Given the contrasting titles of My Disco’s new album Paradise, and its debut LP Cancer of 2006, it’s fair to assume we’re in for a change. Word surrounding the latest offering from the Melbourne three-piece is a minimalist and very stripped back approach, and this comes for a band that has already leant on this idea in their previous work. WB spoke with guitarist Ben Andrews who confirmed the rumours on the sound of Paradise.

“We took a bit more of just a reductionist approach where we kind of stuck with stripping it back a little bit further than Cancer,” Andrews pondered when asked how the bands two LPs would compare.

“Like where we’ve kind of progressed with it, it sits well with our minimal kind of reduced approach and it’s pretty different like it’s heaps longer and some of the songs, even though there’s not as many ideas present, there’s a lot more subtleties involved and fierce ideas of repetition to be expanded as long as we could I guess. So it’s pretty different, but it’s still My Disco.”

Good news for the fans of Ben, his brother and vocalist Liam and drummer Rohan who have toured consistently over the past couple of years developing a solid local following and making inroads overseas in some interesting locations such as Mexico and South-East Asia. Given the positive reaction to Cancer, why make the change to take on this minimalist approach?

“I think we just got more and more interested in doing something different and we’ve always been a band that’s hard to kind of easily fit into a genre or whatever and I think it was pretty interesting for us to take it a little bit further and like, try writing a ten minute song with one idea in it,” Andrews remembers, “we just got really excited by it and it came quite naturally, we usually struggle with writing and takes a while to get the ideas flowing but this idea came really easily and it just kind of seemed to fit with the way we were doing it and the motives we challenged ourselves with. And we tried some different things, some crazy tunings on the guitars and strip back some drum approaches, aesthetically, so we just got kind of excited to do it in this way.”

Andrews raises a valid point, his band getting labeled with different genres constantly and with the changes in their song-writing approach they are even more difficult to describe to the average music listener. One of the more popular tags the band has been hit with is math-rock, although Andrews thinks it’s a thing of the past.

”I think people used to say that, I don’t think they do anymore. People used to say that because it’s a lot easier to kind of identify with a band if you can explain it in a one-word summation of a sound like ‘math-rock’ or ‘technical-rock’ or ‘bla-bla-bla’. People seem to nowadays go with minimalist-rock or whatever (for My Disco), and that’s probably a bit more accurate,” Andrews ponders, “Math-rock, I think we fell into that because in years past we’ve been quite technical in our song-writing and as soon as you get out of the ordinary and you’re not just playing four chords in four bars you kind of get that technical, math-rock sort of appeal.”

Tense and raw are two words you take away after seeing My Disco play live, and not surprisingly it’s something they have drawn upon when producing Paradise.

“I think the overall theme is pretty translucent or transparent in the fact that we kind of went with the rawest most alienating approach, really tense and not much release if any and it’s kind of really fitting, even lyrically it’s more stripped back than our previous stuff and even a couple of instrumental songs, and that just seemed to be the way we were going with it and it became easier and easier as we were writing the record. And we kind of wanted to write it really quickly and, well not frantically, but a lot quicker than we have before so we could basically have a block of time where our singular idea was to write the record instead of what we’ve done in the past which is write a song, go no tour, write a song, do something else, so not in a block. And we wanted to do it in a block because I think it would create more of a conceptual sound overall not just a bunch of songs we’d written over a bunch of time like it’s really concise in its time frame in both writing and recording and I think that’s probably our best achievement that we stuck to our guns with that. We took three months to write it and five days to record so that was pretty impressive for us.”

Now when you hear words such as alienating, raw and minimalist used in the same sentence as My Disco, it is surprising to know that their live show and debut album possessed an element, albeit ever so subtle element, of funk and dance. Was this something they tried to continue into their sophomore record?

“Not intentionally, but I think some people have still said even though it’s raw and it’s stripped back there’s a definite dance element, mainly because we use one heavy pounding rhythm over and over again and it becomes quite hypnotic and I think if something becomes hypnotic then it focuses mainly on rhythm and rhythm is what people respond to in the dance sense.”

As the Andrews Brothers, formerly of Irish-Australian outfit Clann Zu, have developed such a unique, constantly changing sound it seems their influences are evolving likewise, even encompassing the film world.

