By James O'Toole

Brisbane band The Butterfly Effect are one of Australia’s most exciting heavy rock bands, with an electrifying live show. Ever since the release of their independent EP in 2001 the band has had a buzz about them. Triple J lifted the track "The Cell" off the EP for regular airplay, and it seemed it was always only a matter of time before a major record deal was struck. For Butterfly Effect, their time has come.

James O’Toole spoke to guitarist Kurt Goedhart on the eve of the release their debut album 'Begins Here', which this time hits the stores backed by major record company marketing power.

O’Toole: It must be an exciting time for the band now that you have recorded your first album. Were there any particular goals you wanted to achieve with this recording?

Goedhart: Definitely, we talked about it at length. The main one was writing one piece of music, not in terms of the same chords or the songs all sounding the same, but writing a really cohesive album. Every song had to better than what we had done. If it didn’t move onwards then it had to definitely move leftward from what we had already done.

O’Toole: There is an intro, a middle section and an outro piece on the new album, all of which are moody instrumentals. What was the thinking behind putting them on the album?

Goedhart: The idea was that after the first EP and seeing the live show everyone would be expecting something that would rock hard, so the idea was to throw the whole thing off a bit. They were pieces that we were quite proud of and it’s a nice introduction.

O’Toole: You’ve definitely expanded the sound of the band on this album, there’s more musical depth with some of the atmospheric and moody pieces. How do you think this progression came about?

Goedhart: We had a lot more time and I think a lot more maturity to approach the song writing with a better understanding of each other as musicians and individuals. Obviously you spend a lot of time together on tour, you eat together, you sleep together, you’re on stage together, and you’re in the car together. We knew where we were coming from and what each individual would like to achieve and what each other’s capabilities were, the strengths in their playing. That definitely helped.

O’Toole: Are you into music that takes a while to understand as opposed to instantly catchy stuff?

Goedhart: I’m into both. I love Holly Valance. I love Kylie Minogue. I think she’s fantastic. Christina Aguilera rocks, though not all of her tracks are good - same with Kylie. The amazing thing is with throwaway pop like ‘Confide In Me’ is that it’s so hooky, so catchy that it goes past being throwaway pop. If you heard it in twenty years time you’d still tap your foot to it.

O’Toole: It might surprise a few people that you’re into that kind of stuff when The Butterfly Effect is based around such a big guitar sound!

Goedhart: Well although I’m into it I definitely wouldn’t write anything like that. I’m more interested in music like Dave Matthews or Cog, or Pangaea.

O’Toole: Is your live guitar set up the same as your recording set up?

Goedhart: It was almost the same. I tried a few heads in the studio for different sounds and layering ideas. It was mainly my Marshall TSL 100, which is a triple channel 100 watt head. I use Orange cabinets and I’m going to get another Marshall head and slave the two together. I use fairly standard pedals live — reverbs, delays, phasers, choruses and flangers. I double up on a lot of them. I recently bought a tremolo and EQ, plus another reverb.

O’Toole: You can always buy something else, just that little bit more ...

Goedhart: (Laughs) Oh, absolutely. The worst thing about being in America recently was that we had no money, just enough to eat and in the music shops there was a lot of stuff I would have liked to buy. There was a second hand shop with some amazing stuff, this array of pedals that I’d never heard of before. There were also some really old quad boxes and things, which I’m sure would have had a really unique sound.

O’Toole: Do you have one favourite guitar you play?

Goedhart: I switch between a PRS and an Ibanez Artist. The Ibanez is a beautiful guitar. The PRS is too when it works, because I thrash the hell out of it!

O’Toole: How do you manage to jump around on stage so much and still keep your playing tight?
Goedhart: We don’t! (Laughs). We’re curbing that a lot now, the new songs are a lot harder to play. On the older songs we’ll still get into it. For the live show and the kids in the front it’s great, but for the people half way back in the room who are mainly listening rather than watching we really need to tidy up our playing. We would still love to do it but with some of the chords I have to pull I can’t jump around. I have to stand there and concentrate. Next album I’m going to scrap all this and start playing two chords again (laughs).

O’Toole: I saw the band open for 28 Days and Grinspoon at Festival Hall in Melbourne and during the show I was wondering if you enjoy playing to a crowd that doesn’t know your material that well?

Goedhart: It was a difficult gig, that one! It took a while to win them over, it was one of the trickiest gigs we’ve ever done. Actually Melbourne is always a bastard to play because there’s a lot of watchers and music critics down there. We came out as hard as we could at that show and no one did anything (laughs). Thank god a few songs in there was a bit of movement happening!