PLACEMENT

Words/Interview: Keeley Thompson

Images: Kyle Dobie + Other

One of the greatest aspects of this work is finding out about cool shit from cool people. This is particularly gratifying when a certain Swedish music streaming company fails to spoon-feed dopamine directly into my chronically online mouth, and listening to my “discover weekly” feels like winning $3 from a scratchie that cost you a fiver. There’s the essence of a win, but it’s still only enough to buy another scratchie, and so the cycle continues. 

After roughly three weeks of trudging through the doldrums of a music discovery flatline by nibbling at the crumbs of old favourites while simultaneously mourning the stagnation of my once fruitful sonic exposition, I found Placement. 

Instrumentally they are noisy, at times chaotic, and at all times idiosyncratic. Yet, vocally, the band saunter more than they run with their spoken-word lyrics giving their music an innate sense of stoicism. If the instruments have ADHD, the vocals are the Dexamphetamine - a seemingly backwards, but beautiful (and effective) way to provide simplicity, order and accessible cadence amongst the sonic head-noise. 

Formed by a group of diverse creatives in Kaurna Yarta (Adelaide), Placement is made up of Mal (vox, guitar), Alex (vox, guitar), Kim (bass, vox), Stu (clarinet, sax, percussion) and Joe (drums). To tell you their music “sounds like this band or this genre” would be a complete waste of words and a disservice to their music, so instead, I’m just going to tell you to listen and decide for yourself (and thank me later). 

KEELEY: Hey, Thanks for joining! How are you today?

STU: It’s been stinking hot here in Adelaide, but it’s been good. It's almost a 40 degree day here.

ALEX: We’re pretty lucky, we’ve just been chilling at home. We’ve got aircon so we’re feeling pretty grateful for that. 

KEELEY: How did Placement begin? Tell me the story. 

ALEX: Well, years ago I was at a point where I played in a few bands and I'd always been playing other people's music, playing guitar for them and writing parts for them. 

I got to a point where I wasn't doing anything and I decided that if I'm going to do something again, I want it to be the music that I want to hear. I jammed with some people around that time, partly for fun and partly to try and find people that would fit. We’d had two pracs and it just didn’t gel and no one spoke again. 

But our bass player Kim was amazing and I decided to keep that in my back pocket because she's just so cool. 

The drummer, Joe, I had played in a band with him in the past and we really gelled. I had seen Stu playing in some other projects and I reached out and said, “hey, I really love what you're doing and I want to do a guitar band, but one of the guitars is a clarinet and I feel like you're maybe the only person in Australia that can do that.” 

I guess the last piece of the puzzle was one night I was at a pub, and I was talking about a band or something. This person turns around and just says “I like that band too” and starts telling me all about them, and it was Mal. Her and I pretty much hit it off that night and from there on, we all got together as a group and it all fell together. 

KEELEY: I’d read that your approach to music initially was to “polarize”, or make music that people might not necessarily like. Is that still your approach, or has that changed?

ALEX: I think it has changed a little bit, to be honest. I think it's something that is less in the considerations that we have as a group. 

Maybe at one point we were more focussed on what we want to do and that maybe that won’t be for everyone, but that’s okay, and we would be able to find a community that does enjoy what we do. 

I think the music scene, and especially the guitar music scene in Adelaide has grown a lot and there are so many great bands doing really interesting things that it's not really a consideration anymore. Now we just make music with the established language that we have as a group and the community around us. 

KEELEY: On that, I think there’s been a massive resurgence of the punk and melodic-punk scene. Why do you think that is?

STU: I think there was a time, like pre-COVID where the scene (especially in Adelaide), was very centred on pub-rock and certain genres, and it was really hard to do something interesting or different. 

I think a lot of bands, like Placement, came out of COVID and wanted to feel something, and do something different rather than just conforming to what was popular. I feel like a lot of people kind of came out of like, “let's just do what we want instead of what everyone else is doing.”

ALEX: I saw this really great interview with Sigur Ros and they said that in Iceland, whether you do something commercial or you do something completely cooked, like Björk, everyone supports it the same, because they're just excited that people are doing something.

