While first sparking the world’s interest via his much blogged cover of ‘No Diggity’, Melbourne artist Chet Faker has gone from strength to strength, with sell-out shows across the country and at SXSW off the back of his debut EP ‘Thinking in Textures’. The album undeniably lives up to the hype. From the pure feeling of ‘Cigarettes and Chocolate’ to the sexy ‘I’m Into You’ it’s hard not to hear the lo-fi sound of nights spent in Nick Murphy’s home studio. ACCLAIM caught up with the man on his new release.
You’ve said that you grew up with soul music, but what inspired the transition into electronically produced music?
Well, my parents are divorced so I grew up with soul music in one house but my Dad used to listen to Chilled Out Ibiza and Ministry of Sound chill albums, so I kind of had both of those influences – so it makes sense that I ended up halfway between.
Your EP Thinking in Textures is a collection of songs that defy all of those genres, the Blackstreet cover, the instrumental Cigarettes & Chocolate – do you think there is a common theme to it?
Definitely. Well, (laughs) I hope so. The title Thinking in Textures is actually a reference to the way I put it together. I wanted to have a release that was one form, and had a consistent flow and the theme I wanted to use to tie everything together is the ‘sonic textures’ – the sound, the actual texture of each song. So there might not be a theme for the lyrics, but the actual sounds of each track I’ve spent a lot of time working on.
So you didn’t set out to create a particular meaning, but more of a ‘mood’ with the EP?
Well, it’s not to say that each song doesn’t have a specific meaning and it follows something, there’s no lyrical landfill in there – just the main thing of the EP was to create the sound of the song. I wasn’t focusing on having a particular theme, I wanted the songs to speak about whatever they wanted to, but I wanted the texture to be consistent. It seems like an old school way of thinking but I wanted to do an release that someone could put on and listen to from start to finish and nothing felt weird or out of place.
Your music has been called ‘post-dubstep’ a lot, were you ever influenced by the dubstep genre at all?
I was never into dubstep, but I did jump on the post-dubstep bandwagon – I’m a big fan of James Blake, Joy Orbison, Burial and then also that West Coast Brainfeeder stuff, like Shlohmo and Flying Lotus.
I find with your music is that it’s equally at home as something you can party to, and something you can chill out listening to –
Thank you.
– is that an intentional aspect of your music?
I’ve always been a massive fan of background music – something that doesn’t distract you – but having said that, I’ve always listened to a lot of pop and soul, where although it could be background music, it’s still good song writing, you know? Just because you want something to sit in the background doesn’t mean you have to make it a boring song.
I want to do something that people can put on, and not necessarily focus on it; they could do work to it, or surf the web, but at the same time, they’re all songs that have meant something personal to me, so if someone did want to tune in and put time into listening to it, I wanted to make sure there was still something there. As for the party aspect – that’s probably just my age.
I think that’s where I was going with the dubstep question; I wanted to find out if you were a secret raver or something.
(laughs) Well, not so much anymore, not dubstep, but I’m good friends with the Animals Dancing guys that throw all the deep house and techno parties [around Melbourne] – I’m a big fan of that four to the floor sort of stuff.
You have a really interesting use of samples, in particular the faded conversation in I’m Into You and the opening of Love and Feeling – how do you go about collecting those? Are they snippets of things that have inspired the track?
When there’s a sample it’s usually a direct reference of what the song’s about. I’m Into You is – well, you obviously know what I’m Into You is about. But I did actually get rid of the intro to Love and Feeling on the actual EP. I found it a bit too easy to reveal what the song’s about. But I’m obsessed with found sounds; I think a location recording or something a bit different can make it a lot easier to set a scene for a song, and plus, growing up listening to those chill-out albums, there’s so much of that going on. Something that can just take you away from where you are – and I think putting little weird samples can really help with that. And if anything makes it more interesting to listen too.
Do you intentionally record sounds meaning to use them later? Does it require any equipment?
I use my iPhone – they’re pretty damn good for that. Most of the samples I’ve used have been recorded through my phone. I’m always just pulling my phone out of my pocket and recording cool sounds. I’m sort of obsessed with it. It’s amazing some of the stuff you can find and record just using a phone. Particularly and because I’m recording at home, there’s an inherent lo-fi sound, so you can get away with using those recordings if you mix it in right. I don’t say ‘I think I might go out today and record some sounds’ but I’ve always got my phone on me if I hear something I like the sound of.
Speaking of ‘lo-fi’ I saw the picture you put on Facebook of your home studio, that was kind of being eaten by nature – do you still record there?
Yeah, I’m sitting out the front of it now! That was one thing that was really important for me, I had a lot of offers of people saying ‘when things start to go well, come in and use my studio’ or ‘we’ll give you free recording time’ – but it’s like if something’s working why would you change it? It’s such an important process of recording if you change the tools you’re using you’ll change the sound and I’m not looking to change the sound at the moment, I’m working within the constraints I’ve got. I don’t think I want to move away from doing it at home any time soon.
You recently played quite a few shows at SXSW – and I was surprised to find out that you have only performed live a handful of times before, was it intimidating performing alongside people who have been playing live for years?
Technically I’ve played more shows in Texas than in Australia. Well, I did seven shows while I was in the US so all up, with the band; I’ve done ten shows. It’s a bit ridiculous. But when these offers come along, you can’t control when you get an opportunity so you’ve just got to go with it. I was a little bit nervous, but I’d played once before in the US and I think the main thing was not knowing whether the Americans would like the sound – but once I’d played in LA I didn’t feel as worried about it. We’d been practicing every week and I felt confident the live shows were representing the songs to the level of quality I wanted. So I was a bit nervous, but it’s kind of like running a race – beforehand you’re nervous, but once the gun starts, your nerves are out the window and it’s pure adrenalin. So as soon as I landed in the US it was like ‘game time’.
