Caribou John Butler

“I feel like this must be the thirteenth or fourteenth time playing the festival – hold on let me Google it,” John Butler says, the clickclack of his fingers hitting a keyboard audible in the background of our conversation. “I’ve never Googled myself before. How else am I going to answer this question?!”

Incredulous as it seems, neither of us can seem to form a solid answer as to how many times Butler has performed at Byron Bay Bluesfest. Since his now-legendary debut at the festival twenty years ago, Butler and his band have notched up countless kilometers touring around the planet, treating millions of fans from all corners of the world to a show spilling over with passion, charisma and musicianship. This time, however, Butler is a man alone: for the rst time since 2012, he’s embarking on his own solo tour. “It’s the rst major journey I’ve done since Tin Shed Tales,” Butler explains. “I did about four shows about two European tours ago when my drummer got really sick, and either we canceled the shows or I played solo to about two or three thousand people who paid to see a band.

“So, I did that, and it reminded me how much I love playing solo and how I can still make that many move and feel, even though it’s just one guy. So, it kind of seemed perfect when Byron and Grant left the band – I just said ‘You know what? I really wanna play solo for a while’.” Butler is of course referring to the departure of longtime Trio members Byron Lutiers and Grant Gerathy, who left the group on amicable terms around twelve months ago to spend more time with their families. Although he’s rotated through several different iterations of the Trio in the past, Butler acknowledges that their departure did make him reconsider how he wanted to re-approach his strategy towards performing live.

“After everything that happened when Byron and Grant left, which was so understandable after so many years of playing, I did feel a bit emotional,” Butler admits. “I just wanted to simplify things for a while. The JBT touring juggernaut is a massive entity; it’s a thirteen person crew and we do great work, but I just wanted to do that same kind of work by myself, and it feels right for now. I know I have plenty of band music still in me but right now solo feels like the most exciting thing.” There’s no doubting that John Butler is an above-adequate solo performer – anyone who’s witnessed him performing his signature instrumental piece ‘Ocean’ in the esh can attest to that. However, given the more expansive and textural production heard on his 2018 LP Home, it’s hard to imagine how some of his more recent material will sound without the backing of his group. Butler of course, remains unappable. “Finger-picking is an amazing technique,” he laughs. “I’m not trying to emulate Home, or any album for that matter, but a lot of the textures that I produce with or think about for drums and bass are already inherent within my right hand and the rhythms I’m making with my guitar and voice.

“I do have a couple loop things that offer an extra shade, but I’m also not wanting to ruin whats really beautiful about the folk singer-songwriter aspect of what I do by making the set full of loops or by using backing tracks,” Butler says with condence, gently ribbing on a growing dependence on backing tracks in the industry as he goes. “My attitude is ‘if you can’t play it, maybe it’s just better to have it a bit raw or rough’. That’s sometimes a good thing. If you really want it there, maybe just get someone to do it! To me though, it seems like the general population doesn’t give a shit about playing live or looping or using backing tracks as long as it sounds good.

“I mean, I think ‘Ocean’ can sound as big as an orchestra with just one person, so if I can do that with one song without words, then I can make any other song as big or small as I want within my own physical realm.”

BY WILL BREWSTER

John Butler is performing at Byron Bay Bluesfest this April. Head online to cop your tickets today.

Al Doyle from Hot Chip is thinking about cabling and air conditioning. It’s a sign the English synth-pop band is reaching middle age, but mainly it’s ‘cause Doyle is bunkered down in construction on a new studio with his bandmate Felix Martin.

mixdownmag.com.au “People don’t get super excited about those things, but they are the quiet heroes. Let’s hear it for the quality cabling solutions,” Doyle says over the phone.

Doyle is enjoying mundanity during a brief period of downtime amidst Hot Chip and his other band you might have heard of, LCD Soundsystem’s, winter (“I’m looking forward to the summer, but I’m also looking forward to not playing”). He’s been remixing Stevie Wonder’s Original Musiquarium – just for fun – and listening to “punishing” breakbeats. Hot Chip have also just returned from their rst ever festival date in India (“There were some really big Indian bands playing that they seemed to be more stoked about”) and are about to arrive in Australia on their second festival season for 2019’s A Bath Full of Ecstasy. The record was a return and a departure for the band featuring an outside producer for the rst time, the late Philippe Zdar. The result was painted on a broad technicolour canvas - mixing dance-psychedelia and bubblegum existentialism. The produced experience was one Doyle hopes to repeat in future.

“It’s nice to have an external authority gure to appeal to; to have somebody cut through the convoluted decision making that inevitably ends up happening when you have ve people in the room with big ideas,” Doyle says. Doyle doesn’t have a wishlist for collaborators but says “generally” he’d like to work with a female producer, or someone with a non-electronic background. However, the new studio wouldn’t necessarily be the recording setting for any new Hot Chip material if they bring in another outside voice.

“The producers that I particularly like working with do have a very idiosyncratic grasp of studio craft. I want them to be very picky about those places, and ideally want them to have their own studio where we can go to,” Doyle says. Unfortunately, Hot Chip doesn’t have the chance to continue their producerial relationship with Zdar, who tragically passed away one day before the release of the record. “That was just the start of an artistic relationship that we were all nding very fertile and productive. He was just an inspiring person to be around, so I think we would have denitely loved to have worked with him again and probably sooner rather than later, but it wasn’t to be,” Doyle says.

Doyle tells us that Hot Chip are currently trying to book studio time in Zdar’s Motorbass Studios in Montmartre, Paris with two assistant engineers from the previous record. “It will be very very strange to go back without Phillipe in the room because that was denitely a prime example of somebody who was inseparable from his workspace. The way he used the facility was a complete extension of his creativity. We’re still going to try and do it, ‘cause I think he would have wanted that,” Doyle says.

Studios are also on Doyle’s mind because he hasn’t had a consistent workspace for two and a half years. Hot Chip often appeals to gear-obsessed listeners because, as they have noted numerous times, they are inspired more by gear than other bands. The day after our phone call, Doyle lends Hot Chip frontman Alexis Taylor a Yamaha CS-70 to play with – a rarer model from the same series as the more common CS-80. “The psychology of it is weird, cause you always want to have something new and the fact of buying a new synthesiser, will inevitably, probably mean you get a new song out of it. Sitting down, with the excitement of a new tool can be very stimulating and productive. Then you get into this rich man’s game of never quite having enough. It’s a real afiction.”

Luckily, air conditioning costs are slightly easier to manage.

BY JOSH MARTIN

Catch Hot Chip on tour around Australia this month - tickets are available now via Secret Sounds.