Korn‘s Jonathan Davis was so excited by ORGY that he created his own record label …
There’s a whole lot to love in our Oz indie scene and a whole lot on offer too. From surf to shoegaze to straight up punk, music fans everywhere have been spoilt for choice.
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Chutney is a band ready to dominate this realm and your playlists—and with their latest track, Talk, we think they’ve got a pretty good chance of making it happen. We caught up with frontman Matt Hansford to chat about it and the band’s plans for the rest of the year.
Hysteria: Give us the Chutney story.
Matt: All four of us played in different bands when we were in our early 20s. Believe it or not, I was in a hip-hop/electronic group! Cal and Pat were in a Led Zeppeliny, 80s rock group and our drummer, Andy, was in a Red Hot Chilli Peppers type outfit. We all ended those bands over time. I wrote some indie rock songs over the guitar, so I linked up with the boys and asked them what they thought. We jammed them out, and that’s where we came from.
Coming from those different bands, what was it like the first time you all dove into the indie realm?
That’s the music we’re all into. We all love Arctic Monkeys, Catfish and the like, and don’t get me wrong, we all love the first bands we were in, but this just came more naturally.
Congratulations on the release of the new single Talk. It’s got a pretty important message behind it. Tell us about that.
It’s about mental health, but we wanted to give it a positive spin. Within our friendship circle, we have a lot of mates that do speak up when they’re in trouble. Over time, we’ve formed this community where it isn’t weak to speak. We all talk to each other, and it’s really healthy, so we wanted to highlight that. It’s great that mental health talk has reached that stage. Obviously, it has a long way to go in some places, but especially with the youth, the message is there that you can speak up and your mates will be there to listen, so don’t be afraid to do it. We love our mates, and we wanted to highlight that.
Within our friendship circle, we have a lot of mates that do speak up when they’re in trouble. Over time, we’ve formed this community where it isn’t weak to speak.
[ Matt Hansford, Chutney ]
The film clip looks like it would’ve been loads of fun. What was that experience like?
Yeah (laughs). It was really cool. I can’t act at all, so that was tough for me! Putting together the idea and storyboard was fun. The concept for the film clip isn’t necessarily about mental health. We really wanted to show off where we live because that’s important to us. We love our hometown, and we wanted to show off who we are as a band, particularly our attitude and character. We could’ve gone down the mental health pathway and made something hectic and deep, but we decided to make it nice and lighthearted and have a bit of fun.
What’s one thing you want people to know about the recording process?
You know the scream that comes in at the start? We were sitting in the recording studio, and Pat had this idea to put it in, as this big bang to kick off the track. I just let out a wail and asked the guys what they thought, and initially, everyone said no, that sounds shit (laughs). Our producer Scotty French is an absolute weapon, and he said, let me play around with it. He put some reverb and delay on it and made it sound atmospheric, so we decided to keep it in. But now, every time it comes on shuffle on my phone, it scares the absolute shit out of me. I’m sorry for anyone who gets frightened by it too!
How are your bandmates going to feel when you let that wail out at a gig!
We haven’t figured out how we’re going to do that yet! I have pretty temperamental vocals, and I can run out of gas halfway through a gig if I’m not careful. We’re trying to get one of the other guys to give it a go, but we haven’t figured out who it’ll be yet!
What’s in store for the rest of the year?
We’re still trying to get the radio and Spotify stuff sorted, but we’ve had a lot of success getting on some good shows. We had a show with Kingswood booked, and unfortunately, that’s been postponed because of COVID. In a couple of weeks, I’m doing an acoustic show with Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother. Most importantly, we’re playing at Springtime Fest in September, as long as COVID doesn’t rear its ugly-ass head. That’ll have Ruel, Ball Park Music, Hermitude, and Sycco. We’re super excited about it!
Anything before we let you head off?
We appreciate everyone that’s checked out our music! We have two more singles coming out this year, and they’re juicy as.
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