9+1 Q&A with Koalas

What inspired you to first start making music? And how did you come to be in your current incarnation? Or if you prefer, a brief bio about you.

We originally both met at university whilst studying music but it wasn’t until a few years after that Koalas started to take more shape.

Provide us with some info about your latest release…

We’ve just released ‘Sandcastles’, autumn felt like a good time to make people reflect on their summer holidays, mortality and nuclear annihilation.

Which ones would you consider your main influences both music-wise & non-music-wise?

It feels like in music that pool is always growing and the music I’ve written has always changed, the obvious ones are Caribou and Boards of Canada in terms of direct influences on Koalas maybe. My favourite album has always been ‘The Lost Riots’ by Hope of the States which I hope you can hear in the songs.

In what way does your sound differ from the rest genre-related artists/bands and why should we listen to your music? In other words, how would you describe your sound?

I like this idea that it’s all just a big synthy harmonic fizz: ultimately the long-term aim is to play every note all the time on a mass of sawtooth waves. But for the time being I think we try and play with synthesis and pop in a musically interesting way, we love dissonance and tension in our music as well as a sense of erraticism. Each song tends to have a specific sound world based around our mood around the time of writing, every piece has its own place. So far, a lot of what we’ve released has tended towards the pop-side of what we do, but live we get to show the whole picture.

Please name your 3 desert islands albums, movies & books…

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Do you prefer studio or performing live and why?

It’s a tough one because of the nature of how we work, the studio process is also the writing process which can be really fun but also potentially full of pitfalls or roadblocks, but I think both of us find we sing better and more fluidly live than we do in the studio environment. Live performance definitely has more electricity to it, performing to an audience give you something to feed off of. That mixed with the sense of nerves you get at the beginning of a set gives a feeling of performing in a tinderbox, so much could happen.

Is there any funny-unique story you would like to share with us, always in relation to your music ‘career’?

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Which track of your own would you point out as the most unique and why?

We have a track that’s somewhere between what we normally do and Chinatown by Chaka Khan, I think it might be a single at some point.

Would you like to share with our readers your future plans?

We feel like we’ve had a fair few ‘pop’ moments and now hoping to get a little weirder, it’s something we’re really looking forward to.

In the immediate future we have a few shows coming up including our first show in Italy which we’re really excited about…

13/11 – Manchester/UK – YES – Co-headline show with Cocoa Futures + MakeMake DJ set – Free Entry

16/11 – London/UK – The Finsbury Pub – Co-headline show with Cocoa Futures – Free Entry

23/11 – Milan/Italy – Linecheck Festival

Free question!!! (Ask yourself a question) you wish to answer and haven’t been given the opportunity…

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