Regurgitator Set It All Off On Their Only Tour For 2024

It’s all happening for Regurgitator! Brand new album Invader is out now (totally awesome) and a seven week tour around the nation. Before we get in to the interview with Ben Ely take note of invasive tour which has already started and coming to a city near you, the band have announced the list of conditions for this imminent action…

ONE – this will be our ONLY TOUR for the year of 2024. Do not miss this! Upon completion of this action we are planning to take an extended break. We have endured a non-stop pace over this past couple of years both in touring and working on this latest album. After thirty years of touring and recording it is time to clear our heads a bit.

TWO – we have prepared in advance a scorching eighty minute plus set covering the bulk of our catalogue of hits – from those first EPs in late ’94 through Tu-Plang, UNIT etc… to a healthy dose of our most loved INVADER. Here we go… hold on tight for a propulsively blistering night!

THREE – we are 200% up for FUN! 100% giving. 100% taking. Perfect mutual balance!

FOUR – we have a brand new live member – Sarah Lim – bringing the keytar and some outrageous shredding to pack some extra laser precision to our rocketing bowl of punch.

Ben Ely talks to Hi Fi Way about the album Invader and tour…

I don’t think you ever you know what to expect with a Regurgitator album. Plenty of great songs, it is quite different from what we are used, you must be stoked with it?
Thanks, this album we spent more time working on this than any other album and I don’t really know why it took like, almost two years to make it. It just kept going on and on and on and we wrote so many songs and then it just keep changing and it just felt like we didn’t get it right and then we just kept pushing it until we felt like it was right. We were supposed to finish it at the start of last year, but it, we didn’t finish it until the start of this year. I don’t know what happened. It just kept going on.

Eleven albums does it get any easier?
Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not sure why. I think maybe we just felt like we had a higher standard for this record or something. It felt like we were going to do a record, we were going to do the best we could and I guess that’s why it took so long.

Does the creative process kind of rely on everyone being in the studio together or do you all go off and do your own thing and then bring it back to put it?
Yeah, it’s a bit of both. Quan writes his songs and I write my songs and we’ll get together to put them together. Some of them were done in the studio together and because we don’t live in the same city. Quan lives in Melbourne, Pete lives in Sydney and I live in Brisbane. That’s probably why it was a little bit of a long and painful process because we don’t live in the same city. We would send stuff to each other to play on each other’s songs. I think it was two studio sessions where we actually went to a studio for a few days to record together and then would go away and write and then I would write stuff and send it to Quan. He’d be like, oh yeah, no, do it again or fix the guitars or something. So it was a little bit hard when you live interstate.

Was there anything that inspired these particular songs? There’s some UK indie influences that come across in these songs.
Hence the name Regurgitator! We have always done that sort of, mimicking other styles and other bands or we’ll hear a band we really liked. When we started we used to listen to Cypress Hill or something. We would try and record something that sounds like that, but it just always comes out in our own way. So, I guess we’re just kind of big music fans of all different styles, so we get into lots of different styles of music. Regurgitator is actually a really fun band to be in because anything kind of goes, there’s that weird song on the record, Dirty Old Men. When Quan played that to me, I was like, um, are you sure you want to put this on the record because it sounds a bit like country rock rap or something. I was a little bit confused, but also I go, it’s actually cool because it’s so weird compared to the other songs and so style stylistically different. When Quan was writing that song, I think he did that song in about six different styles. The first version sounded a bit like a Tom Waite song and then he’d send it and sound like a eighties hip hop song. He just did all these different versions until he’ll do a version that he thinks he likes the most. I guess that’s why we’re still together too because we do so many different styles and we have that playful nature that creatively anything goes. It doesn’t get boring for us even though we’re in our fifties now!

Regurgitator keeps going through this sort of renaissance where the interest is as strong as ever. I guess that just must make it a lot easier when everyone sees you’re still having fun and enjoying it.
It is a fun band to play in and I think if we were just like a rock band who just had a rock sound and painted the same picture all the time, we probably would’ve ended twenty years ago. I think because it’s stylistically interesting and it’s of a fun vehicle to drive.

I can’t picture any of you being accountants or anything like that?
Yeah, I think it’s too late for that now, I think these dogs are old.

How did the collaboration with Peaches come about?
When Peaches first started way back in the mid-nineties or in the nineties when she did the Teachers of Peaches, our manager had friends in Barcelona and he was in Spain. He went to a music festival in Spain and he saw Peaches play in one of her very early shows over in Europe. When he came back to Australia he was like, oh my God, I met, I saw this amazing woman play, her name’s Peaches and he brought back her CD and we listened to her. We were all kind of blown away and then our manager established a relationship with her and he used to bring her out and tour her for many years. I think he’s only just stopped on the last tour, but he’s always had a relationship with her and we’ve performed live on stage with her at a Big Day Out on the first time she came to Australia. She’s kind of always been a friend and I think Quan for this album, he wanted to reach out and have some guests on some of his tracks, because we’ve never done that before. So, I think he wanted to experiment with getting other people on the album and he thought she would be great for it and we asked her and she said yes. I guess that’s how it came about. We’ve known Merrill for a very long time and I mean we’ve always been a big fan of hers, so we feel very fortunate to be able to get her on that track. I think it does add a new dimension to our band a little bit, having guests.

Will the songs that didn’t make the cut end up on something else?
I probably wrote about five albums worth. I wrote a lot of songs! A lot of them didn’t make it, but I think I will put out another album with some of the songs because some of the other ones are kind of cool. I think Quan didn’t write as many as I did. I kind of like to write a lot. Whereas Quan will come up with a lyrical idea that he likes and then he’ll do multiple versions of it to get the right version he likes. I’ll do a like, sixty crappy demos until I go, oh, this one is the one I really want. When you ride alone, I have a tendency to get a bit not as energetic maybe because the other guys aren’t there. Some of those more mellow songs will probably get moved over to a solo project somewhere or something at some point.

What were your initial thoughts playing the album in full for the first time? Do you play it with Quan and Peter as well?
We always had a ritual in the past, especially in the nineties, you’d make an EP or an album and then we’d turn all the lights off and lie in the dark and listen to it just to see what it’s like and see how it flows. Quan came up the day before we set it off to mastering, we laid down in my little studio and turned all the lights off and listen to it. It’s funny because when you work on a song individually you really focus on that, but when you put them all next to each other, it’s a a very strange experience because they’re so different. We like the fact that it jumps around a lot stylistically. We were actually pleasantly surprised by how it all flows together because it is quite odd.

The interest in this tour is really strong, you must be looking forward to playing these songs live?
Yeah, we’ve got some surprises coming up for the tour and we’re excited about it because we believe in this album and worked hard on it. We’re excited about touring most definitely. It gets a bit harder to stay up late these days. I like sleeping a lot but I’m psyched for the tour.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Regurgitator on the following dates, tickets HERE…