Earlier this year I had a chance to interview Brisbane’s Bent on behalf of FRR for FRR Zine #1 (see more about FRR and its zine @ FRR’s tumblr). Bent’s full-length cassette debut in the form of “Non Soon” came out onVirtual Coolin late 2014, and it was a year end favorite of both myself and those behind the curtain at Fuckin’ Record Reviews (aka FRR). The band consists of Heidi Cutlack, Sky McNicol and Glen Schenau, all veterans of the Brisbane music scene, and every other thing you’ll want to know about them can be read below. I half-heatedly and indirectly tried to engage them on a neutral (from my POV) discussion about arts funding in Australia, but they didn’t take the bait and it would have been weird/disrespectful to go down that path further, considering how little it had to do with why I wanted to reach out to them in the first place. They were definitely a pleasure to interview. Here goes:
The three of you are involved in numerous projects. What are some bands you play in, outside of Bent?
Skye: I think bands are like other relationships in your life…many different kinds can co-exist and maybe make the stew richer, so long as you’re totally committed and present for everyone you play with…and don’t get the songs mixed up! My first love is improvising and the group I’ve been playing with longest is a pot of cosmic gronk called Warden Burger. I also play in a few other Brisbane bands including drums in Scrabble(d) and violin in GKATGKs. For both Scrabble and GKs I was first and foremost a friend and a fan and was pretty over the moon at eventually being asked to join! For me, those bands kind of sound like the noise Brisbane makes when it creaks…
Glen: Per Purpose is my own vehicle, and he’s still choking my smoke – Gerland Krenny and the Gerbalb Keaneys, Cured Pink and sometimes Sky Needle all waiting in the wings. I’d like to think this list is enough to keep me busy – and sometimes it is. I am 25 years old.
Heidi: The only other band that currently has a piece of my heart and or lazy talents is Gerald Keaney and the Gerald Keaneys. Readers will now make the un-obvious observation that the entire Bent band is in the ‘GKs’. But it wasn’t always the case back in 2012 when I was plonked into that crew of weirdos or such a reputation that band always seems to have. It had an almost completely different line up then, but it’s ever changing members is a never changing trait. I’m talking a bit about this band because if you listen to/ read the liner scrawling notes of Non Soon you’ll hear clunks and clangs of The Gerald Keaneys between Bent ‘songs’. So there you go. Other than that there’s been a couple other bands I’ve played in but there’s no time to say what who what’s.
Heidi: Oh yeah, Glen also had Marl Karx, his first ever band, he made with Michaela Chin, and was in the ever impressing band Psy Ants oooaahhhoo
Glen: oooaahhhoo
Was there any scene or style that you feel like you’ve evolved out of? Or any experiences earlier on that provided a template that you’re still expanding from? I’ve heard most of the bands you’ve mentioned and it seems like there was a willingness to experiment from the onset.
Heidi: Well I’d never played in a band before Bent began back in 2011, the lineup then was different though – myself and two other girls named Katie and Julia. But the first ‘songs’ I guess you could call ’em, that I ever started writing were greatly inspired by current Aus underground bands at the time – Psy Ants, On/Oxx, Per Purpose, Gutters? I can’t really think of much else though. There were also odd pieces like Arab On Radar, DNA stuff like that – real cooky wonky stuff that’s hard to find – I knew I could make my own thing out of it. But it was going to shows in Brisbane and seeing other kids that were just like me, and see them play in bands together or perform exotic experimental nonsense sound in front of their friends – THAT was what put the ideas in my head. Because what they spat out of their crumbling drum kits, and shabby creaking guitars and half-good vocals was and still is some of the most difficult music to find in the world, because no one else could make it but them. I hadn’t heard anything more authentic, not from the Pixies or Sonic Youth or bloody Nick Cave (as far as ‘band bands’ go). I remember seeing Per Purpose play in a hall that was renamed Burst City for a time when kids were playing shows there, around 2010, I was 18. But for Per Purpose – I still can’t put a label on what they sounded like, and that’s what made me think – I could and should do this! Ha ha Oh Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is cool, yep she’s great – she still gives me inspiration.
Glen: Being in the unique position of g uitarist in a bass led three piece band, I guess I’m expanding from the Psy Ants template I was a part of a few years ago. Bent don’t need a feedback wizard, so I stick to little post-it guitar notes all over Heidi’s songs. ‘Ten fly partners in a rotten chicken cup’, ‘did I do that?’, ‘click clack’, stuff like that.
