Having gone from a message board self-promoter to a genuine club headliner, Melbourne musical maestro Muscles is finally ready to unleash his debut album upon the world.
As it turns out it’s been a very long time coming indeed, with the man bringing surprisingly elastic and pop-tastic doof-doof back to the masses having finished the album quite some time ago.
“The album’s pretty much been finished from February, March this year,” he says. “I guess it’s kind of different – I’ve had three singles played a lot on the radio, and now we’re releasing the album with the third single nearly finishing its run on the radio.”
Naturally enough, it makes for an exciting time – Muscles is one of those lucky folk who has had a wave of hype precede the release of their first record, with his singles dominating alternative radio playlists for some months, and every man, woman, and fluffy pink club bunny coming up to the poor fella asking ‘you got a record?’ about to have the answer swap from a negative to an affirmative response.
“It’s going to be weird; it’s the first time I’ve ever had an album out in shops,” he guesses. “It’s going to be interesting to see what happens now that it’s out in shops now.”
The delay was two-fold – first and foremost Muscles had to secure a label to release the music, and he ended up plumping for über-hip cool cats Modular Records (home to Klaxons, Ghostwood, The Avalanches, and many more). Plus, of course, he needed to write enough material – quality material – to make up an album.
“I had three songs floating around on the internet, and I was touring overseas as well and all the business aspects of putting out an album weren’t really organised until later on,” he explains. “I only really got signed in June this year to my record label, and it just seemed like now is the right time, and it’s an interesting time to release an album.”
Muscles is also in the interesting position of controlling his album – given that he funded and created it all on his lonesome, he’s been able to license it exclusively in Australia to Modular but hold the international rights for himself until he finds the ‘right’ home for it…which could very well prove to be the international arm of the label.
Of course, one of the advantages of this is that – in all likelihood – he stands to make more money from the sales that the album may generate. Hey, it’s a strategy that worked well for the Living End way back when. Coincidentally, they were one of Modular’s first ever signings.
“When Triple J started playing Ice-cream I had about 15 record labels contacting me,” he says of the feeding frenzy that ensued, “from all around the world and Australia and I wasn’t really looking to get signed or put out any CDs – I was happy to load stuff up on the internet! I’d been writing a lot of songs and I wanted to get it out there, and Modular got it straight away. The other labels didn’t really understand whether I was a dance act or a solo act or why I had to shout so much on the tracks, and they thought the music was a bit weird. I never thought I’d be signed to Modular but it’s been such a great fit – the people working there are really into it, and really into what I’m doing.”
Lovely! The decision to release an album was a slower move to make – for a while it seemed as if Muscles was happy to focus on the digital, less on the physical, side of releasing his music to the millions.
“From a fan’s point of view I think people like going to a record shop and buying the CD, and I had a lot of people asking why I didn’t have a CD out yet. All I know how to do is write songs and put them together.”
Muscles’ debut album Guns Babes Lemonade is out now.
