Failed to execute CGI : Win32 Error Code = 3
Free from a music retailer near you.	Subscribe to Australian Musician now!

Read articles: 2004 Reader's Poll Bass Player Tributes Betchadupa Birtles, Shorrock and Goble Kevin Borich Adam Brand Dan Brodie Cactus The Casanovas Troy Cassar-Daley Cat Empire Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Les Claypool COG Cold Chisel Coldplay Cordrazine Crakajak Joe Creighton The Cruel Sea Stephen Cummings Burkhard Dallwitz Butterfly Effect Deep Purple Double Drive Mal Eastick Epicure Melissa Etheridge Even Evermore Fear Factory Andy Fairweather Low Neil Finn Flying Burrito Brothers Ben Folds Brett Garsed George Harper Jimi Hendrix Charlton Hill Jerk John Paul Jones Paul Kelly James Kempster Killing Heidi - Adam Pedretti Killing Heidi - Jesse Hooper Killing Heidi - Warren Jenkins Linkin Park Chong Lim Little Birdy Living End Living End - Scott Owen Lo Tel Magic Dirt MGF Microphone Technique Midnight Oil Gary Moore James Morrison Motor Ace Murderdolls Kieran Murphy New Power Generation Nokturnl Oscarlima Pacifier (AKA SHIHAD) Gerry Pantazis Simon Patterson Alex Pertout Dave Plenty Pollyanna Powderfinger Powderfinger 2 Rick Price Primus' Les Claypool Joshua Redman Resin Dogs James Reyne Tim Rogers Red Hot Chilli Peppers Steven Rosen Savage Garden Screaming Jets Sepultura Silverchair Gene Simmons Sneak Something For Kate Spineshank Synthesizer shoot-out Superjesus Richmond Thompson Bernie Tormé 28 Days Uncle Bill Steve Vai Stevie Ray Vaughan The Vines Tony Joe White Tony Joe White 2 Chris Wilson You Am I

Check 1,2 - Product reviews: ART SLA-1 & SLM-1 Studio amp & mon Ashdown Fallen Angel combo amp Ashton ASA 2000 Archtop guitar Ashton ASR-282 Semi-Acoustic Guitar Ashton_D38_CEQ Thinline Ashton AWM100 UHF Wireless Microphone Ashton Viper 20 Valve Combo Bad Cat Hot Cat 30 Amplifier Behringer V-Amp Pro Beyer Dynamic Microphones Carl Martin Hot Drive n Boost Mk3 CM Labs MotorMate & MotorMix Consoles Cort GMP1 Electric Guitar Cort M Series M800 Guitar Cort MMP-1 Master Series Guitar Crate PX800TLX Mixer and Speakers Daisy Rock Stardust series Dean Boca Electric Dean QSE Acoustic Cole Clark Fat Lady Cutaway acoustic DeLaya Guitar Pedals Digitech GNX4 Digitech RP80 Guitar Effects Processor Digitech RP-300 Digitech Vocal 300 Processor Ebony Quake 400 & Pocket 50 Bass amp Electro-harmonix "holy Grail" reverb pedal Electro-Harmonix 4600 Chorus Pedal Epoch Violins ESP Eclipse II Standard Guitar Fender Bassman 100 Fender Cyber-Twin Guitar amplifier Fender GA 43 SCE & GC 42S Acoustics Fender Stage 100 Guitar Amp Fishman Loudbox Acoustic Amp Floyd Rose Redmond series Guitar Garrison G10 Acoustic Guitar Tracks Pro Hammond XK-2 Keyboard Hughes & Kettner, Edition Blue Amp Hughes & Kettner edition Blue 60-R Amp Hughes & Kettner WARP X Head Ibanez AF85VLS Hollow Body Jazz Gtr Ibanez ZR Tremolo Ibanez SZ-520 Electric Guitar J&D Luthier XTC Series Electric Guitars Jackson ATX Dinky Guitar Janus Ergo Double Drum Pedal Johnson J-Station Jose Ortega JCE Rafael Classic Guitar KP2 Kaoss Pad Kustom wAv 212 Amplifier Kurzweil K2661 Synthesiser Laney Hardcore MXD 15 amp Laney R5 Richter Bass Amp Laney TT100 Head & 4x12 Quad box Laney VC30-112 Class A Vintage Combo LEXICON OMEGA Mark Bass - Traveler 2X10 Combo Mastertone vHO & Spa Pickups Monterey MST3 Stage Series Electric Guitar Monterey Stage Series solid-body electric MusicMan S.U.B.Bass Guitar Novation Supernova II Numark Axis 9 CD Player OLP MM2 & MM3 Electric basses Peavey SP 5x Two-way PA Enclosure Petrof Pianos Radial Tonebone Guitar Pedals Roland VS2000CD Samson C01 Studio Condensor Mic Segovia Guitars Shure PSM200 Personal Monitors Sonar 2.0XL audio/MIDI sequencer Soundcraft Compact 4 Mixer Tascam 2488 Takamine TAN 16C Guitar with Cool Tube Preamp Tanglewood TW15 & TW45 Guitars Taylor 314 CE Acoustic Guitar Ultrasound AG100 & AG30 Acoustic Amps Warwick 5 string_bass Yamaha AW16G Yamaha 01X Zoom PS-02 Palmtop studio Zoom RT323 Rhythm Trak

