Into the Wild: Zebra and Giraffe

(153 reads) Greg Carlin is a multi-instrumentalist indie-visionary; a prolific tamer of the giraffe-necked beast in both its six- and four-stringed formats, and the cymbals ‘n skins and black-and-white decked-out board of keys as well. He’s managed to put together a fully-fledged album of darkly delicious glitch-electro-pop; a ten-track dark safari sundae. A curious admixture of both dark and light, alluring and unerring. But how will the charisma of the album change during its journey from intimate one-man artistry to a nuanced five-piece live act?

“Literally, memories collected over the years,” is Carlin’s description of the album in question. 'Collected Memories,' released earlier this year, is exactly that – a personalised portraiture of the man, told through anecdotes of love and heartbreak, longing and misdirection. His influence is felt at each juncture; after all, he wrote each lyric and played each instrument (sans drums).

But rather recently, the music has had to adapt to the theatrics of stage, when Carlin recruited a musical crew to tour with him and flesh out the music, in both senses of the phrase. Bandmates, Darren (drums), Robert (keyboards), Andrew (bass) and Alan (guitar) are veterans of the live experience, having played in gaggles of unsigned, never-made-it bands before Zebra and Giraffe. As to how they feel they’ve added to Carlin’s music, resident clown Andrew pipes up, “We just took it and made it fucking awesome,” cue laughs all ‘round. On a more serious note, he adds, “The parts are there, nothing needs to change. We just put people in front of the instruments.”

Andrew can’t resist injecting another measured dose of everything frivolous into the interview. When asked what attracted the newcomers to Carlin’s music, he says, “Well, we were just attracted to him as a person… because he’s beautiful.” All Freudian slips of the tongue aside, Carlin attends to the real issue of the question, saying, “It hasn’t been easy translating this stuff to ‘live’. I mean, we’ve done well. I couldn’t ask for a better band.”

The ‘best’ band in question has proved their worth, ostensibly, through a rigorous practice schedule and personalisation of each instrument, bringing out a greater depth to the music. Guitarist Alan says on the subject, “We’ve worked for a good three months rehearsing to actually launch it. It’s different. People play their instruments differently. Greg’s style is specific and it was quite different for me, even though I consider myself quite broad. I wouldn’t say it’s difficult… [The trick] was making it as good as it was.”

And they’ve certainly succeeded in capturing the ‘goodness’ of the album. At their virgin concert, the Oppikoppi Myn Stage 2008, the baited-breathed buyers of the album exhaled with deep relief, when a more formally-attired version of the spotted-and-striped lads took to the stage and billowed forth a gorgeously dark performance, which darkened each black passage and elevated the ferocity of each electronically-pronounced hook.

Both Alan and Carlin engagingly set about their physical performance of each track, admittedly with recourse to every staid trick in the book, but the final product was both polished and professional.

With ‘Collected Memories’ attracting the attentions of each indie-kid, retrospective-rocker and diaphanous, bohemian groupie, Zebra and Giraffe just about have their quasi-celebrity futures carved in stone. So, what does the quintet hope to achieve before they call it a day? Says Alan, “If you define an end, then you’ll be defined by it, right? So, whatever; just to do what we love doing. Everyone in this band loves music more than anything else, and I know that for a fact. We don’t care what we do, just as long as music is at the core. As long as we keep doing it together, I don’t think we should ever define an end.”

And the success to which they personally feel they’ve managed to communicate the nuances of the album in a live setting? Says Alan once more, “I think we’ve been very successful. People should know it’s the same band, but it should still stand by itself as a live act.” Carlin concedes that while the album may have a ‘super-personal’ feel about it, the music was originally engineered with a live audience in mind. “Funnily enough, when I was writing these songs, I made specific beats etc. It was definitely intended for a live thing. I wanted to write upbeat songs.”

Shooting by in a blizzard of hype and delivery, it looks like the master of the giraffe-necked guitar and zebra-coloured keyboards, as well as his enthusiastic band-mates, are going to dominate the airwaves for quite some time.