Sauce

It’s been a hard life for Art of Fighting’s Ollie Brown. For a start, he’s never been in a fight, and he’s just finished playing gigs in Paris. On retreat in Copenhagen, he took some time out from this itinerary of misfortune to chat with David Williams about the new album… and frogs.

Hey what’s going on? Where are you hanging out?
I’m in Copenhagen at the moment, actually.

Wow! What’s going on there? How come you’re over there?
Various reasons; visiting people… just having a bit of a holiday after our gig in Paris, actually.

You sound really, really impressive; [like a] jetsetting, global, mega-band type - gigs in Paris; hanging out in Copenhagen…
I can imagine how it might come across that way but it’s not really that glamorous in reality… [Laughs]

Tell me about the gig in Paris; how did you get it, how did it go, how were the frogs?
Being there was fantastic… how did it start… we got an email from – it translates as “Paris Summer Festival”… and we just got an email from them one day saying that they were putting on a stage, five nights of Australian bands as one of their interesting kind of things to do for a festival – they’d never done that before – I don’t think they’d had a week of Australian bands before… so they said they’d work in collaboration with the other Government in getting all the bands over there and that kind of thing, and we’re like, “Cool, yeah, sounds great!” It just went from there… they were an incredibly organised group of people and, when we went to the gig, very professional – it was really fun, yeah.

So I’ve gotta ask, what are you like in a fight? Have you ever been in one? Are you any good – are you a slapper, or a runner, or a kicker?
I don’t really know because I’ve never been in one –

Never been in a fight?
No… maybe as a kid in school…

Go back there; how were they?
You know, I think they were just kind of rough and tumble kind of things, you know…

So no “Art of Fighting” from back there – so where does the name come from?
It comes from some obscure Japanese video game – that I’ve never actually played to be honest! I just saw it somewhere… it used to be the name of one of our songs and the classic thing that happens to bands is that… your first gig comes up and you don’t have a name for the actual band so you pick something out of thin air, so we [thought] we’ll just name ourselves after this song we’d been playing, you know.

What happened with Runaways, or Runways, sorry – was that a quick grab name, or more of a considered title?
It is actually Runaways, not Runways… and I don’t know where that came from – it was just one of the suggestions someone made and a lot of the songs on that record had to do with travel, and kind of leaving and wanting to get out of there… so it just kind of [fit] the songs and they went with it; also it was the only one we all kind of agreed with. I can’t remember what any of the other contenders are – they were pretty bad… [Laughs]

And I guess life has imitated art… you have gotten out of here and runaway[ed] to Copenhagen…
Uhm… yeah… in some tenses, yeah.

And Second Storey; I’ve read a comment I think, I’m not sure if you made it – I hope you made it – you wanted Runaways to be more “impulsive” than Second Storey… to what extent do you think it ended up like that?
It definitely did, and it’s funny because the main thing with Runaways is it was definitely protracted and a lot more relaxed, so in some senses that’s not a situation that really brings about impulsive recording… but I think, given that we had more time to make the record and more time to get the original takes right we could really focus on the actual playing of us four together in one room as opposed to getting a take and then… like we did with Second Storey, we’d only get a couple of takes and then pick the best one and then spend aaaages in the studio layering it all up using various studio tricks to make it sound how we wanted, whereas with Runaways we wanted to make sure the playing was more at the front so we had to be a lot more impulsive as musicians and listen to each other a lot more and stuff like that. That’s not to say we didn’t put as much effort into getting good takes on Second Storey, it’s more we realised the focus is on this record.

Listen to the full interview Below

Art of Fighting embarks on their nationwide “Mysteries” tour over September/October.