Go Farther With Further

Tue 13th Sep, 2005 in Features

What is punk? This is a question that silently arose as the following conversation unfurled.

Slipping away into a corner on the cold steps of a set of doors noone had acknowledged, FasterLouder sits down with Matt Coyte, guitarist, and Leo Coyte, vocalist and guitarist of local quartet Further. Playing at an instore at Red Eye Records on King Street in Sydney and under the circumstances their energy and full sound was surprising to find.

“Whatever happened to dissent in this country?” This is the graffiti that Matt decided he had to blog about on Further’s MySpace website. Though the blogpost was assured as not the view of the whole of band, Leo’s silent response in parts of the conversation was an indication that this drives at least half the band’s music.

“The state of the country right now is fucked.” replies Matt when asked what Further, as a punk band, is retorting/responding to, “And we’ve never really been political in the past and we’re probably never going be that political… But I think if we’re ever going to make any small statements it’s probably going to start soon [laughs vaguely]. I just think the whole nature of everyone’s laxness and willingness to take what keeps getting thrown at them is just deplorable at the moment. [But] I don’t want to get up on stage and go ‘Ohh. it’s a police state man!’ and all those throw away statements. You know I really wish more people would start freaking talking about about the state of Australia.”

Leo and Matt are the main songwriters for Further so it became the perfect opportunity to ask what drove some of their lyrics in particular, “in debt to pioneering punks” in An Adolescent With Grunge. Matt responds, ”I guess it’s about the state of modern punk music. And I dont even want to be negative and slam it and slag of any bands or anything, I kind of wanted to be more positive about it and just give props to bands that we thought were real punk rock and thank them for inspiring us.”

I ask whether they think bands these days have forgotten about their influences and not enough of them are acknowledging where their music comes from? Leo says, ”Maybe they’re not looking back far enough. Back to the early 80s to your Black Flag and your SST days.” And Matt adds, ”I think a lot of the bands [are] playing punk rock but they they don’t even know or haven’t really heard the bands that they should be inspired by. You can hear it in their music. And also a lot of the bigger punk bands in this country are going about their career in the most unpunk rock manner imaginable.”

I’m taking “Your enemies are on the air waves.” from Fools In Love as a swipe at mainstream music. Am I right, Leo? ”Just the state of Australian music at the moment.. it’s very safe. It’s not a whinge that we’re not on the airwaves, it’s more [because] no one’s taking any risks these days on what’s getting played on the radio. Matt adds, “And if it is new it’s just copying someone else who’s doing something new.”

The two guys and I muse over the feeling of the Australian music scene is in a sad state of affairs right now especially since it’s gotten more popular?  Both Matt and Leo concede that it’s not a complete downward spiral with some improvements, especially since five years ago.

“In Sydney there was nowhere to play. So it’s a lot better now with a lot of new clubs opening up, says Leo. Matt mentions, ”And the dance music scene is dying out. A lot of people who were kind of on the border line between rock and dance are just going to rock gigs [now] so that’s good. [pause] I will slag of dance music [though].... I will.” [laughs]

When it comes to playing live, with a reputation for resonating feverish energy, the band are both sides of the coin; extroverted and introverted.

On the flip, Further occasionally perform shows under an alias, were they “just improvise and jam” according to Leo. While the anonymity of secret gigs are more affiliated with bigger famous bands wanting to be common again it serves it’s purpose here as a way of rebelling against, well, their own band. A freedom for unrestrained, unidentified expression of music outside of the institution that is an established band indentity. Also… because they’re punk and they can do that.

The conversation (unavoidably) turns to punk rock and politics. And while they’re not really on a musical vandetta against The Man or The Corporation, (unlike an unmentioned American punk band), their strong views obviously inject a kick and a shove in their music.

“When you look at the punks in the 80s and what they were rebelling against, we’ve probably got more to rebel against now. But nobody’s doing it.” says Matt, “I mean they had skinheads to rebel against but it was on it’s way out by the time stuff like Black Flag came into it. They’ve managed to, you know, create this firebrand approach to everything which got everyone thinking. Nobody’s doing that anymore.”

I ask Leo whether he had anything to add to this. After pausing he says no. I ask whether he was just not very political or he just didn’t want to get into it because he’d probably have a lot to say. He starts but pauses again and then finally says “Nah… I won’t get into it” and answers my question.

As a recording band Further has been quite prolific, with EPs between albums throughout their eight year career. So one has to ask, how is this album different to what you’ve done before?

“Well,  we’ve trimmed the fat a lot. We used to have a lot of five minute feedback sections and stuff. I just wanted it to be concise. And slightly boppier without being lame. We recorded it all live as well so it still has that sound, that good energy that we’re known for live,” according to Leo. 

“We wanted it to be more melodic but we still wanted it to have a lot of impact so we cut out a lot of the effects. So, really clean guitars, really natural sounding recording, adds Matt.

It’s quite interesting that the new album is a self titled (plus an exclamation mark). Leo responds, ”I guess we thought this was our first, really solid record. The other one was good but we we’re still finding our way. We’re confident that this one was gonna be our important record.”

The cover of the new album… it looks a lot like Darren ‘Dang’ Talent, the band’s drummer. The guys teasingly entice comparisons, asking me if I thought it was Dan Ackroyd. Matt mentions, “basically I did a whole bunch of different paintings and I didn’t really concentrate on what would be the front cover. [So] I laid them all out and that was the one that stood out the most and I want people to remember it as the blue album cover with… the ghost-like Dan Ackroyd on the front cover.”

According to Leo and Matt the band itself is quite mellow offstage. We discussed how aggressive bands, like punk and hardcore, are usually nice guys offstage because they’ve got their aggression off their chest.

“We find that [that is the case]. We get told that we’re doing a tour with a certain band and we go “Err… This is going to be tough. They’re gonna be meatheads or they’re going to be really instense.” But then they’re really nice. And we make a lot of good friends.”

Not that Further hasn’t had it’s moments. Particularly when they were in England playing for an indie radio station.

Matt tells the story, “It was a big dance party in this hall and all the radio DJs deejayed and there were heaps of kids going. And we played at one and they just… they just didn’t get it. Leo interjects, ”Yeah… they were just throwing…” 

“ ...throwing glasses at us. And Leo played Forever Dead, the last song off our last album and he just kept playing for as long as he could. [laughs] And he just wouldn’t get off the stage and the kids were just standing up the front yelling. And then Darren had a big night that night as well. We went out. He drank too much. He threw up in the bin. Fell over in the bin. And we completely trashed the backstage area. Not that we condone that but they were… They deserved it…they were bastards.”

So, at the end of the conversation we ask again: What is punk exactly? I say I can’t really say. But ask Further, they seem to know what they’re talking about.