The Cat Empire fans are excited. With just cause too: the new album, Cinema has dropped and trumpeter and vocalist Harry Angus describes it as being ‘different to the records we’ve done before’.
Their sound is best described as eclectic with lashings of jazz, funk, groove and world influences. Energetic, audacious, infectious, outrageous – all are words that sum up the Cat Empire vibe.
‘We’ve always had a world music travel guide aspect to our albums,’ Angus told OUTinPerth over the phone from his home in Melbourne.
‘The band’s always been known for including a lot of genres. Especially world music genres and stuff.’
‘Even though we didn’t consciously start out to be like that it became a bit of a gimmick for the band.
‘With this record we’ve really tried to get away from that. So the record is still very musically dynamic, using the instruments we’ve got and using the diversity of the band but without the stealing-genres-from-different-continents kind of vibe.’
However, the band is happy to embrace the world stage, particularly with the recent launch of their new album on June 20. They became the first Australian band to broadcast the virtual launch of their new work across the world, simultaneously via the internet with a one second delay.
And it’s their live appearances which blow people away time and time again.
‘Fela Kuti, the pioneer of Afro beat, was famous for his live shows,’ Angus explained in describing the band’s live presence.
‘His thing was that he’d write a song and then tour it for a year, or two years, and then record the song. The music industry is like the exact opposite of that and sometimes I wish we could do it that way.
‘Because, you know, we record a song and then we go on tour and a year later it’s unrecognisable. Cat Empire does a lot of improvisation on stage and the songs tend to just grow.
‘Coming together on stage is a combination of the materials that we begin with but also where it goes when we start messing with it.’
The band brought a similar approach into the writing and recording of the album, creating a much more fluid process as a result, one which saw everyone contribute to the penning of the songs.
‘In the past it’s been me and Felix who have been the main songwriters in the band, kind of writing the song and bringing it in to the rest of the guys and telling them what to play and being precious about our little compositions. And in a way that kind of stagnated the recording processes.
‘This time round it was more of a case of coming into the rehearsal room with no ideas or a very loose idea and just sort of creating something together.
‘And when you relinquish that control you open it up for all kinds of things to happen.’
The result is unmistakably equal parts The Cat Empire and brilliant.
Cinema is out now through EMI. Visit our giveaway page online at www.www.outinperth.com to win a copy today.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
