Belgium-born and Melbourne-based musician Gotye releases his debut UK album, 'Like Drawing Blood' today, via Lucky Number. Cutting loops and beats under his rich vocals, he has been compared to everyone from The Avalanches and DJ Shadow to Beck and Architecture In Helsinki. We caught up with him for some Same Six Questions action.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
There's a photo of me banging my parents' pots and pans (and also scratching their records with small sticks) outside our house when I was five years old. Surely a sign? It took me until sixteen years of age to convince them to buy me a drum kit though, and from there I taught myself piano, singing, songwriting and production.
Q2 What inspired your latest single?
'Learnalilgivinanlovin' was inspired by the desire to write a positive song with a message of pure love for the people we share the world with (that's EVERYBODY). But to do so without coming across as cheesy or naive. A few of my friends who find that the song picks them up reckon I did pretty well.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
A long period of collecting sounds and experimenting with instrumental arrangements before I write the 'song' (lyrics and melodies) around those instrumental beds. Recently I wrote a tune on the piano and now am thinking of ways to arrange it with synths, drum machines and maybe piano. That's a bit of a different approach for me.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
The KLF, Depeche Mode, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, DJ Shadow, Massive Attack, Machine Translations... the list goes on and on
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Don't you wish I would stop saying stuff to you so you could just listen to my music and make up your own mind?
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest single/album, and for the future?
I hope that my music finds an enthusiastic audience in Europe. An audience that is interested in what I do next, who are prepared to stick with me in what I write for a forthcoming record. That's a sign to me that I'm making interesting music. As far as the future goes, well, I'm very keen to make a new album to try out all the production tricks and techniques I've been picking up over the last couple of years.
More>> www.gotye.com and www.myspace.com/gotye