Psychedelic Porn Crumpets
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets continue to assert their status as one of Australia’s hardest working bands – pandemic be damned – in announcing the release of their new album, SHYGA! The Sunlight Mound, which is released on February 5. For the Perth group, creativity and production hasn’t stopped in 2020. Despite much of this year’s tour plans being put on pause, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets have used their time off road to continue preparing themselves for the release of their fourth studio release, and an eventual blistering return to stages around the world with a heavy-hitter of an album primed for the live space. Hi Fi Way spoke to main man Jack McEwan about the album and what lies ahead.
It feels like really exciting times for the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets with a new single and album almost ready to be released? Chuck in some tour dates and it couldn’t get any better than that!
It is a bit of a shot in the leg, the band is pretty chuffed with how everything is going.
Do you feel more optimistic about this year and start making plans for the rest of the year?
I’ve been trying not to get my hopes up to much because there were all these talks of going to Brazil, Mexico and playing shows in South America. I don’t really want to look at my passport or get it out. I think it is a matter of seeing how Australia goes first with shows. As soon as you start getting your hopes up and it’s sweet I’m going away doing this, having to keep postponing it is annoying for everyone.
Are you confident that the tour with Ocean Alley you will be able to do it in some shape or form?
Hopefully, that will be a great tour and that has been pushed back to August. Sports have come back and festivals have been announced in Sydney for February and March so I reckon yeah it should definitely go ahead. Hopefully we don’t get hit with any more quarantine or another wave of something but that Ocean Alley tour in my opinion in some shape or form will go ahead.
Was album number four SHYGA! The Sunlight Mound a result of having the time to write and record at home last year?
Yeah, there was a concept for the album to be released in March and I had an idea for this fictional character Norton Gavin who is this old 70s long haired, salty rock dog, old kind of character whose music never got released. We were going to do the long lost recordings of his music and I had this mish mash of all these ideas of hit songs that might of sounded like era based 60s, 70s and 80s spanning this guy’s career. The mish mash of ideas I didn’t think people would get this, it’s just a strange idea. We went back to the drawing board and with COVID it was real serendipitous that we could sit at home and record a lot more and work on music. I knew I could space it out in to two records, I wanted to do this glitched out 70s rock like deep fake internet music, that glitchy type of rock style and I would all the heavier songs for another album. So one was that straight back ELO, T-Rex, Supertramp kind of vibe and I’m working on this Tool, Mars Voltaerie, Sabbath album at the moment.
Will that come out under the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets name?
Yeah, yeah, yeah! I’ve been thinking about it with the band and we got Chris who plays keys and we were doing this project called Infinite Junkie Cage.It was like The Prodigy I suppose, really heavy sub-bass, I think we will put that in to a Porn Crumpets records as well. Eventually, you get the luxury of being in Perth we can start doing shows and playing around. As soon as the band goes on tour as we are now it would be too hard to keep going, so it will be easier to keep it under the Porn Crumpets.
When you get in that creative headspace how do these characters and themes emerge as it is just as intriguing as the music?
I don’t know, a lot of it is just old ideas that we have laughed about on tour or on nights out with different people. When you belly laugh an idea and think it’s brilliant we should do that and then I think about some ways to narrow it down over a period of time, especially Norton and we were chiselling away at him and how do we mould this man, what is he, doing this mockumentary with Spinal Tap type thing would be interesting. With the records we were listening to a lot of Mighty Boosh at the beginning to get the Porn Crumpets going and then we were getting back in to the Monty Python movies. That was the source of inspiration, anything you can watch and I think wow I don’t think I can do this.
What’s the story behind the single Pukebox?
It was called jukebox but with a P, it was then just call it Pukebox! It was when we were out on tour and you wake up, it is a weird repetitive job, you don’t think about it, the time off now writing and recording this is nice and chilled but when you are on tour you do the same thing each night but the cities change. When you wake up in a different place feeling the same hungover state is what I wanted to write about and the fast paced nature, languages changing, peoples accents changing and we’re still hungover being Porn Crumpets going where are we tomorrow. It is almost never ending being in a strange haze at the moment I’m missing.
Is there any pressure to keep up with your mates King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard with the amount of releases each year?
I think they release a lot of material but I wish they sat down a bit more and wrote one brilliant one. Apart from Nonagon which I love, Sketches was sick, the older albums when they had a year like Float Along and I’m In Your Mind Fuzz are my favourite records they have released. Infest The Rats’ Nest was sick and I think they have time at the moment and working on more material. For us, if we can keep doing an album a year it gives me time to write at least fifty songs that I can narrow down to ten or fifteen.
Do you spend a lot of time thinking about the art work?
Probably a lot more than should but the art work for this record is done by Sergeant Slaughtermill who we found on Instagram. I remember the idea of the glitched out internet looking in on itself. I had that as a concept for the record. The artwork perfectly matched that, it is so colourful, glitchy and pixelated it sounded like some of the guitar effects.
How will you celebrate release day?
I don’t know, we celebrate every day at the moment being at home. Hopefully Fringe World is still on so we can go down there and get absolutely tonked. It will be the last week of Fringe, I think Perth and Adelaide are the only two places in the world having it this year. We should get a residency at Jive Bar hey?
What’s next for the Porn Crumpets?
I’m working on this next record and it will be the heavier follow up to SHYGA. I want to explore more how to flow an album. I think that for me, I want try and do something like Abbey Road. The end of Abbey Road would be sick to get that melody of songs together perfectly where they all work as one. That is the dream.
Interview By Rob Lyon
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Don’t forget the upcoming tour with Ocean Alley…
