Article about Mark’s upcoming visit to Cairns.

Author: Jesse Kuch, The Cairns Post.

Date: 8 September 2011.

Original URL:http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2011/09/08/181431_entertainment.html

Article Text

Only weeks after announcing Hunters and Collectors will reform, Mark Seymour hits town, writes Jesse Kuch.

Australian music legend Mark Seymour is back in town this week, bringing his new album The Undertow to Brothers World Of Entertainment on Friday night.

The Undertow is more than just the title of the album, it’s also the name of Mark’s band, the first since Hunters & Collectors disbanded in 1998. While his former act have recently announced they will reform for the V8 Supercars in Sydney in December, Mark says working with The Undertow has been very refreshing and looks forward to what the future holds.

“It’s kinda in name only,” Mark says. “All those guys have been playing with me for four or five years, so it’s pretty stable now. What the difference is I suppose is the way we actually develop the music. They are much more involved in the pre‑production side of things. Rather than demo-ing in my own world, I’d go to the guys with a song and we’d go into the rehearsal room. It gives two or three presences in the song rather than me accumulating the music alone. We moved quickly, recorded quickly and I think the album benefited from that. It’s a very, very simple, sparse sounding recording.”

Mark says the simple, stripped‑back sound is a direction he’s been heading in for a while.

“That kind of song writing works better for a listening audience, so I think I tend to write that way because of the way people react to it.

“It’s a very accessible way of constructing a song and the way it sounds has a very dynamic, fresh feeling about it.”Mark says it’s also about making the record easier to translate live from the recorded format.

“I’ve done incredibly complicated records that have ended up not being able to work live. Some of the things I’ve done that have been a huge commercial success have loops all through it. That used to drive me insane, I couldn’t marry those feelings. This is a very tidy little group now in a traditional format and it’s going very, very well.

Mark says we’ll have to head to Sydney’s V8 Supercars in December to see Hunters & Collectors live again, but his sets do feature some of their material, interpreted in his own way.

>> Mark Seymour and The Undertow perform at Brothers World Of Entertainment on Friday from 8pm. Tickets are $30 presale, available from www.brotherscairns.com.au or 4053 1053.

Comments

N/A.