Quarterly issues: On-line Extras Autumn 2005 Summer 2004 Spring 2004 Winter 2004 Autumn 2004 Summer 2003 Spring 2003 Winter 2003 Autumn 2003 Summer 2002 Spring 2002 Winter 2002 Autumn 2002 Summer 2001 Winter 2001 Winter 2000 Autumn 2000 Summer 99 Spring 99 Winter 99 Autumn 99 Summer 98 Spring 98 Winter 98

Australian Musician Issue 15 Spring 98

The Cruel Sea by Stephen Andrew

They were once an eclectic instrumental band. They were once darlings of the Indie scene. With their multi-award winning album The Honeymoon is Over, they were once labelled by many as The Next Big Thing. They toured to a point where they lost their innate sense of gravity and cohesion. With their new album Over Easy they've landed on their feet and sound like The Cruel Sea; which through all the changes is the only label that really fits.

At the bedrock of the band's instantly recognisable sound is the seismic bass rumble of Ken Gormly. When Stephen Andrew spoke to him, the bass player was sitting in a "little dog-box hotel in Townsville, bored shitless." Another night on the road. Aahhhh, rock'n'roll!

When you went into record your last album, Three Legged Dog, you started from scratch. Describing that time you once said the band had, "no ideas, no songs, no plans, no nothing ;"
"And no future, really."

Did you approach the recording of Over Easy in a similar fashion? Did you go in blank or did you have some sort of vision or goal for the album?
"We'd just had 18 months of nothing. So we had 18 months worth of fiddly bits - little bits and pieces and riffs and bass lines and ideas for songs and in the summer leading up to that we just sort of jammed around a bit. Everybody had some things up their sleeve this time. With Three Legged Dog we were out there touring so much - we were touring about three times in a row in Australia and we went to Europe and America. We turned back into a rock band, which being on the road will do to you. So we were caught with our pants down a little bit on that one. But this time we were sipping coffee and doing crosswords for a year. So we all had a bag of tricks and also a year and a half's worth of listening to music - listening to new stuff, listening to old stuff. We were a bit freaked when we did Three Legged Dog; we weren't sure that we could actually do it. But when we got up in the hills in Byron Bay and sat down in a studio together, we found that making up the music was actually the easy bit. Same with this album. I thought it came together very easily. When we are out touring really hard, we get really tight by the end of a tour but it doesn't really expand your musical skills because you're just doing the slog. So, having some time off, even though I'm not playing the guitar, my musicianship seems to improve. Given that we had a bag of tricks to start with, and that our musicianship had improved a peg, it all just went onto tape incredibly easily, I thought."

What does Over Easy say to you now, as an album? What does it document? What feeling do you have at the end of the recording process?
"We just thought we had something good. Because we had a long break, there wasn't a story attached to it, there wasn't any kind of ascendancy or ARIA awards or 'hard-bitten-road-warriors-about-to-break-up' or any bullshit. So there isn't any sort of history to attach to it, except that we just came at it with a bunch of songs. They seem quite focussed, they seem to jell together. We just call it our getting-our-shit-together album. It doesn't break a lot of new ground. We used different producers and because of that we recorded it in a slightly different way."

