Beyond the Looking Glass
If you’ve been attending heavier shows in Canberra in the last seven years, chances are you’ve found yourself drawn to the stage when three of Canberra’s maestros have been plying their Sabbathy fuelled riffs, driving bass lines and world class guitar playing. Further, if you had any sense at all, you would have gone and picked up one of their three albums. I refer, of course, to LOOKING GLASS.
Be it the considered riffing and great songs of the eponymous debut, the more spacey jam approach of their 2 record or, with no excuse for regular readers of my column, the career best combination of the greatest elements of the first two records on their latest album III, you know you’re listening to a truly special band.
Having trod the boards all over the country, with a couple of jaunts to New Zealand, the band have soared in the last 12 months as they prepared and toured the new material alongside the tried and true songs from their earlier works.
Catching up with veteran Canberra bass legend Lachlan Paine, I wanted to know what laid the foundation for the record that was my number one in 2011.
“We tried a few things that we hadn’t done in the past. Stuff like two of us singing, keyboards, and the use of instruments other than our standard guitar, bass and drums. There is a drawer full of cutlery being hit with sticks throughout one of the tunes. It’s subtle, but it’s there. This has opened the floodgates for new ideas and we are very positive as to which direction we are heading in; we’ve had great reviews of the disc from all over the world. We are also working on a ‘bits and pieces’ recording gathering everything that hasn’t made it onto our albums. Having access to our own studio now has enabled us to finish off a few things from the past without time and budget constraints.”
The DIY approach carries over into the bands merchandising also.
“We run our sales through Bandcamp now, which has been the best website for bands in recent times. I am visiting the post office a few times a week to mail out discs interstate, to Europe and the US that have been purchased through the site. In fact, we have sold more stuff through the site since the last album’s release in October than we have over the past two years. Most of the sales can be tracked back to CD reviews on overseas sites.”
Recent tours on the Doomsday shows with US bands Acid King and Cough have garnered further respect plus tantalising offers to head stateside.
“III definitely stirred up more interest overseas than anything we have done before. Being essentially a DIY band, and with the current climate of physical CDs heading out the door and only digital recordings being marketed, the possibility of us heading overseas is closer to reality. The NZ shows are always great and Cough and Acid King both spoke of the possibility of us doing a bunch of US shows with them. We sell quite a bit digitally overseas – it would be great to back it up with some shows.”
The band’s show at The Basement on Wednesday January 25 will include a full track by track performance of the latest record, including the haunting Shores of Carcossa thanks to the pedal keyboard skills of Mr Paine. You can catch them alongside The Veebees and Mother Mars.
