Mark Fuller - Gold Fields (19/03/2013)
Direct from their appearances at the iconic SxSW Festival in Austin and the release of their LP Black Sun, The 59th Sound chatted with Mark Fuller of Ballarat band, Gold Fields.
Hey Mark, how are you today?
Hey mate, I’m good.
So you're currently in Austin for South by Southwest, how was your set?
It’s good; it’s been a pretty full on couple of days. We’ve been here for three days and we’ve played three shows. So we are trying to cart our way around the city, making it a bit of an adventure. But yeah, it’s been pretty full on and really fun so far.
Hopefully the yanks have been treating you guys all right?
They're good, I think they have warmed to us pretty quickly because were from Australia, so they have an immediate interest in us because were from overseas. It was sort of easy to impress but at the same time a lot of the crowds we’ve been playing to aren’t used to the electronic, dance bands. So it’s probably taken a while for the crowd to warm up to us but usually by the end of the show it’s a fair bit of fun. I mean, because we grew up listening to bands like ‘The Presets’ and ‘Cut-Copy’, while these guys didn’t have that privilege so it takes them a bit longer but we are getting there, so it’s been good.
And since the release of Black Sun, has the exposure in the states turned out better for the band?
Yeah definitely, we’ve spent the past month here or six weeks to be exact and it feels like we’ve been playing almost every single night. I guess almost every second night we have played, so we’ve been working our asses off driving around the country and playing shows every night and since the record came out we’ve had people especially from back home calling up saying ‘we finally heard the album’. Getting in contact with us telling us that they like it or that their enjoying it, so it makes it a little bit more rewarding while we are away from home.
I also remember first seeing you guys play at the Forum alongside Miami Horror in 2011, had to say you guys blew me away. Has the experience changed at all since then?
Not really for us I don’t think. I mean going back, being a young band and touring with band like Miami Horror was something else. Like we were fans of Miami Horror so when we got that, it was massive for us and we became pretty good mates with the Miami Horror guys. So I think since then we’ve just been trying to grow the live set or develop the live set into something bigger, so it’s more fun for us and more fun for the crowd. We’ve actually met up with the Miami Horror guys a few times since we’ve been over here, so hopefully we will be able to play a couple of more shows with them. But at the moment as far as our live shows go, were just trying to better every tour we have, tuning it up and making it more fun for us and more fun for the crowd as well.
Now you guys have been the supporting act for a lot of major names from Datarock, Crystal Castles and PNAU to name a few. Is it different now that the band has a massive fan base and that your playing your own shows?
Yeah sort of, I think all the bands we have supported and played with are bands that we absolutely love. I guess we kind of have the luxury of… not being picky but we’ve been lucky to able to play with the bands that we love and in America we literally don’t have that luxury. So even though the tours we’ve done have been awesome, we sort of played a lot of shows with more rock bands or bands that we don’t usually association ourselves with. But I think we find it amazing just to play in America, to play shows where people come out to dance and have a good time rather than come outside and see a rock band. I think we haven’t quite found it yet, but we are slowly finding our way into the scene, like the show we played today was for ‘Blahblahblahscience’, which is a blog that we sort of find a lot of the music that we love and they were one of the first blogs to blog about our music. They put on a party today at ‘South by Southwest’ and it was us, ‘Ghost Beach’ and I don’t even know any other bands, um ‘Wildcat, Wildcat’ and a band called ‘1975’ and those are the sort of bands that just feel a bit more in our world. In America we sort of do feel like a fish out of the water, but if we keep playing with bands like today then that’d be good.
In August 2011, the band went to the states for the first time and worked with Mickey Petralia to produce your debut album ‘Black Sun’. How was it, working with someone who’s produced songs for the likes of Beck and Ladytron?
It was good; we learnt a fuckload from Mickey. We spent six weeks in LA with him sort of developing the songs and our songs that we had back then. He taught us heaps about producing songs and recording music, so it was like a pretty full-on months and the six weeks we spent over here. But at the same time, we probably weren’t ready to record an album yet. Like we didn’t have eleven or twelve songs that we loved and we weren’t confident in the sort of direction we wanted go or how we wanted to sound. So we got to work with Mickey and he taught us a load and then we came back to Australia but the album wasn’t really where we wanted to be at all, mainly because we weren’t ready for it and we spent a summer with Scott Horscroft who’s a great mate of ours, trying to fix everything where we may have made mistakes and find where we wanted to go and all that sort of stuff. Eventually we sort of realized that we had to start the whole thing again and by then we had learnt to trust ourselves and trust our own instincts and we saw that we could probably do it by ourselves. So we scrapped everything that we’ve done and then recorded the whole album in my mum and dad’s garage in Ballarat. We spent three weeks there taking everything that we learnt from Scott and Mickey and that whole twelve months and putting it all in the album we have now, so were really happy with what we got.
