Before they support Sleep in Adelaide at Fowler’s Live on December 9, we catch up with Hydromedusa guitarist Joe Steele and find out what’s new…
What’s going on in the world of Hydromedusa?
We will hopefully expand our art into a multifaceted mental and physical experience — mapped with smell, touch, taste, love and fear. Before all this our LP is coming out in the next few months, we’re going to the US next year, we’ve also been writing some new songs. This week Dieter got a new bass and my new guitar broke. Troy’s delay pedal for his vocals also broke but Ben bought an effects pedal that has the ‘Soulfly’ logo on it! Tom has become a drum teacher but still lives in a big shed next to the river.
What motivates you to make music?
Why if we told you that, everyone would be doing it. Rather everybody would know the bits of all the Sabbath songs we’ve simply stolen and played in a lower tuning. At the heart of it though it’s just the fun we have working on ideas together. It’s mostly this coupled with the drive of constant and uncompromised ego that makes us better than everyone else.
What have been the high and low points of your musical experiences so far?
There are no real low points when you are flying so close to the sun. But probably my happiest memories are all the gigs we’ve played where people dance. I don’t remember any of these times specifically.
The lowest point I can imagine is an all-day-gig we played years ago where I realised I had been inside a nightclub called L!VE for about fourteen hours. By the end of the evening I was in the club’s panic room dangling my dirty, bare feet in an empty jacuzzi smoking crystal meth from a cocktail test-tube that turned out to be plastic. The gig was a lot of fun don’t get me wrong it’s just for some reason I can never forget this when I look at myself.
What music are you listening to at the moment?
I personally have been enjoying Brisbane’s WOODBOOT, truly an excellent band, wicked sound, proper assholes. Their cassette is sold out but you can download it from their Bandcamp.
POWER from Melbourne are also great. Awesome live band. I hope more high quality Aussie R’n’R like this will start to emerge in the next few years.
If you were stranded on a desert island, which member of the band would get eaten first?
I’m sure a painfully drawn out democratic vote would take place with lots of indecisive answers, short attention spans and fickle decision making abilities. Realistically we would starve. We would starve on a desert island. We would probably starve holidaying in Ireland. “What coffee shop do I want to go to” versus “let’s just drive on to the next town we’re making good time” or “let me just shit in this bin here” are all very plausible last words before the starvation would take us.
Here’s an opportunity to bitch about something, whether music related or not. What really pisses you off?
Lately I’ve enjoying hating on white Australians that call themselves Gypsies because they choose to dress in tattered clothing. Also cancer, terrible stuff.
You’re putting together your perfect gig featuring Australian artists. Who would you get to play and where? Feel free to include acts/DJs/bands/venues that no longer exist.
I have always wanted to play for tens of millions of dollars, by ourselves, at a grand stadium. A concert where the fans don’t necessarily like your music, or any music for that matter, but you have become a commercial entity so large you’ve achieved the same allure as a circus, car race or KISS concert. A real Hydropalooza. I probably wouldn’t care who was there or why. However if we can be hypothetical I’d have Jack Black serve as a rug and lie underneath the drum kit so it doesn’t move around when Tom’s playing it.
Hydromedusa join Iron Worzel in support of stoner doom legends Sleep on their first ever Adelaide show at Fowler’s Live this Tuesday, December 9. Tickets on sale now through lifeisnoise.com.
