q&a: love of diagrams

Love Of Diagrams, a Melbourne three-piece that put out some pretty noisy ’80s music, have been around for a little while. Most recently, they wound up 2011 with a string of shows to launch their 7″ In My Dream. So here’s a few questions, and their answers.

I’ve been keeping track of you guys ever since I saw you at RAOB GAB for your 7″ launch, the most recent post on your WordPress was a step back to 2003… how do you feel about the way things have developed since then?
The blog is something I had been thinking about doing for a long time.. basically it is a way to archive our poster art and other mementos and also to sort of tell our story so far. A fun process, really. We started out as a band in 2001 and we have progressed through many stages, including being an instrumental band at the start.. and we were signed to Matador for a brief period. We have toured and travelled relentlessly for many years and have experienced the highs and lows of being in a band. I think most of all, what this sort of experience gives you is the idea that it is up to you to decide what is really important, and to shape things in that direction. We have taken an independent approach, where we have been able to make our own decisions about what we want to do, how and when. In 2010 we started our own label ‘free field records’ to release our own vinyl.

How did the rest of your single launches go?
We played to a packed audience in Sydney at FBi Social, which was amazing. It’s been really fun to road test the new songs..

I really liked you guys live, it was LOUD! How was putting together the 7″?
It was a really fun experience.. We worked with our friend Jack Farley ( Twerps, Beaches) who did an excellent job. We started out with a plan to demo 12 new songs, and in the process of recording, we noticed ‘In my dream’ and ‘too long’ were really coming together so we thought why not put a 7 inch out!

Just a little bit about the band name? Which diagrams in particular?
The name ‘Love of Diagrams’ comes from a conversation Luke and I were having about how we found diagrams to be aesthetically pleasing. And that it would be interesting to work with some diagrams that tried in some way to express something that was otherwise hard to articulate.. In a sense that is also what the process of making music is about for us. Also a lot of our poster art has featured diagrams over the years. I guess you could say, we are drawn to them.

I know this is a pretty lame question, but where does most of your inspiration come from?
Our inspiration comes from all sorts of places. I guess just the outside world and then also your own internal experiences. We also just really enjoy writing and jamming together and we’ve spent the last 10 years doing just that.

After SXSW in 2010 which must have been huge, any other big plans to look forward to for 2012?
We are working on recording album number four late this year! That and playing lots more shows..

Love of Diagrams will be appearing at Adelaide’s Lost City festival on February 4 at the Queen’s Theatre. Find out more here!