And was there a large comparison from working with Horscroft compared to Petralia
The main difference was that were pretty close with Scott, his been like a mentor to us. Like he was at our very first show ever and he manages our band as well and also working on a heap of records that we love, his literally one of our mates as well. So given his advice and guidance along the way and as a producer but also just being there, he sort of show us to understand where he wanted to go with it and what he thought was best for us to do. So out of anyone his probably taught us the most about recording and being a band in general. He sort of has been a massive mentor to us, which is probably the best word for it.
Would you say that without Mickey’s creative input, Black Sun would sound the same today or do you believe it would have sounded completely different?
Yeah, good question. I think for the overall sound of the record to be honest, we didn’t achieve any where near where we wanted to be over in the states with Mickey. We weren’t even close to what we wanted to make, we came back with probably an album that sounded like demos really and the whole electro side, which is probably the main part of our recordings is trying to mix the real instruments with the electronic instruments and finding that balance and being able to make sounds that we love and sounds exciting and new to us and we didn’t even get close to achieving any of that in LA. It pretty much sounded, well to me it sounded like a band going in and playing live in the studio and recording some songs. Probably the most valuable gain we got from that experience was learning how to structure songs or how to not clutter songs and I guess just the whole experience of being put out of our comfort zone. Pretty much after the year of trying to record and doing it other peoples way I think it was a sort of ‘let just do it the way we recorded the demo of Treehouse and The Woods’, because on the album as well we literally backtracked to how we did things at the start and took everything that we learnt over that twelve month period.
Finally, what’s the plan for the future?
We're finishing at the ‘South By Southwest’ and then were going to have a tiny breather for about a week or so and then we start a tour where were touring colleges over here on the west coast. So yeah we doing a tour of a few colleges and then we start another tour with a band called ‘Capital Cities’, they been played on the radio a fair bit unfortunately I haven’t really listened to them a lot yet but from what I’ve heard it’s going to be a pretty fun tour and it gets close to twenty dates.
Well, again thanks for speaking to us.
No worries mate, thank you.
Jason Cheung
Hey Mark, how are you today?
Hey mate, I’m good.
So you're currently in Austin for South by Southwest, how was your set?
It’s good; it’s been a pretty full on couple of days. We’ve been here for three days and we’ve played three shows. So we are trying to cart our way around the city, making it a bit of an adventure. But yeah, it’s been pretty full on and really fun so far.
Hopefully the yanks have been treating you guys all right?
They're good, I think they have warmed to us pretty quickly because were from Australia, so they have an immediate interest in us because were from overseas. It was sort of easy to impress but at the same time a lot of the crowds we’ve been playing to aren’t used to the electronic, dance bands. So it’s probably taken a while for the crowd to warm up to us but usually by the end of the show it’s a fair bit of fun. I mean, because we grew up listening to bands like ‘The Presets’ and ‘Cut-Copy’, while these guys didn’t have that privilege so it takes them a bit longer but we are getting there, so it’s been good.
And since the release of Black Sun, has the exposure in the states turned out better for the band?
Yeah definitely, we’ve spent the past month here or six weeks to be exact and it feels like we’ve been playing almost every single night. I guess almost every second night we have played, so we’ve been working our asses off driving around the country and playing shows every night and since the record came out we’ve had people especially from back home calling up saying ‘we finally heard the album’. Getting in contact with us telling us that they like it or that their enjoying it, so it makes it a little bit more rewarding while we are away from home.
I also remember first seeing you guys play at the Forum alongside Miami Horror in 2011, had to say you guys blew me away. Has the experience changed at all since then?
Not really for us I don’t think. I mean going back, being a young band and touring with band like Miami Horror was something else. Like we were fans of Miami Horror so when we got that, it was massive for us and we became pretty good mates with the Miami Horror guys. So I think since then we’ve just been trying to grow the live set or develop the live set into something bigger, so it’s more fun for us and more fun for the crowd. We’ve actually met up with the Miami Horror guys a few times since we’ve been over here, so hopefully we will be able to play a couple of more shows with them. But at the moment as far as our live shows go, were just trying to better every tour we have, tuning it up and making it more fun for us and more fun for the crowd as well.