Skye: Once my school music teacher wanted to quit his band, and offered me in his place. I rocked up to my first practise with these awesome old (they probably weren’t, but I was 13) folkies and asked if they had some sheet music or charts for the songs…they laughed at me and told me to first listen, and then try to play and listen at the same time. That was my first experience of improvising and it made a huge impression on me. Also, they bought me my first beer;-)
Years later I found an ad in rave magazine for a violinist…the band I joined was called Marlinchen and was largely improvised and instrumental. We all agreed that we were trying to play something like the soundtrack to dark fable or a cinematic dream never filmed…any experimenting was welcome within that aesthetic. Not long after joining I found out that we were performing at Audio Pollen Social Club, then at a mysterious place called the forest (I had only just moved to Brisbane and thought it might be an actual forest!) Audio Pollen completely blew my mind…boundaries were blurred or non existent in so many ways I’d never experienced before, particularly between performer and spectator. People would come week after week, challenging themselves to get up and perform in some new capacity, or to explore and hone what they were working on creatively at the time. I think I’ve been trying to expand on these two experiences ever since…trying to listen and play at the same time, while staying curious.
As an outsider observing a scene like Brisbane, I’m always blown away by the freedom you seem to have collectively, as far as experimentation goes. In America things are more rigid, even on an underground level. We have our own support systems in independent music, but what tends to come with that is more adherence to a style, set of aesthetics, etc. Is there anything culturally about your city, or Australia more broadly, that lends itself to artists being so open-minded? Or do I have a false sense of what’s going on? It’s extremely easy for me to be hyper-focused on one aspect of your culture and filter everything else out, I suppose.
Skye: I have great affection for Brisbane…lost city of the dags. I think that plays a big part in the culture of mangy experimentation and rampant diy…we’re outwardly not known as a cultural hub, which I think is freeing! There is no particular cool, underground or otherwise to conform to. The scene is small and incestuous, the weather is hot and the light intense…maybe the humidity causes our brains to fester in an interesting way…
Heidi: There are sort of underground bands in Bris that put a lot of pressure on themselves to sound a certain way in their scene, some might call em hipsters? Bands in that crowd often all end up looking and sounding very similar to one another, even though they think they feel different. Ah I don’t want to sound mean, but we’ll just never fit in with them because we humbly make & do what we like without questioning ourselves too much, or at all. So it depends on the individual on where they end up in the norm-to-weirdo scale. Not considering you’re part of any kinda scene is probably a good start to feeling no pressure from other musicians, I mean you’ll end up in one no matter what. There are bands in the middle of the scale which are fantastic – Barbiturates is one that stands out in my mind. But also, it might be something that’s unique to the humble Bris, because when I’m in Melbourne or even Sydney, the wild-eyed sounds-I-never-heard-before are infrequently experienced.
Changing gears to your recent album, I was wondering if the juxtaposition between the interludes and the actual songs on “Non Soon” has some significance?
Heidi: mm! I don’t think I’d ever let Bent put out an album with just songs alone. There’s a lot more to Bent than our constructed songs. To tell you the truth I rarely listen to bands except when I see them live or they’re playing on the radio in my kitchen. For me, when I’m in my room I usually have playing some freaky abstract Japanese music like Geinoh Yamashirogumi, that’s what has inspired me most. So I wanted to allow people to have a broader concept of Bent, rather than just another conventional band – When the three of us come together we’re an unusual lucid dream team.
I’ve read a lot of positive reviews of your live shows from various people. There’s a tug and pull in your music, where it shifts between loose and taut. How natural does the material on “Non Soon” come out in a live setting? Did it take time to get comfortable working together with these songs in particular, or do you find it translates well in a live setting? Do you improvise much?
Glen: Skye and I have a looser role in holding the songs together than Heidi, so there is naturally a degree of improv in what we do. if only slightly. I can’t play the same thing, I won’t play the same thing, and if you don’t buy me that toy, I’m gonna go MENTAL mummy
Skye:The tug and pull is so central to our dynamic (musically and as whole humans) that I’d be unsettled if we started playing crisp, tight, cemented versions of our songs. I know I sometimes fail to play the same thing twice. We’re all quite intense people and I think we’re at our best live when we meld all that energy into a taut band, and then twang it and let the bendy spasmatic droplets fly.
Heidi: mm mm! what they said, I do write the structures of the songs so there’s only so much improvisation I can do without confusing those two. But when we do improvise on stage, usually before the set begins it always sounds liking likeable to me. The songs from Non Soon are played just the same as the recording – except for the tin cans and rattling spoons and stuff, we don’t have enough hands for that.
What do you guys have in your future right now, with Bent and beyond? Could you picture yourselves touring the states?
Skye: We’re going to Japan! Everyone will say that, but we are! I’d love to tour the states. I’ll go anywhere and play with anyone!
Glen: I picture bank error in my favour, I picture bank error in Skye’s favour and I picture bank error in Heidi’s favour.
Heidi: Oh yeah sure thing I’ll perform to any crowd yes-sir – a few more part-time jobs to save up before I ever get over there. But yep Japan o Japan 楽しみにしています！
AGONY SHORTHAND 