Chester : Lavish Interview

Lavish

Interview with Brisbane's bright young things, May 1996

Far from the glorious shores of the UK, you find that categorised, world famous sound known as Britpop has infiltrated a healthy portion of the Australian music scene.

Well yeah, the mainstream market have only recently cottoned on to the universal appeal of Pulp, Blur and you know the rest, but, in actual fact, Australia has always been aware of the newest UK music and none so like Brisbane, which is home to a plethora of strong English influenced sounds.

One such band to take serious note is Lavish. This cocky five piece have a sound all their own. "We have a joke term in which we call it cyber-pop. Our songs are so diverse," starts Nathan. Their technique is somewhat similar to bands like Pop Will Eat Itself and at times Depeche Mode, in their use of real instruments and the wide assortment of samples ranging from some of pop cultures best movies to practically anything they can get their hands on. "We're influenced by techno and some weird techno samplers," says Nathan who's in charge of it all. But, it's not just all samples that make the Lavish sound such a stand out, with the band receiving many comparisons to some excellent British bands of the moment. "Some of our fave bands are English," says Nathan. "We've never really been into American music. People see us and they say, 'they sound like The Charlatans, Oasis, Happy Mondays, a cross between the Stone Roses and Blur.' We've got an influence definitely, but everyone's influenced by something."

But it's definitely not an indie or alternative grunge thing as Nathan believes. He is actually quite comfortable with the notion of Lavish taking over the mainstream market, they even have a major label knocking on the door. "We don't want to really stay in the indie scene, we don't necessarily want to be an indie band, whatever that's supposed to be.

"We've recorded an album and we're going to record again soon and we don't want to release it on a small label. We want to be universal, we want to go around the world. We want to be bigger than Oasis, I'm serious!," muses Nathan.

We'll have to watch that one quite closely, but the cross over nature of their music helps Lavish attract a wide ranging audience. Nathan though isn't sure what it is about Lavish that attracts their already loyal following. "Probably because we haven't got a certain sound, we're just totally different. I don't know what it is, we seem to appeal. that's why we want a major deal because we're confident enough that we can tackle commercial radio."

Good luck to them, I say!

Anita Caruso

Design and layout � Chester 1996. This page last updated 20 June 96.