The Australian summer festival season rolls on, and before long Good Vibrations will be upon us (event website here). Arguably one of the most rock-friendly dance festival line-ups this summer, it’s shaping up to be another big one at its new home the Claremont showgrounds. I had the opportunity to have a chat with the drummer from one of those acts, Jack Savidge from Friendly Fires, about becoming such a popular band so quickly, their sophomore album and band DJ sets. Full interview on the other side.

Friendly Fires (Myspace)

You guys started out as a punk rock band in high school, was the change to your current sounds a gradual one?

It was kind of gradual I think at the time I suppose we were quite punky until like 18 or something but then we all kind of left the band alone for about three years only doing it very occasionally. In that time we got into dance music and wanted to do music that had a strong dance element and was kind of poppy as well.

Any artists around that time that sparked your interest further in that genre?

For me people who got me into dance were like Matthew Dear, and some of the Minus label.  Suppose I came to it from a geeky side of the fence, around 2003-04 when minimal house was really kicking off and I was buying a lot of those records. I know that Ed was into Jamie Liddell and more soulful, vocal stylings, which influenced some of the tracks on the album. It was more of a general push to write structured pop songs.

Do you ever sit back and enjoy this relatively rapid rise in popularity?

I think when you do certain gigs it’s a good reminder… Like as a teenager I always watched the BBC coverage of Glastonbury and really watched it heaps and I’d have an archive, it’d just be really really big for me. So say when we were doing Glastonbury and knowing that we were on that same BBC coverage I would of video’d at the time being a teenager seems kind of crazy. Just to know I was doing that thing which was so formative for my music fandom was pretty amazing. Sometimes looking back on huge gigs and pivotal moments they kind of get lost… Sometimes things that are really huge just get lost on the conveyor belt. Looking back at pictures of some of the festivals and things you do over a summer you think that was actually fucking huge. We were actually playing to 30 or 40 thousand people but it can be really easy to forget it at the time.

Do you have a preference for festivals vs club shows?

Not really… Sometimes at festivals you can feel really isolated from the crowd. For instance at Glastonbury the crowd is so far back, you don’t get any kind of instant reaction. When the song finishes you don’t get a roar from the crowd or anything. As the sound on stage fades out you get a gradual rise of shouting from the crowd but its not an instantaneous roar and I remember coming off stage thinking was anyone even into it? You’re just really isolated… So yeah that’s the main difference. When you do your own big show and it goes well its kind of more special because people are there for you not just passing by.

Are you guys getting much time to work on the new album?

Well basically we just got back from the USA a few days ago, but before then we had been working on new stuff. Being in the US blew a hole in our studio time, but we’re getting back into it now. What we’ve done so far is sounding good without being finished. What we’re doing at the moment is trying to get a load of instrumental ideas which Ed will take away to put some vocals on top of which is generally how it works.

Are you still producing yourselves?

Yeah at the moment that’s all we’re doing. Essentially just getting the ideas together. Just before we come to Australia we’re going to have a look at what we’ve got and see if we can take something we’ve got to a producer or perhaps work on something entirely new with a producer. I think we’ll assess that before we get to Australia. Its really exciting at the moment. I’m excited to get back into the studio after the US tour.

Are you looking to make many changes with the Friendly Fires sound?

You never really wanna repeat yourselves but there are certain kinds of things that will always be a part of how we make music and what our tastes are basically. It’s always gonna be dance-able. We’re a long way off writing un-dance-able kind of music. We try to keep it as varied as possible. One of the great strengths of the first album was how varied it was and the different styles and palletes in each song. We’ve just been trying to do that as much as possible and it’s sounding good. You don’t want to lose sight of making a good song though. We’ve got a few kind of power ballady songs, ‘lighter in the air’ songs. Some are more epic, hopefully huge sounding.

Any chance we’ll get a taste of them for the Good Vibrations festivals?

We’ll have to see I mean if we’ve got something finished by then, which I hope we have, maybe we’ll learn them for live. The way we tend to write and record isn’t really as a live band. We record parts into the computer and then kind of work them out. It’s a whole separate thing really. I don’t want to say yes definitely because our main focus is to write more music and leave the working out for live thing later in the year but if something can work then yeah I don’t think we’d be adverse to trying it out.

Is there much difficulty translating studio sounds into the live show?

Yeah that’s exactly why we have Rob helping us play live. We also have a little brass section with a trumpeter and sax player for the live show which works really well. They’ve become quite pivotal to the show. It’s almost starting to sound not quite right without them. The thing is you don’t want to just recreate the records live. We like to muck around with things, change the structure a bit, elongate songs make them work better instead of just doing a totally dry reading of the record. It’s kind of a separate thing to the studio. That’s good though you’re not just bound to the studio.

“Band name” (DJ Set)’s are becoming quite common now is that something you guys are into?

Yeah definitely, I do that. I DJ around when we’re not touring under the Friendly Fires DJ Set name. It’s a lot of fun. I kind of pride myself on being pretty good at DJing rather than just being dreadful. I think a lot of the bands who do DJ sets have never done it before and it’s just kind of a cash thing. But I’ve been DJing since I was about 17 or 18 so I know what I’m doing.

Have your DJ tastes evolved along with the bands?

I used to buy loads of old jungle records; proper ragga jungle and DJ that. Now I guess I play a lot more housey/techno stuff. I like playing a lot of old, sort of acid house, Chicago stuff. It’d be nice to do that in Australia at some point. I did a couple of gigs when we were last over, around Splendour which was fun. I hope I could do it again.

I hope so too Jack thanks so much for your time looking forward to seeing you in a few weeks.

No worries at all and yeah see you soon!