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 OLLIE from local indie five-piece TRAGIC/ATHLETIC talks to JAKEB SMITH about new directions, new endeavours, and a sleeping Brisbane music scene.
I haven’t heard from you guys in over a year. Did you fall off the radar there?
We definitely, definitely have – in the last year and a half we haven’t really lived in the country. We’ve had someone in Europe and then they came back and lived in Melbourne for seven or eight months and another one go to New York for Six months so that would be probably the reason why you haven’t heard anything, we haven’t done anything for ages really, just a few shows in between people being home, but not much at all.
Have you kept on running Handclappin’ Records?
We haven’t, we started something else [Mt. Field Recordings] with Sam from Quebec [the band, obviously] in Melbourne, which is along the same lines, but we’re playing on being a purely vinyl, small label. It’s something to start new and do it better hopefully. No more Handclappin’, but it was good for however long it lasted.
The sound of Tragic/Athletic has changed from hard and fast to slow and spacious, is that the result of growing up a little?
I reckon it’s a combination of a few things. Growing up is definitely part of it, maybe the addition of other people, because we used to be a three-piece and now we’re five. So that’s part of it, growing up and maybe – hopefully – the songwriting ability has improved.
You used to be vaguely labelled as hardcore, but that doesn’t seem true any more.
I’m not even that sure it was true beforehand anyway. It was something that someone else said that we sound like dyslexic hardcore, but I thought we were pretty eclectic. Our influences probably haven’t really changed, it’s just maybe that we’re showing it more. We are all still drawn back to the American hardcore scene, but it’s not like I listen to The Replacements. I guess also Brisbane seems changed. I think it’s really different and we’ve pulled away from it a bit. I don’t feel so strongly connected anymore to what’s going on in Brisbane.
What happened do you think?
I think for a good while people were relying on James K (Death:Wolf, On/Oxx) to pull people together to do stuff. Then he went away and everyone sort of sat back and waited for things to happen. You’re just wasting your time, you can’t really do that: you’re got to do things yourself.
I don’t really hear about many house parties any more. They used to be every week, am I just out of the loop, or is nothing happening?
I don’t think you’re wrong, I don’t think they’re happening any more. I don’t know whether I’m out of the loop as well but it doesn’t seem to happen much.
(If house parties are still happening in Brisbane, please let Jakeb and Ollie know because it sounds like they’d like to be invited – Ed)
So do you think Tragic/Athletic will end up staying in Brisbane?
No I don’t think so, I think everyone’s got a pretty deep feeling of they want to go somewhere else. Obviously everyone’s got their own agendas of what they want to do. We all want to venture out and try something different, but it all just depends when and where I guess. The next year is a little unsure for us. I think we’d still like to record another record in Brisbane, but after that, who knows?
TRAGIC/ATHLETIC launch their BRAKES 10-inch EP at The Troubadour with Major Major and Do The Robot. The EP is out through Mt. Field Recordings from then on.
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