The Break

Thu 29th Apr, 2010 in Features

Surf music can be polarising at times. It really is something you love or you don’t. I am unsure if it is a generational or a geographical frame of mind that enables you to connect. Or maybe it is just music and with any genre, you either get it or you don’t. The Break, made up of Rob Hirst (drums) Jim Mogine (guitars and keys) and Martin Rotsey (guitars) name you would know from the iconic Midnight Oils.

Joining them is the lone Yank, one Brian Ritchie on bass. Brian is now living in Tasmania and is best known for his work with that fabulous trio, The Violent Femmes. So is this a surf super group?

Rob Hirst, skins man extraordinaire caught up with FasterLouder from the Northern Beaches to talk about the music and the salty new release, Church Of The Open Sky, which is filled with the brackish and reverb filled sounds of surf guitars and the pounding sounds of Hirst’s drumming.

Wondering where and why a surf record at this time with this conglomeration of talent came about is something that is top of mind and a question that Hirst was happy to answer.

“This sound has been kicking around in the Oil’s camp for at least a decade and a half. I recall two occasions when The Oil’s were still going and we talked about when we were going to make this long heralded instrumental surf album. We just never got around to it. Church Of The Open Sky has been in the back of our minds for a long time. It was that pent up excitement and the fact that we had done all the pre-thinking by the time we got into the studio that made it such a spontaneous and joyful eruption when it came out in the studio.”

Hirst continues, “Brian dug the kind of surf music that we loved as well. Not just surf music, but weird instrumental music that was made by Joe Meek or Dick Dale or Link Wray. You know, that hard instrumental guitar music they made. Jim and Martin already had their vintage Jazz Master guitars and their Fender Vibroverb amplifiers and I had my old Ludwig drum kit and we had a sound in mind and we went for it. But instead of just being a nostalgic surf record, we wondered how we were going to put enough Violent Femmes and Midnight Oils styles within to move surf music around a little bit. Once you have the tortured twanging guitars and the pounding toms you can marry it with anything else and that was what we were trying to do with this record.”

From the first listen you know it is not simply a trip down memory lane. You can feel the joie de vivre of the recording sessions and the energy that was captured over these short takes. You don’t have to listen too deep to hear the Oils and the Femmes influence throughout. The band has taken music that inspired each member when they were young and put a fabulous new spin on it with filled with reverb, cheesy keyboards and theremin wails.

“We were very excited about making the music. It was the old fashioned thing of getting the ‘take’ rather than layering stuff or agonising over it. The riff would just arrive as you were jamming on something and it formed an amoebic shape and that firms up a bit and you go to the control room have one listen and go back and do the take again. By lunch time, you have a song in the bag and after lunch you have a couple more and we did that a few times and almost without blinking an eye we had fifteen or so songs done incredibly spontaneously. I do believe that this music has to be made this way and does not really benefit from over production or grinding away at it,” Hirst claims.

Surfers will recognise song titles such as Winkipop, Five Rocks, Dump, and Cyclops, however without any proficient surfers in the band, the investigation into appropriate titles fell to the younger family members and friends/surfers within their community. Hirst puts it simply, “Brian Ritchie used to surf behind the super tankers in Lake Michigan growing up in the US on a long board, but he knew none of the places here. We are all musicians and not surfers and the short answer is that we think surfers should surf and surf musicians should play surf music and never the ‘twain shall meet”.

The Break have done a few gigs around the traps and one of the more recent appearances was at the appropriately located Byron Bay’s Bluesfest at Easter. Playing at 12:15, the first band on the day they played, the campers were just getting up but they did get a decent turn out.

“We were running on adrenalin and lack of sleep and we were over caffeinated as we played the Boogie Festival in the Victorian countryside the night before. That was a lovely and sweet festival, it was kind of like festivals used to be in the late 60s and 70s set in a beautiful valley that gleamed with a perfect sunset. Bluesfest is an altogether different beast, it is massive. We had a great reception for that hour of the day and many people came back afterwards and said they got what we were doing. We were a bit stunned and the audience was a bit stunned for the first half of the show. The audience was probably thinking, “Who are these guys? Where is the lead singer? What are they on about? And then they seemed to get the surf styled music we were e playing and took off with us.”

Touring will continue with some upcoming shows with iconic Aussie band the Hoodoo Gurus where Hirst hopes “to steal some of their fans and keep the Gurus honest”.

The Break play with the Hoodoo Gurus at these gigs:

Thursday 29th April – Hi Fi Bar, Brisbane
Friday 30th April – Twin Towns, Tweed Heads
Saturday 1st May – Yamba Bowling Club
Friday 7th May – Governor Hindmarsh, Adelaide
Saturday 8th May – Hi Fi Bar, Melbourne