interview: civil civic
Ben Green and Aaron Cupples, two Australian expatriates who met for the first time in Barcelona in 2009 – though that’s not what Aaron thinks – formed a musical marriage they call Civil Civic.
With the upcoming release of their debut album, it’s only now they’ve set their heart on a debut tour of Australia. No vocal distractions, Civil Civic are an explosion of instrumental sounds and atmospheric intensity and they’re ready to take their party to Australia for the first time.
I pick up the phone to have a chat to Ben Green whose accent still hints his Australian roots. He chats about the formation of Civil Civic, his music partner Aaron, starting off as a duo and what it’s like to tour in Europe while anticipating what Australia will think of their wholly instrumental affair.
What do you feel your music is about?
It’s party music. Fights might break out or boyfriends and girlfriends are breaking up but it’s still a party. People are still having fun but it’s a bit edgy and a bit weird. It’s much like a dark party.
You’re an Aussie ex-pat, where are you originally from?
Well, I grew up in Canberra but I don’t really like telling people that. I moved to Melbourne as soon as I could because I wanted to play in bands. When I got sick of that, I moved to Germany and Spain.
How did you meet your duo partner Aaron?
Aaron says that we met in Melbourne at a gig once but I don’t remember it. He says he gave me a lift home in his car. We’ve got friends in common and we know a bunch of the same people in the Melbourne scene. I think when he was looking for someone to hook up with to do this project he was having trouble finding anyone. They were sort of giving him the cold shoulder. Someone said to him ‘oh, you know, Ben’s in Spain that’s not so far away, why don’t you try him.’ He emailed me a couple of demos and they sounded really exciting. So I said yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem let’s do it.
What do you enjoy most about working as a duo?
We kind of got lucky in our duality because we got together as kind of a blind date – we didn’t really know much about each other. It really was like an internet hook up. We like a lot of the same musical references, the whole kind of what Civil Civic is supposed to sound like, we have the same idea of what it’s supposed to be and we get along well. We’ve got the same sense of humour, to an extent. It’s fun and it’s more personal than playing in a bigger band. We’re a bit like a married couple in a way.
You’ve toured over Europe with your music what’s the reception been like over there?
It was slow to get going. The first tour we booked it by ourselves. It was a pretty good ride actually because our first little EP, we did a mail out to every blog in the world. We hit up everyone and one of the songs on the EP it took off a little bit. It wasn’t a world wide smash or anything but a few semi-influential blogs just went ‘yep this tracks great’. So that helped us book shows. But we’ve been playing in Europe over five tours now. We do best in France and at the moment most of our crowd is there.
How does Europe treat musicians compared to the Australian music industry?
In terms of the large circuit here, every Australian band who [has] toured Europe has gone back with a story, ‘it’s amazing, they put you up, they feed you’. It’s all true. Even the shittiest gig that you complain about in Europe, they’ll provide some food for you, it might not be great but they’ll do it and they’ll make sure you’ve got somewhere to sleep. When you’re playing in a rich country like Norway, you’re just a pissy little band but you end up staying in an amazing hotel and going to an incredible restaurant. It can work out really well.
So how do you think Australia will receive your music?
I don’t know. I’ve got no idea what’s happening on the Australian scene right now. I just don’t know what’s flavour of the month, what people are after or what people are looking for in a band. We’re hoping to just go over there set up on stage, kick into the set and have people just be blown away. That’s the aim, to take peoples heads off. That’s what we’re aiming for, that’s all we’re going to go for and we’ll see what happens.
Civil Civic will be releasing their debut full-length album Rules on 1 February 2013 in Australia. See Civil Civic live at the Black Bear Lodge in Brisbane on Thursday 7February, at Brighton Up Bar in Sydney on Friday 8 February, at the ATP Melbourne ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’ Festival on Saturday 16 February, and a special show at The Tote in Melbourne on Tuesday 19 February.
By Nikita Andrea. With an obsessive nature for music, Nikita writes avidly for the world of sound both on Lip and her blog Raindrops and Rooftops. When she’s not writing about music she’s performing it.
