Trish: You consciously wanted to do that though.

Gus: It’s just for the record; you need bass there to thicken it up. As long as it’s not doing anything like walking bass lines. Our thing is that if you can’t do it live, at least for now, you’re not allowed to record it.

Trish: Total opposite of us. “Let’s have eight vocal layers…”

When do you stop adding elements to your recording?
Trish: When you’ve been working for two years on an EP and haven’t put it out yet. That’s when you stop.

Vivian: We take so long to do anything. We’ve been together four years and we’ve put out an EP, a cassette and a 7”.

Trish: But we’re really happy with all of it. I’d rather be happy with it then have a lot of stuff out.

Pete: What are the Unity Floors recording rules? Sunglasses?

Gus: That you’ve gotta be able to do it live is the one thing. I’d really like to do some crazy stuff on it, but it’s not practical.

“Charles was going to be a second guitarist and synth player, but when he played he was like a CD in a microwave.”

When you’re playing with dissimilar bands like these guys, do you start thinking about adding different elements to your band or changing things around?
Henry: We’ve thought about it a bit, but the two-piece just seems to work. It’s easier to organise, we’re both good friends; to get someone else in would be someone who doesn’t know us as well.

Gus: If you’re gonna play music with someone you’ve got to be friends with them first.

Vivian: We weren’t friends with Charles though…

Gus: But the world is friends with Charles.

Vivian: Charles was going to be a second guitarist and synth player, but when he played he was like a CD in a microwave. It was fucked. Then this other girl we were looking at for a drummer didn’t show up and he said he’d have a go. He hadn’t drummed in four years, and in typical Charles form he just smashed it.

Trish: And I went, “You are never getting away from that drum kit. I don’t give a fuck. You can sing from behind there if that’s what you want to do, but you are not leaving that kit.”

And now he can’t be here cos he’s tutoring drums.
Trish: How does Making (pictured) record?

Pete: It’s hard. It all has to be recorded at the same time; we live track it.

How do you hold it together? Those songs aren’t exactly straight-forward…
Chris: Well, we rehearse twice a week.

Pete: There are times when you’re playing a seven-minute song and six minutes in your brain starts going, “It would really be a shame if you were to fuck up right now.” And then you look down at your fingers and they just go “Ha!”

Chris: We fucked up a few times on Monday when recording and I was actually happy to leave them in there this time. Previously we’d think everything had to be executed perfectly, but now I feel there’s more style in those errors. When I listen to other records I really enjoy those moments, but usually when I hear it in ours, I hate everything.

And writing all those parts? How do you do that? The result for Making is really unnatural.
Pete: Painfully. We all have to agree that we like each other’s parts, so that can be a bit of a process.

Chris: I’m more interested in people vibing off it. If people are excited about what they’re doing then I won’t tell them not to play that. I wouldn’t by choice write the music that we make; I wouldn’t do that, but I enjoy the interaction more.

Pete: I definitely couldn’t come up with this stuff in isolation. It’s always a reaction to what everyone else is doing. It’s a pretty rigorous process compared to other bands who can go “verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge.”

Trish: For us we go, “Oh shit, that just went verse, chorus, verse, chorus…”

Vivian: “…now let’s play the thing that sounds nothing like anything.”

No Art are a bit more fluid than Making, do you think your songwriting is a bit easier?
Trish: Maybe fluid, but we still have like five ideas for a song, and will try to decide where to put those ideas in.

Pete: You know when you have those ideas that don’t work that you’re just barracking for?

Vivian: Yeah, and you just keep trying to smash it into another song.

Trish: ‘Kids in Place’ is like that, even now I think it just doesn’t work.

Vivian: While everyone else goes, “Ooh, cool change.”

Trish: I think that’s more interesting, to go with those impulses. Otherwise you write something that’s forgettable.

Is the Unity Floors process more simple because it’s just the two of you doing something a bit more conventional?
Henry: Maybe. Gus will have something on the guitar that’s worked out, and the song can come together in three run-throughs. It might be a loose idea, but we’ll have the base of it pretty quick.

Gus: Then there’s this weird unspoken moment when we’re both happy with it. But there’s a lot of hours spent together in a room. I know Making and No Art, you guys spend time in a studio to rehearse. Does that make you get down to business more?

Pete: Yeah, if I’m in a commercial record space paying $66 for three hours, you don’t want to sit down and chat. When you take time out and set all your shit up, you’re motivated.

Trish: When we had the studio it was really productive, but there was a point where that stopped being productive and we knew we had to start playing in places.

Gus: I guess Henry just comes over and we hang out. That’s why I ask.

“We just rehearse in a shitty room then go and play a shitty show. You get good at playing the type of spaces you rehearse in.”

Chris: We played this show and we met a guy who was in a band who was quite big. We were talking to him and we found that we both rehearsed in Marrickville. And he asked if we rehearsed at Top Studios.

Pete: And we were like, “Woah, don’t waste your money, come to the Pitz [Marrickville rehearsal space], it’s really cheap.” And he said, “Oh no, I need to have my own lighting rig and foldback.”

Chris: He pays $120 for three hours, we pay $70 a month.

