Gyroscope

Mon 31st May, 2010 in Features

Cohesion as an album title aptly sums up Gyroscope’s current position in many areas: musically, career-wise, and also on a personal level. They wanted to create a collection of songs that sat together to tell a cohesive story. This songwriting idea expanded into the idea of being cohesive amongst the band and as people within themselves.

“At this stage, the band takes up 99 per cent of time in our lives… it’s important to have your friends and your family on the same wavelength to make sure everyone is cohesive in a sense, to keep yourself happy in your personal life as well as in your music life. It’s a word that sums up that last one and a half to two years of making the record,” says guitarist Zoran Trivic.

After the huge success of Breed Obsession in 2008 that propelled them to the forefront of Australian music, Gyroscope are currently enjoying the calm before the storm before they embark on their national Cohesion tour.

In the making of their newest release, Gyroscope were able to fulfil one of their goals as a band by working with producer Gil Norton, who has worked with iconic bands such as the Pixies and Echo and the Bunnymen, and more recently with bands like Foo Fighters, Jimmy Eat World and Dashboard Confessional. The album was made at the legendary grounds of Rockfield Studios, Wales where bands including Queen and Coldplay have recorded in the past.

Trivic describes the experience with Norton as overwhelmingly positive. “He’s a legendary man…He’s a great guy first and foremost and got along with the band really, really well. To cut a long story short, he became like a fifth member of the band… he brought a lot of great ideas to the table”.

Breed Obsession revealed a more polished Gyroscope sound to Australian audiences. The band has described Cohesion as an attempt to capture their trademark live rawness and energy. Norton pushed them to experiment with this in ways they didn’t expect.

“We tried to make it reflect a bit more of our live show. Obviously it’s a bit more of a heavier, more rock-based album and we just wanted to showcase what we do onstage as an album. With our last couple of albums, and even our first album, we never really felt like we caught what we do live on record. That’s what we sat down and aimed to do with Gil”.

Norton encouraged them to not overthink their music and pushed them to roam free with their own ideas in total self-confidence. Contrary to how many would believe a big-name producer would behave, Trivic describes Norton as open-minded and really focused on the idea of getting the most out of themselves musically. He wasn’t the kind of guy to “lay down the law” and force the band stick to the letter.

Having attempted to capture their live sound on record, Trivic says that the band has never been more excited to take an album out on the road. “Particularly with Breed Obsession, and even a little bit with Are You Involved? there were some songs that really felt like album songs, rather than live songs… we actually have to choose what songs we want to play live [from Cohesion ] because everyone has a couple of favourites, and if we played the whole album live we probably wouldn’t have enough time to play our older songs”.

The Gyroscope crew are now veterans of the local music scene and have the luxury of sifting through a high quality back catalogue for those older songs to play live. Looking back on their thirteen year career, this level of success and longevity was not a thought they had in mind when they first started just as drummer Rob Nassif and Trivic jamming together with the first small goal of just getting a real gig.

With the addition of Brad Campbell on bass and singer/guitarist Dan Sanders they were soon playing parties and gigs around Perth. Then the idea of a first tour came up. Trivic’s account of their history is a series of small goals that eventually led them to having an ARIA gold album two years ago.

“All of a sudden you start to have all these achievements, and never in a million years did we think that we’d have a number one record… things like gold records and stuff like that were things we saw on movies. To have these achievements is great, it’s humbling and it’s something we can always look back on even when we’re not making music any more.” For now though, they are simply concentrating on making more of those small goals and creating something a little bit bigger and better each time.

It has been a long story in the making, and Trivic mentions that it’s a joke amongst their circle of friends that everything in Gyroscope takes a “hell of a long time”. Contrasted with bands that have buzz and hype built around their first few gigs or even the instant fame of Australian Idol contestants, it has taken more than a decade for Gyroscope to arrive at this point of recognition and success. Even the basic fact that they are from Perth has affected this progression.

“It took us five or six years of playing gigs in Perth to even get anybody from a label over to Perth to look at bands to tour nationally, because to get on a flight to go over east was $1000 return, and we had to get all our gear over there… It was super hard for us, but at the same time we feel like we’ve earned it that much more”. All the memories of getting paid a mere $20 after a gig or the hard times of simply not getting noticed are however looked back on with fondness and gratitude.

Their peers (both musical and non-musical) have a high respect for them because of this long hard-working history, and Perth has a high rotation of quality Aussie music. Does living so far away from the rest of the country affect their mentality as working musicians? Trivic uses the example of the controversy relating to their recent greatest hits release (released by Warner Music against the band’s wishes) to highlight something he’s happy to avoid by living in Perth.

“We’re lucky we live in Perth because we get to avoid a lot of the infighting or arguments or having to deal with record labels and that sort of thing. We get to go out on tour, do our best live show and then retreat back home to Perth where we are either writing more music or preparing for the next tour”. He explains that he’s not sure if the politics of the music industry is a straight-out negative, but he says that it’s definitely not a positive.

This tour sees them taking long-time touring partners After The Fall and upstart blues/noise boys The Vasco Era with them around the country. The Vasco Era is a choice that perhaps surprised some but it’s the kind of sound that reminds them why they got into music in the first place. Another current Australian act Trivic is enjoying is Violent Soho, and he says that they were all grunge kids when first starting the band in the late 90s and he looks forward to touring with acts like The Vasco Era and Violent Soho.

For young bands and musicians looking to make a break in Australian music, they could do worse than to look at Gyroscope’s example of working hard and earning it. “It’s going to be better for your heart and your mind and your soul if you just be prepared to work for it and not to have too many stars in your eyes”. Even at what seems to be the peak of their career, Trivic says that they aim to continue pushing for those bigger and better goals both artistically and personally. Gyroscope will be making music for as long as they can but at the same time not at the risk of becoming “obsolete or writing songs for the sake of it”.

Gyroscope Cohesion national tour:

Saturday 5th June – Prince of Wales, Bunbury
Sunday 6th June – Metro City, Perth
Friday 11th June – The Forum, Melbourne
Sunday 13th June – The Tivoli, Brisbane
Thursday 17th June – HQ, Adelaide
Friday 18th June – Metro Theatre, Sydney
Saturday 19th June – ANU Bar, Canberra