INTERVIEW: We Chat To The Drones

This year marks 10 years since the release of The Drones critically acclaimed album Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Float By, to celebrate the occasion with fans, they will be embarking on a tour this month. We had the opportunity to ask Christian Strybosch about the release, vinyls, and how they celebrated the album's tenth birthday (hint, it's way cooler than the jumping castle you had at your tenth birthday)

Congratulations on the 10th Anniversary of Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Float By, you’ve released quite a few LPs since then, has anything changed in your recording process within the last 10 years?

Thanks!  A lot has changed.  We sort of know what we’re doing now, or maybe we know what not to do.   Like letting the neighbor’s dog in who left a warm surprise on the carpet for us.   Maybe it was a comment on the music?  We have our own studio now too, a long term rental from some great Melbournians Helen and Quincy from Bakehouse.  We can take our time now, which can be a bad thing when you share it with your mates (Dan Kelly and Phil Gionfriddo), we’re all easily led into the excesses of the rock n roll lifestyle ie: green tea and the great vegan restaurants on Brunswick st.

How did you celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the album as a band? 

Just the usual sort of thing, hung out with Morrissey at the Sydney Opera House. Doesn’t everyone do that?

If you had the chance to recreate the album, is there anything you would add or change? 

No, not now anyway.  Looking back we spent so much time writing and forming the songs and then heaps of time in the studio.  It’s a really honest portrait of where the band was back then.  For me, recording is like looking for something but you don’t know what it is.  After 10 years it’s still really fun to play those songs and for a whole lot of people there are some good memories about what they were all doing at that time.   For us at that time most of the band lived in 1 of 2 share-houses in Baker St, Richmond connected by a hole in the fence.  We lived with heaps of our mates all in bands, or photographers or artist types, and some great cooks!  It was like our own island in inner city Melbourne, a refuge for anyone who wanted to hang.  Good times!   

It's also set to be released on Vinyl for the first time, which is exciting. How would you describe the listening experience with Vinyl, as opposed to listening to a CD. Do you have a personal preference over CD and Vinyl?  

Vinyl is always better, unless you’re in the car.  I’m not audio philed enough to tell you exactly what it is about a song played on vinyl as opposed to CD but it’s just better.  For me it’s the experience of a vinyl album.   It’s a real event, especially now in the age of iTunes, to pull out a vinyl record and put it on and have to get up and flip it over rather then just pressing shuffle and away you go on autopilot until that Yo Gabba Gabba track comes on.

You’ve got a massive tour coming up, what are you looking forward to most about the tour?

Getting out of the studio and playing some shows. Cabin fever has been setting in after being in the Bakehouse studio since last year.   We’re looking forward to taking off the headphones and playing to real live people.  Also looking forward to getting out of Melbourne, it’s freezing here. 1^st stop is Darwin so we’ll all be sunburnt for the rest of the tour.   We’ll make sure to bring along the aloe vera gel. And Gaz has a habit of going for a wander when we’re in Darwin, he almost got done by a croc once.  He’s still working on a tune for that one.

Have you got any surprises up your sleeve for your upcoming LP?

Not sure if it’s a surprise but we’re including a download for some live recordings we’ve managed to track down over the years.  They’re from all sorts of shows all over the globe.  It’s been fun to find recordings we didn’t even know existed and they sound really good.  They’ll be available as downloads with Wait Long… and Here comes the Lies LP’s. It’s hard to surprise people these days without getting naked.   Maybe we could do that? Like the Kiss solo albums but naked, neon glow around our bodies.  Not sure anyone is ready to see that?

You can catch The Drones at the below dates:

Thursday 20th August 
Darwin Festival, Darwin
Tickets The Drones

Saturday 22nd August 
Rosemount Hotel, Perth
Tickets The Drones

Friday 28th August 
Small Ballroom, Newcastle
Tickets The Drones

Saturday 29th August 
Triffid, Brisbane
Tickets The Drones

Friday 4th September 
The Gov, Adelaide
Tickets The Drones

Saturday 5th September
The Forum, Melbourne
Tickets The Drones

Sunday 6th September 
Theatre Royal, Castlemaine
Tickets The Drones