Pete: He needs it all ready to go so he can run through his entire show. While we just rehearse in a shitty room then go and play a shitty show. You get good at playing the type of spaces you rehearse in.

Gus: Can I bring up knee rock?

Chris: So, here’s the thing: No Art (pictured) are the premier members of the genre of knee rock.

The hell is knee rock?
[Gus gets up from the table and demonstrates, bobbing up and down at the knees.]
Chris: They do it in sync after a while too, and then suddenly they go out of sync. It’s like when you’re waiting at traffic lights and you watch the blinkers of two cars that go in time and then slowly they’re off again, and all of a sudden they’re exactly opposite.

What sort of venues were you playing when you started out five years ago?
Vivian: We played Mum, at the World Bar. That was an experience. We did a one-month residence in the 2am slot on a Friday, packing up at 4am.

Trish: We’ve got this term in No Art called hate-playing. It’s like hate-fucking, when the crowd is so fucked that we just hate-play them. Hate shows are so good, they’re so satisfying. At our launch when Vivian broke a string and got really angry? She hate-played the shit out of them.

Vivian: People came up to us and said that was a really good show too. Early on we were also playing places like Spectrum, the Gallery at the Oxford Art Factory; we met Mere Women for the first time at the Red Rattler…

Trish: I feel like in the four years we’ve been playing, that shit has changed so much.

“We only play a venue we would go to, or where we think our friends might want to go to.”

Do you feel you’ve graduated from smaller venues like the Gallery? Is that why you don’t play there anymore?
Trish: I think it’s just shifted and we have new priorities to play only at places we like.

Henry: Yeah, we only play a venue we would go to, or where we think our friends might want to go to.

Vivian: Same, unless it was the Beach Road Hotel in Bondi. They pay huge money.

Gus: [Talking to the microphone] Yeah, let that be known. We are three bands who are happy to play the Beach Road whenever we’re needed … and we’re willing to negotiate.

That whole idea of the different levels of venues you can play … do you feel capped at all by what you can achieve in Sydney?
Vivian: I don’t really think there’s a pyramid thing going on.

Chris: But Sydney feels so sectarian now. I think the divides are like they weren’t before. The Kings Cross music is so different to the Inner West music. There was so much cross-pollination before, where a band like Ohana could play at Spectrum.

Gus: When it comes to people who listen to guitar music, like the bands we’re all into, it’s such a small, small minority of people going out, and I don’t get why people aren’t cross-pollinating more.

Trish: I think Ohana time [early-to-mid 2000s] was pretty exceptional for Sydney music. I think that was a time where people were playing a lot of shows at a lot of different places.

Vivian: Back then people would earn their chops somewhere like Candy’s Apartment. It wasn’t like there was a place where people wanted to play; they just played wherever they could, even if it was terrible.

Gus: I wonder in retrospect how much of this kind of thing is just mythologised. Four years from now, are we going to be going, “Oh, remember that time when the Black Wire years were cool?”

“They’d be like, ‘How do you go out and play so hard to no one?’ And Dead said, ‘That’s what Australia’s like every night.’”

Do you feel like you all get stuck playing to the same people?
Trish: We make a conscious effort not to do that. It’s easier now though, because people are getting more desperate. When we started playing, if you played with bands who didn’t sound exactly like you – which we could never do anyway – people would get bummed and step out for a bit.

Vivian: Yeah, No Art can never fit a bill. We’ve always found that awkward. Now, maybe bands are just more integrated as people, but we try to play with as many different people as we can that we actually care about.

Pete: Ian Rogers [of No Anchor] was telling us this story about that band Dead who were on tour in America. He said Dead would go out and play awesomely every night, then the American band would go on stage and see 20 or 30 people and go, “Hmm, not tonight.” Then they’d just load out because there weren’t enough people there. And they’d be like, “How do you go out and play so hard to no one?” And Dead said, “That’s just what Australia’s like every night.”

I can’t even fathom that attitude of being upset by that kind of turnout. If there were 30 people at a show I’d think that was sick. I’d say, “Fuck yeah, 30 payers. Tonight, the sound guy is not going to be taking money directly from me.”

+

No Art kick off their 7” tour tonight, including two gigs with Unity Floors and one with Making. Dates below.

Fri, June 14 – Public Bar, Melbourne, VIC [w/Infinite Void, Naked Maja + Halt Ever]
Sat, June 15 – Gasometer, Melbourne, VIC [w/Duck Duck Chop, Yolke + SeeSaw]
Fri, June 28 – Metro, Adelaide, SA [w/Naomi Keyte + Menagerie]
Sun, July 7 – Hideaway, Brisbane, QLD [w/Unity Floors + Footy]
Fri, July 12 – Black Wire Records, Sydney, NSW [w/Unity Floors, School Girl Report + Lenin Lennon]
Sat, July 13 – North St, Batemans Bay, NSW [w/Making, School Girl Report + Corpus]
Sun, July 14 – Sunset People @ Hollywood Hotel, Sydney, NSW [free]
Fri, July 19 – Croatian Club, Newcastle, NSW [w/Lenin Lennon]