Image: Jeremy Yang
This Sunday HTRK will perform on the Golden Plains Festival stage at 10am. Much of the audience will be disheveled and hung over having slept only a few hours. Many will have not slept at all. Some will be cracking their first beer of the day. Quite a few will be still drunk.
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It’s an odd time slot for the cool Melbourne duo whose restless dub techno and frosted post-punk is usually associated with late night dingy basements or dark clubs in London, Berlin and Melbourne. But Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang are an accomplished live outfit just as capable of moving a crowd of bleary eyed people dressed in gumboots, as they are a fashionably smoky room in London’s East End.
We’ve heard rumours that for their Golden Plains they’ve dropped a lot of the electronics of recent recordings and are going back to the guitar based performance of their early days. Interesting!
But it’s not all breakfast burgers and insect repellant, the two will also be playing an upcoming club shows with their Berlin friend Gudrun Gut, who is bringing her live show “Wildlife 2.0” to Australia.
We had a quick chat to Jonn about the upcoming weekend.
Noisey: There’s been rumours that you’ve dropped a lot of the electronics in your performance and are going back to the guitar based performance.
Jonnine Standish: I’ve heard some people have been dropping hints like “you look like you’re on a cooking show” and “seeing HTRK used to be great because of your guitar”.
Is this change reflected in new album? How is it coming along?
The new songs are sounding good, electronic but simple. Just 808, synth and vocals. We also want to record a guitar album. When Lou Reed died I went through a huge Velvets / Lou Reed phase, watching documentaries like Rock and Roll Heart and exploring new bits of his discography. So that’s been brewing for awhile.
It seems odd that this is the first time that HTRK have played Meredith or Golden Plains.
Yeah in the past it’s just come down to bad timing.
It seems even odder that you are playing the 10am spot.
Yeah it’s a strange time for us but we’re working with it.
Jonn you are soon moving to the hills. As someone who has lived in London, Berlin and Melbourne how do you think country life will affect your creative process?
The Dandenongs is a long leap in the imagination from East London, isn’t it? It has a really unique energy up there that a lot of people just aren’t aware of. I move in two weeks and have no idea what’s ahead of me which is very exciting. I’ve been on the phone today to a pest company, removing a colony of killer ants on the property and I have mixed feelings about that. All this talk of getting to the Queen….anyway I hear the humidity is very good for the skin. We are setting up a home studio/rehearsal space and with an acre of land and no neighbours in close proximity maybe we can make more noise and more often.
You helped direct the video for Jonny Telfaone’s “Waking Up Crying”. Is this something you will continue you to do?
That video was a learning curve as I’ve been an art director for film but it’s a very different experience to direct and shoot yourself. Frank Valvo and I took forever on that video even though it appears quite simple. I’d love to make more music and fashion videos with Frank.
Catch HTRK at these shows:
March 13 – Golden Plains Festival
March 16 – Melbourne at the Curtin with Gudrun Gut
March 25 – Inner Varnika Festival
