q&a: mildlife

It’s an exciting time for General Pants Co.’s Major Label! It’s their second birthday and they’ve just signed Melbourne band, Mildlife, with their single, ‘Milk Wool’.

Lip had a chat to Tom Shanahan about electro music, advice from fatcats, and David Bowie in Labyrinth!

Describe your sound in five words or less.
Post-prog-yacht-rocktronica-no-fi. How many words is that?

Was there a particular moment or artist that made you want to pursue music when you were growing up? Who were your early influences?
I guess there were a whole bunch of artists at all different times inspiring me for a bunch of different reasons. Growing up it was legends like Bob Dylan for his lyrics and their delivery, Tom Waits for his Charisma, Herbie Hancock for his genius and David Bowie for his package, particularly in the movie Labyrinth.

What’s the appeal of being signed to Major Label for Mildlife? What does it offer that other contracts do not?
Well for starters we get 100% of the royalties and we certainly don’t feel like we’re locked in to anything as it’s quite a short contract.

Given that your sound blends both electronic elements and more conventional instrumentation, do you think that the latter is missed among most electro music these days?
No, not really. I think there are a whole bunch of electronic artists doing really great things without conventional instrumentation. Having said that, from an audience perspective it’s not great seeing a dude hit play on his laptop then stare blankly at the screen waiting for the next song to queue. And it sucks even more seeing artists pretending to play conventional instruments on stage. It kind of becomes more of a theatre show then.

Who do you most admire?
The chocolate rain guy for singing about his deepest passion.

Greatest achievement to date?
Selling out shows is always a great feeling.

A song I wish I wrote/played is…
We’ve been loving this weird RnB track from the 80’s by iLevel called ‘Give Me’. Pretty seedy lyrically (if you’ve heard it you’ll know why) but it’s pure bass porn.

I couldn’t live without…
Cheese

The best advice I ever received was…
We met a drunk fatcat sitting outside our hotel not long ago and he was telling us how he got caught cheating on his wife with a co-worker. His advice for us was ‘Don’t shit where you work’. I don’t think it was the best advice I’ve ever received but it was pretty memorable.

Is there anything you’ve always wanted to be asked?
Hmm that’s a tough one. How about ‘What was it like to be the first band to play a show on the moon in front of all those presidents?’