You’ve said that Australian audiences are notoriously hard to play for, what would be an ideal gig in Melbourne for you? I know that you’ve done small secret shows…
Yeah, I like the small shows, where you can talk and the audiences are receptive. But I quite like the Toff – where I played my first show – and where I’m playing again. But I like the idea of secret gigs because it creates a vibe. People have decided to be there and it’s sort of exclusive, generally people aren’t as critical if they’ve had to figure out how to get there.
How do the secret gigs come about? The last one you had to find the place where you’d taken a picture of a certain couch?
Yeah, we’d posted a picture on Twitter. That was a week before I was due to fly to LA to do my first solo show, and I’d worked out how I was going to do it but I hadn’t really practiced at all so I though ‘ah, shit I should do a practice run’ but there wasn’t really many people invited at that point and since it was a practice gig I kinda did this half-arsed show – putting hints up on Twitter and Facebook so that people that knew where it was would come, and it turned out perfect, there was the perfect amount of people there. There were a few mix-ups, but it went really well. It was a really good lead up to the LA show; I could sort some things out so that gig would run smoothly. It’s funny, I’d never really used Twitter up until recently and its kind of cool to have people reacting to stuff you’re doing.
With the recent spark of ‘blog fame’ like your releasing No Diggity online to playing sold-out shows and being played on Triple J, within a year, do you ever feel like it has happened a little too quickly?
Absolutely. Really fast. I put No Diggity up on YouTube in February last year. So it was very fast. Which made pretty nervous to begin with. But like I said before, you can’t decide when these opportunities happen; they come when they come and you just have to go along with it. A big thing for me was to try and legitimise the hype behind my music, so getting the EP out was a really good thing and a step in my head – just to put out a lot of my own music and just the one cover, to let people know I can write my own music. It’s been received really well, which is cool which is an amazing feeling. So it has happened really fast, but I’m just focusing on the music side of things as best as I can.
I read an interesting interview with you were you said that when you’re writing a song, normally there is someone else singing them in your head, and they’re almost unconscious – do you still get that feeling now that there is a particular Chet Faker sound?
It’s not like a hear every song in my head – it’s not like I’m some bloody savant or anything – but I do, occasionally, a couple of times a year maybe, and it’s really random – but sometimes I hear the song I’m trying to write in my head and I can hear someone singing it. It’s usually another voice; I can’t hear my own voice in my head but for Love & Feeling the chorus popped into my head when I was bed so I had to get up and record it on my iPhone.
But not really, every now and then it’ll pop into my head. But I think it depends on which way you approach it – there’s not a sound I have to make, it’s more like what sound do I want to make. When I’m writing music, I won’t try and direct a song into a specific direction, I’ll let it go where it goes. If it’s good enough I’ll put it out, but if it doesn’t fit in with what I want, it’ll just sit on my computer and I’ll try and find another use for it. It’s kind of a numbers game, I’ll write like ten of them and then pick the one which is the closest to where I want to go.
You featured on Ta-Ku’s LATE-NYC EP – have you got any more collaborations coming up?
Yeah, the one with Ta-Ku is the only one I’ve released so far [Mahal] but we’ve been doing a heap of songs together. We’ve got about six now, but doing that same numbers game again – he works the same way, he just churns them out.
He’s created an insane amount of tracks!
Oh, it’s massive – he did that 50 Days for Dilla – a new beat every day, and I know for a fact that he did it every day and wasn’t using a back catalogue, he’s just so forward thinking. It’s cool because it’s an approach I try and use. He’ll just send me stuff and I’ll send him ideas. So yeah, working on that with Ta-Ku and I think we might like to do an EP, but at this rate we might have enough material for an album. And also some tracks with Flume from Sydney. He’s nineteen and got a good head on his shoulders, the way he puts tracks together is insane. I wouldn’t mind sitting down and picking his brain.
How do the collaborations work – is it usually you doing the vocals?
With Ta-Ku I’m mostly just doing the vocals, but I’ll chop some things around and maybe add a bit of a beat, but with Flume, and I mean, it differs with every track… we send each other ideas, and it depends on how polished that idea is. If someone sends you a half-finished idea then that means I would add something to it. But the track that Flume and I like the most is one where he’s just done the beat and I’ve done the vocals, and layered the shit out of them and put as much interesting stuff in there as possible. Sometimes it’s nice just to work on the vocal side of things.
Lots of iPhone sounds too?
Yeah and one thing I’ve been doing lately is recording my vocals and chopping them up and texturising them, so it’s like working with the beats, but just using your voice as an instrument.
Now that you’ve released your EP, do you have plans for a full-length album?
I feel like I don’t have time, but it is something I’m working on. I’ve been playing a lot of shows, but I’ve had a bit of time in the studio lately to work on some new stuff. I’ve got maybe twelve rough tracks at the moment, so it’s probably a bit of a way off.
You’ve got the shows at the Toff that sold out ridiculously quickly, are there any more tours or festivals coming up?
There are the two Toff shows and one in Sydney and Brisbane – so it’s kind of like an East Coast tour. I’d like to go to the West Coast – see Ta-Ku – and visit Perth. There are a lot of ideas flying around at the moment, but nothing really locked down. I’m going to the UK in May to play at The Great Escape Festival – which will be cool, since I’ve never been over there. But there’s a lot coming up.
Chet Faker is currently touring the East Coast, finishing up this weekend in Brisbane and Sydney. For venues and ticket info, check his Facebook page.