Interview: Getting to Know soop
Meet electric space wizards, soop. Enthusiastic about lazers, grammar and Django Django, they also make music:
soop are Michael Burke, Stacy Gougoulis, and Mitch Secrett (last name alphabetical). Stacy is a boy. We’re three friends from Melbourne who just love having a good time, hey. We all really like Fast and the Furious 6. The front man is a laser, though.
The name of your EP, Buffalo Buffalo, came from Stacy being really annoying one day when we were trying to finish recording it. He kept on saying “buffalo” over and over again. It’s some grammar thing where you can say buffalo like eight times in a row and it is still grammatically correct. Mitch and Michael initially were really mad and told Stace to be quiet, but after about four hours it became pretty funny. The sentence is “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” and it means bison from the New York city of Buffalo bully (or buffalo) other bison and are in turn themselves, buffaloed. Someone with too much time thought it up.
Also, you can say “fish and and and and and chips” and some other ones.* It was one of those things that is really annoying when someone else says it to you, but when you say it it is really fun. We probably should have called it Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo but everyone would have been confused and there would be some sort of stampede. Michael originally wrote to Cleavant Derricks who played Rembrandt “Crying Man” Brown in Sliders and offered for him to name our EP, but he never responded to our letter.
*That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is
*James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher
Buffalo Buffalo sounds like an electric space wizard in a dream forest baking cakes with a tropical dolphin, with a side of post-ironic-synth-gaze-indie-step-core. We don’t know, modern genres are confusing. We just make things we like. We originally thought (back in 2010 when we were in Greece) it would be cool to make a band that had huge banging techno beats and lovely folky tra-la-la vocals, but it actually sounded really silly. We wanted to call the genre techno-folk and it would have been like Breaks in 2003 and everyone would go mental. Don’t really think like the “sounds like” thing, but we think if you like Animal Collective, or being happy, or Washed Out, or Craft Spells or sick outros you will like it. Maybe to enhance the experience put on some lasers and have chips and gravy and a spearmint milkshake. We just really hope Jerry O’Connell from Sliders likes it. Failing that Sonia Kruger or Lara Bingle or Mark Philippousis (however do you spell it?).
In 2014 soop would like to watch some movies, play some tennis, play some new board games. Have a big sit in the sunshine. Also play some cool gigs and have a good time. We have heaps of new tracks for an album, so we should get around to making that too (probably also eat some chips and become a president of a country).
We have been listening to…
Stacy – An audio book version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, narrated by Simon Vance.
Michael – Underground Lovers, Broadcast, Alta (sick Melbourne band!!), Butthole Surfers, Captain Fufanu (from Iceland, saw them at a Ghostigital gig in 2010 and they are amazing live), DJ Rupture mixes, Chris & Cosey, Deltron 3030, Happy mondays, BOaT, Dre, Autechre, MBV, Cornelieus… is that enough? I can keep going…
Mitch – Django Django, Justice, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Knife … (Mitch also really loves Jagwa Ma)
We would love to tour with cool people. It would be great if Fatboy Slim was like ‘hey, want to tour the world with me’ and we just went around the world smashing flutes and banjos on stage with him. I reckon he would like that (side note, Shaun Micallef could join in if he wants). We have a lot of bands we would love to play with, and heaps of festivals we would love to smash (looking at you Aunty Meredith #thesecret (Meredith Music Festival is the best festival in the world)).
How about.. Outkast, or The Knife… at Carnegie Hall… and everybody gets free diamonds and we have pinjatas that contain fireworks. That would be ultra lush. Michael would really like to tour with Ennio Morricone playing “Investigation of a Citizen Under Suspicion” in full with the film. That would be a great show. Actually we probably just want to watch that. Really though, we just want to play some shows and have a good time. Just have fun, hey. We love music.
Peace out. thumbs up!
Keep up to date with soop via their bandcamp or soundcloud pages. You can pick up ‘Buffalo Buffalo’ on Spotify and iTunes right now as well.
Interview by Carol Bowditch.