Now you guys have been the supporting act for a lot of major names from Datarock, Crystal Castles and PNAU to name a few. Is it different now that the band has a massive fan base and that your playing your own shows?
Yeah sort of, I think all the bands we have supported and played with are bands that we absolutely love. I guess we kind of have the luxury of… not being picky but we’ve been lucky to able to play with the bands that we love and in America we literally don’t have that luxury. So even though the tours we’ve done have been awesome, we sort of played a lot of shows with more rock bands or bands that we don’t usually association ourselves with. But I think we find it amazing just to play in America, to play shows where people come out to dance and have a good time rather than come outside and see a rock band. I think we haven’t quite found it yet, but we are slowly finding our way into the scene, like the show we played today was for ‘Blahblahblahscience’, which is a blog that we sort of find a lot of the music that we love and they were one of the first blogs to blog about our music. They put on a party today at ‘South by Southwest’ and it was us, ‘Ghost Beach’ and I don’t even know any other bands, um ‘Wildcat, Wildcat’ and a band called ‘1975’ and those are the sort of bands that just feel a bit more in our world. In America we sort of do feel like a fish out of the water, but if we keep playing with bands like today then that’d be good.
In August 2011, the band went to the states for the first time and worked with Mickey Petralia to produce your debut album ‘Black Sun’. How was it, working with someone who’s produced songs for the likes of Beck and Ladytron?
It was good; we learnt a fuckload from Mickey. We spent six weeks in LA with him sort of developing the songs and our songs that we had back then. He taught us heaps about producing songs and recording music, so it was like a pretty full-on months and the six weeks we spent over here. But at the same time, we probably weren’t ready to record an album yet. Like we didn’t have eleven or twelve songs that we loved and we weren’t confident in the sort of direction we wanted go or how we wanted to sound. So we got to work with Mickey and he taught us a load and then we came back to Australia but the album wasn’t really where we wanted to be at all, mainly because we weren’t ready for it and we spent a summer with Scott Horscroft who’s a great mate of ours, trying to fix everything where we may have made mistakes and find where we wanted to go and all that sort of stuff. Eventually we sort of realized that we had to start the whole thing again and by then we had learnt to trust ourselves and trust our own instincts and we saw that we could probably do it by ourselves. So we scrapped everything that we’ve done and then recorded the whole album in my mum and dad’s garage in Ballarat. We spent three weeks there taking everything that we learnt from Scott and Mickey and that whole twelve months and putting it all in the album we have now, so were really happy with what we got.
And was there a large comparison from working with Horscroft compared to Petralia
The main difference was that were pretty close with Scott, his been like a mentor to us. Like he was at our very first show ever and he manages our band as well and also working on a heap of records that we love, his literally one of our mates as well. So given his advice and guidance along the way and as a producer but also just being there, he sort of show us to understand where he wanted to go with it and what he thought was best for us to do. So out of anyone his probably taught us the most about recording and being a band in general. He sort of has been a massive mentor to us, which is probably the best word for it.
Would you say that without Mickey’s creative input, Black Sun would sound the same today or do you believe it would have sounded completely different?
Yeah, good question. I think for the overall sound of the record to be honest, we didn’t achieve any where near where we wanted to be over in the states with Mickey. We weren’t even close to what we wanted to make, we came back with probably an album that sounded like demos really and the whole electro side, which is probably the main part of our recordings is trying to mix the real instruments with the electronic instruments and finding that balance and being able to make sounds that we love and sounds exciting and new to us and we didn’t even get close to achieving any of that in LA. It pretty much sounded, well to me it sounded like a band going in and playing live in the studio and recording some songs. Probably the most valuable gain we got from that experience was learning how to structure songs or how to not clutter songs and I guess just the whole experience of being put out of our comfort zone. Pretty much after the year of trying to record and doing it other peoples way I think it was a sort of ‘let just do it the way we recorded the demo of Treehouse and The Woods’, because on the album as well we literally backtracked to how we did things at the start and took everything that we learnt over that twelve month period.
Finally, what’s the plan for the future?
We're finishing at the ‘South By Southwest’ and then were going to have a tiny breather for about a week or so and then we start a tour where were touring colleges over here on the west coast. So yeah we doing a tour of a few colleges and then we start another tour with a band called ‘Capital Cities’, they been played on the radio a fair bit unfortunately I haven’t really listened to them a lot yet but from what I’ve heard it’s going to be a pretty fun tour and it gets close to twenty dates.
Well, again thanks for speaking to us.
No worries mate, thank you.
Jason Cheung