Infusion

Interview

It seems that working and living with your band members isn’t all bad. They were three guys living under one roof who had enough understanding and compromise to create two albums. Jamie Stevens tells us how hard it is to make it in the Australian scene and shows us why you should never give up.

- Can you tell us a little bit about the band?

J: We were all originally into electronic music before we started the band. A guy called Danny got me into it by making me listen to Acid House and bands like Depeche Mode and New Order around 1987. Manuel, our singer and keyboard player, played the piano and his mum was a music teacher and Frank came from more of a hip-hop background as well as being influenced by his sister’s 80’s records like Duran Duran and Culture Club.

I met Manuel at high-school in 1988, we became friends and started to make music on a keyboard and a four-track. After a couple of years we had found our style which was playing electronic music, but live and we decided to call the group Infusion. Around 1994, we met Frank, who was actually repairing one of our keyboards for us. He was very skilled turntablist and would come over to jam with us at our house. He eventually fully joined us in 1996.

- So your band has been around for quite a while, how do you feel you guys have progressed?

J: I think we have been super-lucky. It was great how much support we got in Australia. We released our first single on Sony and it was really well received on Triple J radio station, which is probably one of the only national Australian radio stations except for classical music.

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In 2002, when Adam Freeland wanted to get his album produced in Australia, we were hooked up with the project by a mutual friend and got to produce his album. This allowed us to quit our part-time jobs and fully concentrate on our music. Through our connection with Adam Freeland, we were able to release one of our tracks on Marine Parade Records which enabled us to play our first international gig at Fabric. Dave Seaman then put a couple of our tracks on his Global Underground compilation so we started a relationship with Audio Therapy and since then, good things have happened to us. But, the first tour was really tough; we had to save up and fund the whole thing ourselves. I think that you have to be proactive which is something a lot of Australian electronic music producers don’t do enough of. So it was a difficult start but the effort has been worth it.

Youtube : Infusion - Natural

- How do you guys go about making your tracks? What is your creative process?

J: Because all three of us are writers and producers, we all have a hand in the creation of the tracks. This can lead to some really great things but at the same time, it can make things more difficult! But because we have a good relationship with each other, it always ends up working out. If we do use a structure, it is roughly based around Manuel doing the vocals, all of us making different parts of the music and then in production, it would be probably be more Frank and I. We used to go off on our own and try and make something and bring it back to the other guys to see if they would be interested to add anything to it. Our newest album is far more of an integrated effort by everyone and it will take us into a new way of creating and producing our tracks.

Youtube : Infusion - Girls can be cruel

- We originally found out about Infusion through Myspace. How do you feel the Internet has played a part in your band’s success?

J: We like having a presence on the net, but we haven’t really utilized it or focused on it fully yet. We have a Myspace, but we haven’t really put a lot of effort in to the look of it. It has however, given our fans a platform to give us direct feedback. Originally most of our fan base developed from coming to our live shows, so we were lucky to start off in a more organic way with the internet helping us out much later.

- What does the future hold for Infusion?

J: Promoting our new album. We brought on a producer who has sorted out the mastering of all the live instruments. With this album, we really tried to capture the live sound that we achieve in concert. It’s pretty hard though because in the studio, you don’t really feel like making large, in-your-face type sounds that would be perfect for a gig so these are the sounds you will hear on the new album. We are also gong to tour the US sometime this year, but not sure exactly when yet.

Infusion : http://www.myspace.com/infusion

Written by Selph