It's certainly a Cruel Sea album, but songs like "Hard Times," "This Time of the Year" and "The Charmer," I think all break new ground for you.
"Yeah, sure. Everything that's there on the album is all part of our palette and we've always tipped our hat to reggae and there's a little bit more of that on the album. We were also happy to make some loops and stuff and have a hard drive there as an extra toy and a place to store bits and pieces. "Hard Times" is basically a folk song - it's based on an old folk song and that's the vibe behind it - but it was cut, thrown up in to the air and pasted back together. The same with "13th Floor." We had a rhythm track that was not spectacular so we just chopped it to bits and put it back together. It's just another toy to try to get a groove happening and hopefully a different sound."

The rhythm section that The Cruel Sea have sound like no other. There's something about that sound that is difficult to describe, but as soon as you and (drummer) Jim (Elliott) start playing together, you know it's The Cruel Sea. How do you get that sound?
"First of all you start being friends in grade four! We've been mates for about 25 years. We moved out of home together, moved into the city and played in bands together and ended up in The Cruel Sea. It's just an unspoken thing that begins with the bass drum. I sort of know his patterns, I know when he's going for a fill, what kind of thing it's going to be, and, we just play well together. It's also being on the same kind of wavelength with the kind of stuff we listen to. Simplicity, too. Jim is a very simple drummer. He doesn't get really excited, he doesn't flay his sticks around everywhere - he's all wrist - and together we lock into something really simple. When we were younger playing in bands that were more pop, I would spend hours in my bedroom figuring out fancy, flowery licks or going up the neck and a lot of it didn't work and there was a point there where we just decided to strip everything back.

"I like listening to a lot of hip hop and a lot of loop stuff and that really excites me because that's the way I play anyway. When I'm looking for a bass riff it's just got to work by itself and it's got to withstand repetition. Usually if I find something that works and will click into a groove, it just sounds like bullshit if I stray away from it. It just sounds like a bass player wanking on, really. So I like to boil everything right down to the bones and that's what you find in hip hop and looped bass lines. There's this hypnotic thing. I just want to lock into something. So Jim and I have this sort of language going on within something that's incredibly simple and repetitive and when we're in the studio and when we play live we really concentrate on each other and we throw in tiny little variations. It's not even so much that anyone would notice them. We just sort of slip around the groove a little bit."

There are a lot of muted bass sounds on Over Easy. How do you go about taking this subtle studio sound and translating that to a live situation?
"I just work in sub-frequencies. If there's any treble on stage through my amp or through anything I want to run away. I just go for bass. I use a big 8x10. I use an Ampeg, like a big Cadillac amp, and it's able to spread the sound around so I can really give it some shit in the bass end. I use a sans amp bass drive which I can modify and control and so that it's just getting as much bass as possible with some definition. I also use an octave pedal which gives me an octave below which is just filth, you know! Fortunately we have Paul McKercher, who is mixing us live at the moment, and he contains the bass frequency and controls it so that it's got definition but it's just like hitting you right in the chest. I just loath treble. I just can not handle treble at all."

And your guitar?
"I use an old banged up Fender Precision which I've had for 15 years and I like the strings to be a couple of years old and have some Hungry Jacks fat in there and some old sweat and a few claggy things hanging off the bottom."

So there's absolutely no treble at all, even coming off the strings.
Yep. And I use my thumb and finger and that causes me extraordinary pain during a tour. Somewhere by the end of the tour I've got a nice pad on my thumb and I walk down the street and I'm really happy."

What would you like the band to attempt next time you record?
"That's always hard to say because everyone comes with their left-of-field ideas and it becomes The Cruel Sea. I don't know but, I would just like to strip it down even more. With my bass playing and with the rhythm section and The Cruel Sea in general, it's like space is the final frontier. We've been trying to create more and more space. I'd like to really create some space. People say that Over Easy is very dub, but there's no dub on there; there's a bit of reggae but it's not dub. I'd just like to use a dub aesthetic. Last year when I discovered DJ Shadow, it's looped and sampled stuff with a really stripped back aesthetic. Just space. That's what I want to do. Something really wicked, really intense and really just space."

Error processing SSI file