Have you ever heard the sound of an avalanche as it fluxes downwards as it engulfs an entire mountainside in very little time? The sound of the snow gushing is quite amazing. Well, in a similar but not to the same levels of extremity, comes the work of Melbourne indie darlings, British India. The forthcoming album Avalanches will cascade onto shelves in March 2010 leaving those in awe.

Even amongst the deluge of writing and recording of the new album, British India is already in tour mode. As a part of their tour across the country for the new single, Vanilla; British India will be playing at Stonefest09. About two weeks ago calling from the Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne, vocalist Declan Melia called in to talk just about everything including their memories of Canberra…

So… go ahead and describe British India in three worlds.
Four… Handsome… Superstars…

Well, when I was doing some research on you, I found… (Interupted)
...And you are indeed four handsome super stars indeed… Agreed.

In that case then, have you ever Googled your band’s name?
Uh, I probably have in the past… But that was probably before we were big enough to be on it. I’m sure you get a lot of interesting historical tidbits about India and the turn of the century.

Is that where you guys got your name?
Well, it’s not specifically where we got our name but I mean we knew when we were naming ourselves that was what we were naming ourselves after. We were very much aware of that, and it’s not a coincidence that the words are put together. British India is actually the name of a clothes shop in Singapore. We look forward to being sued for our Tshirt designs in the next few years.

So British India is on tour at the moment?
We’re a lot of things at the moment. Like the tour is kind of two or three shows a week, then we’re also in the studio two days a week and then the remaining days are just rehearsing.

The way that your publicist describes you as ‘one of Australia’s hardest working bands’, I guess that does really prove that…
(Laughs) Maybe. It never really seems like hard work though. We don’t really push ourselves to death. I think that’s kind of why we take a few days off a week and why and you know we try to keep ourselves quite comfortable on the road so it doesn’t feel too much like hard work. Christ! You’re not lucky to do this stuff for too long! So we might as well enjoy it while we can.

What I read was that you guys are recording your forthcoming album in Melbourne and your previous two in Sydney. I know that there’s a bit of rivalry in Sydney and Melbourne, so how does it feel to be playing back home?
It’s good to be home I think. The record is going to be better for it.
Um – perhaps some positives about recording in Sydney was that you were kinda inshalla, you were kinda isolated from everything from back home. So there weren’t really that many distractions… Melbourne of course just being the better city in general makes it… and plus my house is just down the road. If I ever get completely sick of this I can just drive home, but it’s not true because I never get sick of of it.
The thing about recording at home has made it a lot more of a relaxed atmosphere which is working for the songs.

How is the making of Avalanches going?
It’s gone really well. We were in here for a month, about a month ago. Most of August… Now we’re just putting finishing touches on it. Far and above, better than the last two. A bit different sounding. Thieves and Guillotine were recorded quite close together, so they’re pretty similar. Not a huge difference between the album, like side A and side B really… but this one kind of feels like this is only our second record honestly.

What made you guys wait a bit longer before? It wasn’t a pressure thing was it, or is it just when it comes out – it comes out?
It’s just how it’s been coming out. We’d take longer if we didn’t have any good songs. We’d take as long as we need to the writing process. We kinda toured pretty extensively especially after Thieves. We went to the UK twice, then we all had a holiday. It doesn’t seem like a massive amount of time, but it’s just because we’ve been doing so much.

We still write as many songs. Like if we had ten songs for Thieves, and ten songs for Guillotine, which we have about twenty for this one [Avalanches] we can just use the best ones. It makes the records stronger. And then of course (laughs) we could just use the left over songs to make a crappy record down the line when we’re out of money.

Back to touring, have you guys travelled far from home yet?
In terms of this tour, we haven’t gone too far. But we went to Brisbane for the Sounds of Spring Festival and we did a show in Mackay, which was something quite new to us.

What is the most interesting thing you’ve seen on the way?
Uh man! I’ve seen so many horrible things by explanation.

Are you talking all tours?
Yeah, all of them are pretty awful. Uh, well – we found a corn field last weekend. We were just driving along. We had to of course stop, get out and jump around.

Did you steal some corn?
Uh yeah, it was under right. It was kind of like a big husk. But upon getting into the corn field, we noticed that it’s a lot harder to get out. The nature of the electric fence is kind of protuding. It looked like we weren’t going to make the show. . .They’d be like, “British India are stuck in a corn field forever more.” There are so many interesting things happen like that. There’s not many places in this country where we haven’t been. Our days of visiting The Big Banana and things like that are well and truly over.

So, like I said before – you’re on your way around the country, but on the 31st of October, you’re actually going to play one of Canberra’s oldest music festivals? You guys haven’t played that have you?
No, we haven’t. Stonefest is pretty new to me. I hadn’t actually heard of it until we were booked on.

It’s apparently been going on for forty one years, older than you and I…
Yes probably older than the ages of you and I combined, actually!

You can only imagine the number or rubbish bands that have played there over forty years and British India are proud to be added to that list.

So, what is your favourite memory of Canberra? If you have one that is!
We’ve got great memories of Canberra! We got arrested in Canberra once. Actually, we narrowly avoided arrest. We had been at the show, which I think was at the uni. Some of us wanted to go out to a club, and some of us wanted to go back to the hotel. So, Will [Drummond] and I squeezed into a car that was already full, so two over capacity… to go to the club and of course we got pulled over, the driver was charged and then we had to catch a cab from there. On a very long stretch of road…. so we did a lot of walking. But cabs dont frequent that often…

Also, our first time in Canberra which was quite a long time ago. Maybe three or four years ago probably before our first record. We were supporting a band called Tambalane and the lead singer was a young man named Wes Carr. We played at the uni and it was probably the last show of the tour and we really despised (excluding Carr of course), but we didn’t like their touring company so there was a lot of spiteful, you wouldn’t even call them practical jokes… just horrible stunts pulled by both of us. It was pretty much our first tour and our first time in Canberra.. we were very excited!

So there’s two memories for you.

For four good looking guys, what are you going to bring to the Stonefest table of bands?
We are just going to bring our now three records. One which you haven’t heard. Three records worth of songs! We will choose the best ones and we’ll perform them for you and I’ll think you’ll rather enjoy it…
Our live show is fine tuned by these years or touring that we’ve talked about. I don’t know, festivals are something we’re kind of getting better at …

So, Stonefest…See you there Canberra.

Be sure to catch British India alongside Frenzal Rhomb, Josh Pyke, The Living End, Art Vs Science and more at Stonefest09. Get your tickets now.