“I think if we didn’t come into new ideas and new sounds that we were into and new inspirations then we’d become stagnant and probably not exist, so I think it’s really good to continue to (find new influences), especially for us how we’re always changing and we’re always hearing new things and trying out different things from other people we like or bands we’ve seen or what not. I don’t know, maybe these days it doesn’t really come with ‘Oh I like this band let’s try that’, I think it’s more like internal influences, like we’re interested in trying stuff that challenges us or trying stuff that we haven’t done before just for the sake of doing it. Instead of being like, ‘Oh well we’re happy with this let’s continue writing that’, we’ll kind of go and instead of writing a heavy guitar song let’s have a bit where there’s no guitar for three minutes or something. So it’s more challenging ourselves and influencing ourselves than anything. But at the same time, at the moment I think some of the minimalist composers and some of the avant-garde film directors and film composers, like scores of films I’ve been watching like sixties and seventies stuff, I can really see how that’s influenced my writing as well, mostly because it draws on tension and no release and then having it tense and then really kind of minimal and utilising space. And that works for film and I think it works for My Disco.”

With the release of Paradise imminent, some of the most exceptional press shots seen of late are representing My Disco in a series taken when the band headed to Coober Pedy to shoot their album cover.

“We’d done some kind of interesting press shots in the past but we didn’t want these to be in the studio we wanted them to be out in nature and quite Australian themed as well, being that we’re from Australia!” Andrews quipped, “We went out to this place called the Breakaways which is just north of Coober Pedy and it’s where a bit of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was filmed and some other stuff when they want to film something that’s either very baron, Australian or looks like the moon. And we wanted to utilize that baron and deserted feel but also keep it in key with the extreme redness that the Australian landscape can produce. It was quite an adventure, we’ll never forget it because it was pretty intense to do plus we did it over Christmas which is probably even crazier but it came out better than we thought and it really fits in with the loose theme of the record and the sound of the record.”

Given the history of My Disco, there is arguably no band more deserving to represent Australia in such a way. They have utilized the breeding ground that is the Melbourne music scene with the utmost effectiveness and Andrews let us is on his take as to why it spawns so many amazing bands such as themselves.

“For one it’s kind of the fact that Melbourne’s got some really good live music venues that have existed for the better part of 20-25 years. That kind of historical nature breathes the people who want to be a part of that and want to play in that like, we’ve played in parts of Asia that have no venues in their town or city or village or whatever, and so, there’ll still be people wanting to play music and do band stuff there just won’t be as many of them because the premise for them just isn’t in place. Where as in Melbourne, over the years and even now there’s lots of venues, like you look at the street press and there’s 20-30 venues every night that might have different styles of music on and that kind of breathes familiarity with when a band starts they’ve got lots of options while in some cities like Brisbane, Hobart, Adelaide and even Sydney unfortunately you don’t have that choice. And I think if you don’t have that choice and you don’t have that community set up, then it can be a lot harder for bands to get off the ground and get noticed and even the means for you to start a band and play live but you don’t know how to do it, it can make you feel really negative towards it. Where as if you have that system in place, like in Melbourne, where there’s lots of places to play therefore there’s lots of bands and lots of different styles of bands,” Andrews considers, before remembering something Melbournites often take for granted, “it has that nature and we’re kind of lucky in that respect.”

It hasn’t always been plain and smooth sailing for the brothers, with Liam being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease in 2004, putting a temporary stop to the band.

“We stopped the band essentially for a year because his health is more important than anything else. At the start of it we still sort of did some stuff then there was a period where we did nothing when it was really bad. But I think it was two weeks after he got out from having chemo we were on the road again,” Ben remembered of his brothers sickness, “so it didn’t stop us for too long and we’ve survived this far which is good!”

Good for My Disco, and great for anyone who catches them on their upcoming national tour to promote the release of Paradise. What’s in store for the fans that make the journey to a leg of the11-stop road trip?

“We’ll obviously be playing a majority of new stuff and the new stuff kind of seems to fit into more of an improvisational role live, so we kind of don’t play the record as it is we muck around with it a little bit which is fun. But it’s still pretty intense live, loud and up there. This record’s probably more in key with the sound of our live show, and I think that’s quite important.”