Wheelers Of Oz
The Wheelers of Oz's debut Revivalised (released last August) was one of the best and most beautiful surprises for us in 2015. Definitely one of the best debuts of the year, including eight magically crafted and highly inspired psych gems, it breath life into a rather uncreative music year in general, where most releases were rather predictable and average (with some wonderful exceptions of course). Having the chance to chat with the Australian (Perth) 7-piece band was a great pleasure and honour for us. Thank you guys!
The Basement: We read that “The Wheelers of Oz are a fictonal group of bizzare characters invented by L. Frank Baum. They are a very rare species who only live in the enchanted Land of Ev and are introduced in L. Frank Baum's third Oz book titled Ozma of Oz”... How did you come with this name and how is your band related to these creatures?
The Wheelers of Oz are a bunch of characters from a film that I watched as a kid. They were intimidating and a memory of them was engraved into my mind. The name came up in the early days of jamming and I guess it just stuck ever since.
The Basement: Your brilliant debut album is entitled ‘Revivalised’. What are you trying to revive ? Or is it already revived ? I Think you should tell us about your past times...
We are reviving the souls of our long lost brothers, our forgotten selves and our future nostalgic memories.
The Basement: Mostly, Revivalised is an upbeat and happy sounding LP but we can spot shoegaze and lo-fi characteristics in your playing. How did you manage to blend all this stuff for this awesome output ?
All sorts of music influence us, whether its, old folk, garage, psych, shoegaze or whatever, we like to incorporate all of it into our sound. If you could imagine an artist making a collage by cutting out all of their favorite pictures and sticking them together on one piece of paper that is the direction we like to take when we write new stuff. We think the fact that we play the music means that it is always going to sound like us even if one song is poppy and another song is a one or two chord progression.
The Basement: Why not a vinyl but a CD release ? We would love to have a black 12" printed with this beautiful cover... Is it finally a completely DIY album ?
We would have loved to press it to vinyl but we wanted to get this record out as quickly as possible so people could hear our stuff. We only had a couple of demo tracks online before the release. Plus we didn’t have a lot of cash flowing through the account so we just ran with a CD release haha. Perhaps we will re-release it on vinyl one day. The next one will definitely be on wax! As for the DIY, we did all the recording, mixing and artwork ourselves, the mastering and printing was done elsewhere.
The Basement: Where was it recorded ? We are a bit confused about this, as we read that you left Australia and visited LA to make the album...
We are confused too! We didn’t record it in LA we recorded it all in our home studio in Perth Western Australia.
The Basement: What kind of things would you consider as your inspiration for your debut and your music in general?
Inspiration can come from anywhere! It could be from a certain song or band, a film soundtrack, a situation in your life or in someone else’s. Whatever gets the creative thoughts flowing. The debut was mostly inspired by music that we listen to, most of the songs were written while we were still trying to find our sound. We used to steal noises and playing styles from our favorite bands and record a demo then a week later we would record a demo with different tones, effects, drumming styles or whatever else we wanted to experiment with. It was a good way for us to discover what sound suited us best and a way to blend all of our influences into our way of playing. The approach is referred to as ‘Pastiche’ and has been one of the most commonly used approaches by countless artists in all modes of art throughout history. So you could say that this debut is a scrapbook of our musical influences reinterpreted with our own personal spin.
The Basement: We love Revivalised on its entity, definitely one of the best debut albums of 2015. But opening track “Mise En Scene” is astonishing. What’s the story behind it?
We knew that we wanted to write an introductory style track for the album and we wrote one as a band but felt it that it didn’t fit the rest of the songs so we decide to get rid of it. Alex ended up writing a new track that we thought had the perfect vibe to introduce the album, he recorded most of it himself and then Sam added the lead guitar and it was done! It came together really quickly. Mise En Scene is a term used to describe the visual theme and setting in films and theatre. This is what we were aiming for with the opening track. We wanted to blend all of the sounds that the listener would hear throughout the album into one piece of work to set the scene for the rest of the album to follow.
The Basement: We think you sound as a Sci-fied try to get the listener to another place. That's the fantasy part in your music we suppose. What's your relation with fantasy or science fiction films ? Is cinema and soundtracks among your influences ?
We are definitely influenced by cinema and film soundtracks but not so much fantasy and science fiction films. We do want the music to take the listener to another place but more so within the reality of their own life, like a day dream or something like that rather than the way a fantasy film works with totally unbelievable situations. Song structure and the layout of a complete album can be closely compared to the narrative of films.
The Basement: We know that the members of your band, live together. Is it a way to know each other and making music much more efficient or it just happened ?
We new that setting up a studio in a house would make it easy to collaborate, so it definitely makes it more efficient when it comes to laying down some new sounds.
The Basement: How did it all start for The Wheelers of Oz at the first place? How did you guys meet and decide to make a band?
We have been friends since we were about 5 or 6. We started playing music a few years ago. We would cram into Alex’s bedroom and make heaps of noise at his parent’s house. Tom joined the band not long before we started playing shows and later on after a few line up changes we were lucky enough to pick up Steve and Glenn who also play in Mt Mountain, Angus from The Durongs and Jordan Zu from The Spunloves.
The Basement: You know, there is a bunch of good bands similar to your genre. You obviously have done great to be known out of Australia so soon. What are your ambitions ? How do you see yourselves in some years ahead from today ?
Yeah we are really glad that our music is being heard internationally. Our ambition is to continue to make more music and share it with as many people as possible for as long as we can. If we are still doing that in a few years we will be happy!
The Basement: Earlier this month you played along with our countrymen Acid Baby Jesus. What do you think of their music?
Their music is really cool. They have definitely come up with a unique sound. You can hear a lot of influence from bands like Black Lips but they still retain a very original direction by holding on to their European charm. They were really good to watch live and were all really nice guys. We hope to get over to Greece one day and play some more shows with them.
The Basement: There are so many great new bands from your country that make considerable fuss over the last 5 years. Do you think we could speak about an Australian ‘music move’?
Yeah there is a pretty lively scene for all genres. We think that certain Australian bands that have done well in the last few years have definitely drawn the spotlight to our side of the waters and opened up a lot of doors and opportunities for other bands to gain attention. You could say that there is a bit of an Australian music movement going on.
The Basement: What’s your verdict on Tame Impala’s latest controversial release ‘Current’? Not their best work so far, we could say.
It’s an interesting topic that a lot of people in Perth talk about. Musically it’s not really what we listen to very often. We definitely dig their older stuff more but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great album. Kevin Parker always spoke about wanting to make pop music and that is exactly what he has done. It is inspiring to see that he is achieving his goals as an artist. A painter can’t paint the same picture over and over; moving on to new pieces of work is how you explore art and the only way to discover what it is that you are looking for is to do whatever it is you want to do, not what others think you should be doing.
The Basement: We would to deeply thank you about this interview guys... As a final question, we would like you to share with us your 10 best bands/artists of all time.
Thanks for having us! This has got to be the hardest question of all so we are just going to list what comes to mind.
The Velvet Underground
The Beatles
Joy Division
Bob Dylan
The Brian Jonestown Massacre
The Rolling Stones
Spacemen 3
Simon and Garfunkel
Cat Stevens
David Bowie
