Movements Are Ready For New Bloom Fest
‘I love Australia. I love being here. Every time that we come here, I fall more in love with it.’
Patrick Miranda, front man of LA post hardcore band Movements explains why he is here earlier than normal for his bands run at New Bloom Festival next week.
‘I wanted to come out early, see some friends, chill, enjoy a little vacation before tour starts. There’s a really cool community here in Sydney that I’ve really been enjoying kind of diving into, and it’s the Newtown, kind of Surrey Hills, Darlinghurst area, all of these little sub pockets of the city. There’s just all these cool little neighbourhoods where the community is really based around local music, art and just different things, happenings that are going on in the city, good restaurants and whatever.’
Movements return after last years headline tour with Boston Manor with a new album under their belts too in ‘Ruckus!’ which is a testament to the bands connection with their antipodean fanbase.
‘Oh man. I mean, one, Australia is beautiful, two, everybody here is so kind and so welcoming. And three, the shows are incredible. Australian fans, Australian crowds. I don’t think we’ve ever played a bad show in Australia, and we’ve only been over a couple of times. But even the small shows that we played where maybe it wasn’t sold out, maybe it wasn’t a huge turnout. Even the small rooms, there’s something fun. There’s a vibe about it that it’s really intriguing and it keeps you wanting more. I’ve really loved it, and I think that we’ll probably continue to come back to Australia for as long as we can, because the shows here are just great. And we’re really excited for this tour too, man. I mean, the fact that we’re getting to play a few headliners, but the New Bloom Fest being the big reason why we’re over here. Insane lineup, so stacked, the shows are going to be fucking crazy. I’m just so hype about it. Yeah, we love Australia, man.’
New Bloom Fest features a stacked line up of bands headed by Citizen, Touché Amore and Softcult which Patrick is very much a fanboy off however there are also some local talent he’s keen to see.
‘Dude, I think my number one for the Fest is Touché Amore. I’ve been a huge Touché fan forever, ever since I was in high school, and we’ve never played a show with them. I’ve met Jeremy on a couple of occasions, – super, super nice dude – both LA based bands, so we’re in similar circles. But yeah, we’ve never had the opportunity to play with them, so that’s going to be kind of a dream come true for me. We’ve been really blessed that Movements has had a career of playing with bands consistently who’ve inspired us to be a band over the years, Citizen being one of them. So the fact that we get to tour with Citizen again is awesome. I’m excited about the whole lineup, man. Especially too, a couple of the opening bands that are on these fests. There’s one in particular from here in Sydney called Peace Ritual. They’re really, really fucking good. We played a couple shows with them last year when we were here, and I was thoroughly impressed by them. Nice dudes too.’
New album Ruckus! dropped since the band last hit these shores and the response has been outstanding, so much so that the set list will be heavily influenced from their third album.
‘I’d say that our set is probably mostly songs from ‘Ruckus!’ and obviously the hits from ‘Feel Something’, but I don’t know if we’ll be playing anything off of ‘No Good’. I might be lying, but yeah, it’s a lot off ‘Ruckus!’, it’s a lot of ‘Feel Something’. I mean, those are kind of our two that getting the most traction, obviously. And the reaction to ‘Ruckus!’ has been awesome. People have been really excited about it. The shows that we’ve played in the States have been next level We toured the UK on it as well in November, and that was awesome, man. It was such a good tour. So yeah, we’re really, really excited to come over to Australia and play these songs for the first time, because if the crowds were hyped in the US and the UK for the new stuff, I can’t even imagine what the crowds are going to be like in Australia for the new stuff. It’s going to be on another level.’
Ruckus! itself isn’t as dark as previous releases, a transformative step in the bands career that Patrick embraces.
‘The thing with our music is it’s meant to be open-ended. Nothing that we write needs to be interpreted a specific way. If there’s something in your life that you can connect to in our music, if you hear something in our music that is impactful to you in some way or another and applies to you in some way, that’s a win for us. Even if that particular scenario isn’t something that we ourselves are writing about or we’re inspired by for an idea for a song. The beauty of art is the open interpretation of everything and letting it live and breathe as its own thing. That can kind of, I guess, ride the line between whatever experiences the listener is having and also the experiences that we’re having. You know what I mean? So yeah, I mean, I think that regardless of where we are, somebody somewhere is going to connect with these songs in a deep, meaningful, impactful way.
Also, if you don’t connect with it and you just like how the music sounds, that’s also cool. You don’t need to, I think that’s one thing about ‘Ruckus!’ is sonically it’s less dense. It’s less the kind of music where you fucking sit in your room, you sulk and you just fucking feel depressed the whole time. ‘Ruckus!’ is more of a party vibe where you don’t necessarily have to be listening to the message. You can just be enjoying the song for what it is and the experience for what it sounds like. And I think that’s pretty beautiful.’
Interview By Iain McCallum
Catch Movements at New Bloom Festival, tickets from Destroy All Lines…
On tour with Softcult, tickets from Destroy All Lines…
