They have been described as a band with a deep musical maturity that far exceeds their years, Jeff Buckley singing with angels, a mini Polyphonic Spree and even Nick Cave and Rufus Wainwright’s love children, but the label that aptly applies to Melbourne band Lamplight now exists in the Punters collective consciousness as Alt Rock Folk Orchestra.

Following a sold out Northcote Social Club show earlier this year and a successful East Coast tour, Lamplight have returned to their home port to once again raise their sails and set forth to play Berlin’s Popkom in October, and in fact most of Eastern Europe (UK, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Holland) including the Iceland Airwaves Festival. I spoke with captain of the ship and singer/songwriter Mijo Biscan of solitary confinement, audible tidal waves, Heath Ledger and other such tales.

“Since we got into Popkom Festival, it’s opened my ears and eyes to certain opportunities. Originally I felt we had too many roots in the ground to just get up and tour, but we’d been planning to tour overseas for 5 years…and now I am really excited about going. We’re also going to play some guest spot shows with Gotye as his live backing band which is really exciting”

Folk who haven’t seen a Lamplight show before will be in for a treat, for this is a band who give it their all when performing live, with angelic soaring vocals and articulated harmonies between Mijo Biscan and Kirsty Morphett, double bass ( Luke Richardson ) drums ( Alex Rogowski ), violin, clarinet and flute ( Indiana Avent ) and Kirsty Morphett also on keyboard, the band’s melodies stretch from dark dramatic dirges to emotive and rich ballads, smouldering lyrics and poetic aperitifs, each capturing the energy of a band who are enraptured in every moment.

On listening to Lamplight’s sophomore self-titled album (independently released earlier this year) there is an inescapable feeling of something authentically ethereal and old-world at work. Beautifully stunning in its originality and style. There’s no wonder the single Ship in a Bottle went to No.1 on the JJJ Unearthed Indie charts during April and bulleted to No.5 in the overall charts. But sublime singles, rave reviews, nation wide airplay and sonic masterpieces don’t come without getting your hands dirty as Mijo explained “We recorded the album with Myles Mumford who acted as producer and engineer and he did a great job, always suggesting new ideas and taking us to interesting locations. We began recording at NMIT studios for four days and then we did some choir and string overdubs, and then we recorded four days in a row out at the old Castlemaine Jail, and also on a property which was Indiana’s childhood home”

One of the qualities that separates Lamplight’s second album from their 2005 debut success The Fish Will Walk is the complex and haunting energy, which it radiates. Many of the tracks were recorded in Castlemaine jail and give the album a light and shade that many studio recordings often lack. If you listen close enough you may even hear the screams of ghosts, rattling their chains and howling from their prison cells, and you have to hand it to Mijo and the crew for having the guts to record in such a space. “That was the whole intention of recording in different acoustic spaces, and in different rooms to see how that affects you emotionally.

“The idea of recording in the jail was to harness that history of people there and the madness, and just being in that spooky environment. They used to hang people, and the hanging bar is still there. I recorded most of my vocal takes down in solitary confinement, and by the end of the vocal take you’re a different person, and the idea was to try and get that feeling across in the recordings. There were some songs where I was almost flipping out, because it’s really cold and dark down there, one morning I was actually short of breath because it was so dank and moist and it comes through in the recording”

The band also laboured over the packaging of the release with excruciating detail; with the pressed versions being recycled cardboard (environmentally friendly they are) and 100 exclusive limited edition hand made copies of the album, carved from wood. “Me and my brother hand made them from big blocks of wood,” Mijo explains, “We cut it all down, and the rest of the band stained them and Belinda Wiltshire did the art work and put them all together.”

In fact, in tow with the efforts of independent artists, these little wooden blocks of music have caught the attention of the industry. “They really got people’s attention and opened us up to bits of the industry we never accessed before. We decided to do this album really thoroughly and come up with an album that we were happy to listen to years down the track.”

As with more and more Australian acts the freedom of being independent and having complete creative control can be a blessing and a curse, I asked Mijo about Lamplight’s independent crusade. “We’ve been fiercely independent, I’m not sure if we were on a label if we’d be permitted to make an album like the one we did. The freedom it gives you to document your artistic vision means you’re not held back but on the other hand you are held back financially. But I look forward to not being a band manager and being an artist again, so another thing we’re doing is hunting band managers.”

But how does Mijo describe Lamplight’s music in a nutshell? “I find it really hard to describe and I actually don’t like it when people try and pigeon hole us, when you’re intimately involved in something it’s often very difficult to stand apart from it. Someone once told me, if you can’t pigeon hole a band it means its just good music. The kinda music I’ve always connected with is that darker side of the psyche; I was even obsessed with Tori Amos for a long time. But at the end of the day I think the album has shown people that we’re a pretty serious band, and that we’re quite unique and quite interesting”

Lamplight play with their High Tide Horn section and Singing Sirens Choir at the Northcote Social Club this Friday the 15th August with special guests Jordie Lane and The Spoils (Duo)