If you’re living in Melbourne and regularly attend local shows, you would have come across the name Eddy Current Suppression Ring by now. Similarly, if you are enrolled at Melbourne Uni and regularly attend your electrical engineering classes, you should have heard the name too.
For those that haven’t been to class in a while: an eddy current is a phenomenon that happens when a magnetic field that’s intersecting a conductor moves, creating a flow of electrons within the conductor. As a result, these circulating eddies produce an electromagnet that oppose the change in the external magnetic field.
Or something like that… thanks Wikipedia.
The band Eddy Current Suppression Ring shares a few similar the characteristics with its electrical namesake. An eddy current is apparently used to great effect moving electricity through microphones and shifting aluminium cans. Sounds like a good Saturday night. The name Eddy Current Suppression Ring also acts very alike to a magnet field for a gig, attracting punters from far and wide. Guitarist Mikey Young cannot explain the pull-factor that attracts the growing cult-like following of Eddy Current Suppression Ring, a band that “accidentally formed at a work Christmas party in 2004.”
The very first instances of the band can be heard on their debut, self-titled seven inch as track So Many Things. “Drunk and the last to leave, Danny [Current, drums] and I jumped on instruments and Brendan [Suppression, vocals] started to yell in to a tape deck. We took the tape home and thought it was cool so decided to keep playing and writing. A few weeks later we got our good friend Rob Solid in to play some bass on some more recordings and decided to put out a seven inch and play a show. The show was fun and people clapped so we kept playing and recording.”
Without doubt, it is the live performance of Eddy Current Suppression Ring that has enthralled the Melbourne music scene; they are the type of band that makes you dance, even when you’re not drunk. Their sixties/seventies variety of garage rock ‘n’ roll has captured the attention of fans and bands from across the genres. They’ve released a split seven inch with crusty-punks Straightjacket Nation, and gigged with a huge variety of domestic and international bands, including the likes of My Disco, Witch Hats, Die! Die! Die!, the Onyas, Grey Daturas, Macromantics, Radio Birdman, Artimus Pyle, the Bellrays, Comets On Fire, and many more.
Young says that he isn’t sure of why the band is so popular, “I think at first we found it weird that bands so different from us liked us but I realised that just because someone is in a certain type of band doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy other music. We don’t just sit around listening to garage rock ‘n’ roll. We listen to heaps of stuff. Its just happens to be what comes out of us best when we play together. I don’t really like to think about it too much. The more unaware we are of why people like us, the better I reckon.”
The bands first full-length, also self titled, was release to enormous critical acclaim and gained Eddy Current a spot on the bill at the 2007 Big Day Out and the upcoming Golden Plains Festival. The album was recorded at the Caulfeild Rehearsal Studios over four hours on a Saturday afternoon last summer except for “the odd extra guitar and tambourine”, according to the liner notes. Mikey Young explained that what was recorded there was no different to recording for their previous, smaller releases. “It had no real intention of being an album. We just recorded what songs we had ready at the time and use what turns out good. It turned out on that day that 11 of the recordings were pretty good, so we made an album.”
“Usually, I’ll have some sort of riff or song that I’ll bring to practice and Brendan will have a bunch of lyrics he’s been writing,” Young describes the writing process behind a typical Eddy Current Suppression Ring song. “Sometimes it’ll come together straight away and we’ll have a song. Usually if it doesn’t work pretty quickly, we scrap it. We don’t spend too much time thinking about songs. Other times, someone will just start something and we will all jump in and it will miraculously turn into a song.”
As for the future, Young says the band hopes to record another album soon and go overseas to play. In the meantime, there are a couple more seven inches in the works and some more shows. “Oh,” he adds, “and we have a film clip half finished.”
Eddy Current Suppression Ring play the Golden Plains Festival, March 10-12 at the Meredith Supernatural Amphitheatre with a heap of other bands. Check it out.
