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It is a long time since the first record and the thing that always occurs to me is that the industry’s changing so fast as well. In that four years the rate of downloading has multiplied so much and the decline of CD sales is massive- people were still selling records 4 years ago and not so many people are able to now. It’s getting harder every day.

Yeah I wonder as well myself, how much that would affect my recent sales on this record and if they’d been a lot higher-

If you’d got it out earlier?

Yeah, and I mean, Nate said to me today I think we’ve… it’s been out three weeks or something and we’re around 4,000 and we should hit 5,000 in the next week or two, which for me, I’m stoked – I mean honestly, like, I know that’s not huge numbers, but-

It’s not small numbers for Australia though…

Yeah to think about the fact that that many people that I’ve never met in my life have gone out and bought my music is kind of cool, but Nate was like you can equate for at least double - of that figure for what would have been downloaded and even the dude at my label like, before we even dropped the album he said, when we first started working on it… I’ve been looking around on the internet at download sites and from what I can see on the main ones it looks like there’s about 25,000 copies of your first album downloaded… Fuck. And then I was like, well, where are all these people at my shows, you know? So, I don’t know. I mean, it definitely has affected. I’m just rolling along thinking it’s not going to affect me, but I’m just starting to notice money from shows is going back down, there are less bookings, you know at those places... you can hit the main city, then there’s always those smaller joints where the promoter would have a club/pub night in the suburbs where you’d do a set...but all those joints have dried up. And that’s where it starts to take its toll. Even with recording stuff, you know I wanna get back in to making the net record, but I’m sure that’s gonna have an effect on how cheaply I can make the next one.

Triple J’s been giving it pretty good spin- it seems like you’ve got more radio play already with this record, then you did with the last one...

Yeah totally. On the first record I think there was barely any play with Triple J. And it’s weird, I listen to the last record and I think, well...rightfully so. It didn’t fit their market. And it definitely didn’t fit a commercial market, like , mainstream. What played a big part in this album was realising that maybe the opportunities that I’m lucky enough to get through being on universal maybe I need to work for those, instead of pointing the finger at other people. And that’s helped me push and work harder on this, and now in some ways, getting plays on Triple J is a sign to me that hard work is paying off. I kind of feel like I’m starting to deserve where I’m at, instead of just ending up here. Because I’ve been in the right place in the right time.

When we last interviewed you, the record was on the verge of coming out, and now six months later, it’s come out with a few changes, so obviously there was some going back to the drawing board...

There was a little bit of that...What happened was, it was supposed to come out in 2007, it was getting close to that then we lost Beau. Face It came out, the track with Ian from Karnivool for the X-Box thing [Australian launch of Halo 3], and the album was meant to come out off the back of that. Then B-side got the sack and everything that had been promised to me was gone just like that. He was gone out of the country, and never heard from him after that. I mean he rang me and was like “hey I’m just letting you know... my contract hasn’t been renewed”...and that was it. Then it just went totally dead at the label. It seemed like no matter what I did, no one had answers. I didn’t have an A[[&]]R. It just kept going on and on. Eventually Mike Taylor came on board, and it was a waiting process to see whether he wanted to work the record, when he decided that he did, he wanted me to go out and write more songs, and I was like fuck that, I’m not writing more songs, the album is dying, you know. Just being stubborn as I fucking can be...anyway, I went off and wrote more songs, which is consequently when I wrote Spaceship and still nothing was happening. And I was fuckered, I had no money, no shows I had no music out and I was totally fuckin strapped for cash. Then eventually I decided I had to do something, and I emailed Kingsmill [Triple J] as a last act of desperation and trying to make something happen. And he said yeah, come in and see me. So I went up to Sydney. And I just said listen...fuck Universal, and fuck what anybody else says, let’s forget about my history with them, and the first album. And here’s the songs...do you like em?

He emailed me back and said, I really like those two songs. And I said look, if you’re serious about them, don’t just jerk me around, you know I’ve been jerked around by enough people. And I think at the time I was being too confronting I suppose, I probably shouldn’t have been like that... but I was freaking out. I was like if you wanna back this, then that’s cool, I'll roll with it, but if not, then I’ll go somewhere else and do whatever I can with it... and then all of a sudden Universal put the record out. And at first I thought... sucked in... but in having time to think about it, it was my own fault. I should have been more proactive about my music, all the time. I suppose in taking control of it a bit more, the ball’s back in my court, the way I like things to go... at the same time it taught me, if I’m just sitting around, fucking twiddling my thumbs waiting for somebody to make things happen for me, then you leave yourself open to those kind of situations.

So now that the album is done, did you have to take some stuff out?

I kinda did a bit, this album was like 23 tracks or some shit, I was dead set like, this is how the album is, and I want it to be that long, I was just pushing the boundaries just saying, I want it to be that long, I want it to be that long, then I listened to it myself one day... and just thought.. ah fuck this is too long. But everything that I see in there, I’m pretty happy with. I probably wouldn’t go back and change anything. And also, considering I’ve had it finished for two years, it’s pretty much done. Two years down the track, I still love listening to it.

