It’s still yesterday in New York and Gabriel Andruzzi – keyboardist, saxophonist, percussionist and vocalist for dance punk outfit The Rapture – has spent the entire day in the studio. He’s slightly tired and a little delirious as he chats about the upcoming dates his band will be keeping as they hit Australia for Parklife, the official start to the summer music festival season, at least here in Perth.
What is your best summer concert story? Festivals honestly turn into blurs for me. There was a time Mez played with us at Glasgow, and he was just crazy and still wasted after all these years. But my favourite summer thing was the first time I went to Ibiza and played in Manumission in the backroom there. I got to hang out with Har Mar Superstar, who was curating this back room at this enormous club. I think we ended up on a beautiful beach and watched these children play, and it all seemed like Lord Of The Flies to us at the time.
What 3 things should every punter bring to an outdoor festival? Some sort of giant blow up inflatable pool toy, preferably a giant seahorse in a girly pinkish or a light blue in colour. Some pills that aren’t pills, so that the person has to really believe they’re pills so they act really messed up so it looks like they did really amazing pills… even though the pills they took were nothing – a total placebo. Some tight colourful spandex pants, like something MIA would wear.
If you had unlimited funds and could organize a festival or concert series where would it be and who would feature on the line-up? It would be on an island. On some really beautiful idyllic island, somewhere out in the Pacific. Some imaginary island with a big volcano. Really gorgeous and beautiful with lots of jungle and beaches. Who would headline? I’d probably get Moondog to headline and even though he’s dead I have unlimited funds so I’ve created a time machine so I can get Moondog headlining. And then I’d get some monks from the middle ages to sing for us. It would be incredible.
You mentioned earlier you spent the day in the studio – what have you been working on? I was editing some bongos, checking my Facebook which I rarely check and writing a new blog entry on our blog. That’s kind of a lazy day. Oh and we’re training our new bass player to play our songs for when we go on tour. We’ve been writing for the last couple of months. It’s been really fun and really exciting, so we’ve been preparing for our Parklife shows and finishing off our writing process.
What do you currently love about the music industry? Hopefully that still nobody has any fucking idea of what’s going on or how to make any money, and that labels are falling to the wayside. Hopefully that will make for some good music in the future.
Parklife hits Perth on Sunday September 27, 2009. Tickets are available now from www.parklife.com.au.
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