Joe Matera: It was on the back of the strength of one song in particular, titled ‘The A List’ that got the band signed to Wah Wah Records.

Chilli: Yes, it was the first track on our demo EP. We knew when we wrote it, that it was something that stood out. We were like ‘geez, we’ve really hit it on the nail here. This is a good song!’. That’s why it made the EP. The minute Paul Kosky heard it, he rang us immediately.

Scott: Yeah, as soon as he heard ‘The A List’ he was on the phone and called us and we were at his house that very afternoon talking to him! We basically had sent it to everybody, to every manager and record company. We got a couple of record companies call us back, but no-one with the amount of enthusiasm that Paul had.

JM: What was the writing process like for the forth-coming debut album?

Chilli: Writing took about ten months and it was really good because we could just write as much as we wanted and so we were spinning out heaps of tracks and heaps of stuff. Plus, we were going in and getting a chance to record as well. We’d demo like ten songs and send them to Paul and then we’d go back and start writing again. We’d demo another eight and send them off to him again. That’s how he put the whole album together, out of all those songs. It was good, ‘cause we were in the studio every six weeks, so we were wrapped.

Scott: We knew we were doing an album, we knew it wasn’t an EP, so we just said, ‘ alright, we’ll take off twelve months and write, write, write and demo and everything. That’s how we got to the stage where we had enough tracks to do pre-production. We had like twenty tracks and we went away for two weeks.The album was all recorded last Summer.

JM: Is ‘Compensate’ a good indicator of what to expect from the whole album?

Scott: It’s definitely got the bigness of the guitars and melodies.

Chilli: ‘Compensate’ is a bit of a stand out track ‘cause its got that 5/4 time signature in it, which is a bit off kilter, and a lot of our other songs are a lot more rocking than that one. On the whole, the album’s very eclectic. Like, there’s even a one and a half minute punk song on there. There’s heaps of different things on it.

JM: (To Scott) Gear wise you use the stock ‘rock’ set-up, Gibson through a Marshall to get that ‘big’ guitar sound.

Scott: Yeah basically I use a Les Paul Studio, which I bought about six years ago. As you mentioned it’s pretty stock standard stuff, the Gibson and Marshall combo that I use. I used to have a 100 Watt head and it used to blow everyone away all the time in my old band, which wasn’t as heavy as this one. I was never allowed to turn past 2! So this time I thought I’ll buy a 50 watt and turn it up to 11! (laughs) With a Marshall you’ve got to crank it to get the sound you want, so that's why I thought I’ll go 50 down and that way I can crank up.

JM: (To Chilli) You play a Parker Fly guitar.

Chilli: Yeah, I play a Parker Fly through a Fender Dual Showman. With the Parker Fly, I went looking for a guitar basically and it was either that or a Paul Reed Smith, but I took the ‘Fly’ because it had the acoustic function on it, which was one of its big selling points.

Scott: The great thing is you can have the acoustic running with the distortion over it coming out of one guitar. That is great and means we’ve got that extra little sound in there and that’s how in something like ‘Compensate’, we can actually do it live.

JM: That’s one of the major things that stood out about Space Like Alice after seeing you live. You have no problem whatsoever recreating everything that can be heard on the recording. What do you use to help achieve that live?

Chilli: We use a sequencer and basically Chris (drummer) plays to that. He gets a click track in his head and its got all the keyboards and stuff. All the loops that we’ve made in the studio.

Scott: Instead of hiring a keyboardist to play a repetitive riff that goes over and over, we decided to put it all in a sequencer and Chris is in total control of that as well as his drums. He has a big responsibility up on stage. The great thing about Chris is he could be playing to a click track, yet, you wouldn’t have a clue, with all the emotions and everything he puts on top of it. He has this amazing ability to make it not sound like that is happening at all.

JM: The coming year looks set to be a big year for Space Like Alice?

Chilli: We want to go on the road and play to as many people as we can. One of the great assets of this band is that we can actually play our stuff live and at the same time we’re entertaining.