The direction that you’ve taken, musically... you did deliberately depart from what you’d done with Talk With Force, and try and reinvent yourself, and on a production level you said you sampled a lot more Aus rock music and stuff, did it ever end up being a record that departed from the hip-hop thing as much as you originally thought, or do you still classify this as a rap record, or a hip-hop record?

I don’t know. I don’t know what I classify it as. I kind of set out there to do that, and the whole album I guess is based around rap. What’s different is the way it’s presented, very differently to what I was doing. I suppose it’s still rap. I think what I realise more than anything is that first and foremost I like making music, and rap is the medium for expressing the lyrics to whatever I like. I think there are sections on the record as well where the music just goes where it wants to instead of like always maintaining like verse chorus, verse chorus, verse chorus...but the feedback I’ve had is that it’s pretty good.  I mean... Triple J are like the guys that don’t play hip-hop, then here’s this guys requesting an interview with me, and he was from Machine Gun Falatio. And he was just like fuck, to me this doesn’t sound like rap or hip-hop anymore, it just sounds like music so I think that’s the vibe around it, and I’m happy with that. That’s where I wanted to get to. I just want it to stop being boxed into that urban stuff and genre.

On the other hand you are going on tour with Funkores, and it’s unlikely you’d be billed with them unless you fitted with their audience, and they're still very hip-hop. Do you see that audience as your primary consumer?

I think it’s the quickest way to get to them. I think because I have done so much shit in the past, the whole audience has seen me perform before, and know who I am. But I’ve been tossing up with my tour at the end of the year, going with somebody different, and a different genre... which is proving to be hard for a number of different reasons... like I can’t even find a hip-hop act to support the tour. At the moment there seems to be nobody that... like I suppose right now, I’m that guy for Funkore, or Pez is that guy... but Pez wouldn’t support me on a tour so I’m just having trouble finding... anyone. So I’m not hoping to do anything... I just wanna good show, and get the music out to as many people as possible

When you talk about the Aus hip-hop audience, you’re talking about a very sceptical political group of people... do you find any backlash coming from that side of things with your new record?

I haven’t had my head in it really...I’ve had nothing to do with it. And if there is...I wouldn’t know. Nate hasn’t really informed me. And also cos im not really hanging out with the same crew I used to. I mean I don’t really know the significance that scene holds anymore. Not in hip-hip, but to me personally. The people you see at shows now – it’s totally different to what it was five years ago. There were just hip-hop dudes at hip-hop concerts. Now, a dude buying a Powderfinger record is buying a Yeah Yeah Yeahs record and he’s also buying a Bliss’n’Eso album, or whatever it may be. It used to be that only hip-hop guys would buy hip-hop and that’s over. There’s way more random fans like that. There’s thousands and thousands of them, while there’s only one or two thousand core Aussie hip-hop dudes.

Outside of touring plans...do you have a long term plan? What’s next?

I didn’t think that 1500 people we don’t know would go out and buy the record in the first week...but that’s still not enough for me to believe that maybe it’s gonna work. And I suppose as the last few weeks have gone on and the sales have stayed at a reasonable place, and just with the tour at the end of the year... it should be ok. By no means will I be fucking rich but, it’s good to know that all the hard work is kinda paying off, that I can just pay my rent each week, and I can go out and write another record.

Do you feel that your achieving what the people at Universal hope for in a record... is it in line with that target?

Well, I think so. Generally and genuinely, the vibe at Universal around the album is really good, I think it surprised a lot of people. I haven’t experienced it before where the whole record label is behind what was going on. Like, my chick that does all my press is selling it out there cos she wants it to work. She thinks it’s really special. So because the vibe there is really good each week feels like an achievement. Cos everyone’s just been working it. So it’s not just me that feels good from a sale, it’s everybody, and therefore I think either you have a breakthrough single, or you look at it as a building platform. I mean, you start at five and kind of build to ten, and keep working at it that way, and have it as a platform for the next album. And that doesn’t seem to me as daunting as it used to be. The vibe’s been good, and now I just gotta go out on tour and keep working it.

Do you have plans outside of your recording career, or are you just focussed on this?

I just started making music again. But for the first time ever I feel like, I have a bit of momentum. I don’t wanna fucking throw that away. I’ll be sitting here in two years twiddling my thumbs. I suppose I’m trying not to put too much pressure on myself. I just wanna make music now, and everyday just do something. If it’s write a bit, or play the guitar everyday, just something. And just keep chipping away at that, so that by the time I’m finished touring at the end of the year, I’ve got a fair start to another record. And then I think my plan is to finish touring and then fuck off overseas for maybe three months, do a bit of writing with Dan and some of his crew, come back, maybe put another one out next year.
 
You still working with Jan?

I spent like 7 months with him in the studio with the last one, so I think I’ll be doing a lot of that myself this time, but I like the way he kinda brings things together, so I think he’ll be doing that with this one too.

Clockwork is available now through Universal. For more on Phrase visit his myspace.com/bigphrase.


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