MORGAN JOHNSON catches up with local purveyors of ‘doom sexy’, THE SCRAPES, as they play a precursor to their April launch.

Violinist Adam Cadell and guitarist Ryan Potter comprise elegantly cinematic noise group The Scrapes. But don’t worry – it’s not all a controlled experiment – they can still descend to make a delightful racket as well.

MORGAN JOHNSON: Arguably Australia’s most featured violinists would be the ACO’s Richard Tognetti and Dirty Three/Bad Seed Warren Ellis. How have they informed your work?

ADAM CADELL: I think it’s safe to say that both of those violinists have informed my side of things in some way shape or form. I’m a classically-trained violinist and it’s basically impossible to be a classical violinist in Australia and not somehow admire Richard Tognetti’s work ... I personally really like his interpretations of the solo Bach violin sonatas and partitas and I sure as hell wouldn’t say no to a job in the ACO! [laughs]. As for Warren Ellis, his work has definitely informed our work to a degree ... particularly the Dirty Three of course. I mean basically he’s the coolest violinist on Earth so how could he not! Whether what we do is comparable to either of their work is up to the listener really ... I think we have something that is really unique in most ways.

MJ: As a duo, do you find you have a musical telepathy that enables you to read and interpret each other when creating new tunes?

AC: Well we definitely work well together and we come up with material quite spontaneously. I think when playing live we really feed off each other and since improvisation is such a huge part of how we work, some really special things can happen. We’re definitely two guys who musically see eye-to-eye on a fairly deep level. But it’s not something we’re consciously aware of exactly.

Ryan Potter: Writing new songs is always easy. Normally someone plays an idea and the other will figure out their part pretty quickly. Then we will improvise and play around with different movements and eventually put it into a structure. Remembering and reproducing the way we play a song is the hard part, the first performances of new songs always seem to go well.

THE SCRAPES play Ric’s on Wednesday Mar 10 with Cured Pink, then launch their LP at The Troubadour on Wednesday Apr 21 with Sky Needle & Muir. Tickets will be $10. www.myspace.com/planetofthescrapes

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