I think that it was a similar sort of thing for the Australian music scene post-COVID. Maybe for audiences, there was less interest in what was “popular” and for bands, less interest in creating music solely for the purpose of popularity. People were just really excited to get in a room and create music, and that was the primary directive. So you've got all these bands that are like “you know what, if I want to do feedback for five minutes on this song, I'm going to do it because the only thing that I'm really thinking about is who's in this room with me and are we enjoying it?“

K: Where do you guys get ideas from? Do you have active inspirations that you follow or is it all from the dome? 

STU: Alex is probably the world's number one Sonic Youth fan. If you walk into their bedroom, you instantly know by the huge pile of Sonic Youth records by the door, so I think that has a decent impact on their inspirations.

But we all come from different backgrounds. Mal comes from a visual arts background, I’m from a classical clarinet background (though I definitely don’t play in a classical style), Alex from the hardcore/punk scene, and Kim comes from so many backgrounds. 

What would you say Kim comes from? 

ALEX: Kim's had a really interesting journey as a creative. Once again, they've always been a part of a lot of projects for other people. But they've always just had really good taste.

And I guess they come from a different, more atmospheric music scene. So we’ve all got a very diverse background and history with music, and all have diverse tastes.

K: What impact do you think that has on your music or how you guys create? 

ALEX: It creates a lack of rules, which is great. When Mal and I started, the plan was initially just “Let’s go buy a pack of strings, bung them on the guitar, and just turn all the tuning pegs until we're playing open and it sounds thick” until we landed on something that we thought sounds cool.

I think it also levels the playing field. Mal is a visual artist who didn't have a lot of experience playing guitar, whereas I have had many, many years playing kind of more traditional guitar. But when you kind of create this new tuning together, you're both starting again. And I think the only thing that is left is creativity. 

STU: Exciting things come from that. 

KEELEY: What has been the most exciting thing? Has there ever been a moment where you were all just like, “whoa”. 

STU: I think playing and hanging out with Tropical Fuck Storm a couple of weekends ago was pretty cool. I think that was a pinnacle, for me at least. 

ALEX: Yeah, Gareth Liddiard is one of my favourite Australian musicians and I was up at 5:30a.m having a beer with him. I was very conscious of my trembling, but that was really cool. 

STU: Hanging out with your heroes and they're actually just really lovely people is something that always feels so exciting. I feel like you don't get the opportunity to do that very often. So it's really cool when it happens. 

ALEX: Yeah, there are two sides to that question too, like what's the coolest thing or what's a standout thing? 

There's being part of communities full of like-minded people and having great experiences with them. There’s going to all the shows and community events and supporting causes that you believe in. 

But then on the other side, purely the creativity is also a highlight as well. To walk away from a recording session, to get a mix back, or to leave a jam and think “Even if I wasn't in this band, I wouldn’t hate it.” And that's cool. Those two things together. 

KEELEY: There is a lot going on and a lot of different elements in your music, which is largely intentional, I believe, but it also doesn't feel claustrophobic.. How do you manage wanting to do all these different things and having all these cool ideas without overcrowding your songs? 

ALEX: That’s a great question! I feel like I’ve answered a lot of these though, so I’m going to pass this one to Stu to start off. 

STU: I suppose for me, sometimes it's about noticing when there's a space that needs to be filled, but not always filling it. There's so much going on, and I feel like it teeters on the edge of being too much, or too chaotic and I think there's been times where it has gone into that realm and then maybe we've had to chat about that as a band.

Alex has been very good at saying what works and what doesn’t. It can be tough sometimes, but it's also really good having a leader who has a vision of what it needs to be, so then all of us can know what our role is. That is tough because sometimes we might have to ease up on the things we really want to do, but it’s about realising that what serves the band is not necessarily always playing what you want.

ALEX: It’s great for the ego to realise that sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing. But it's all about serving the song, I think.

There's that saying, putting every ingredient on a pizza doesn't make it the best pizza. If you’re trying to cook a really good pizza, you have to know which ingredients to take off sometimes. 

And also, I think collectively, we all have to factor in that our vocalist, for the most part, is doing spoken word, and we're quite a loud band. I don't think my hearing will ever recover from this band. And that's okay.

KEELEY: What is your process for writing songs? Does it come with the instrumentation first or lyrics first, or is it different for every song? 

STU: It pretty much always starts with an idea from Alex. They bring something and then the band creates it into a band song. Alex is an amazing guitarist, but then Alex can't play clarinet or Alex can't sing like Mal, and we can't play guitar like Alex. So while it largely starts with Alex, it takes us all as a team to really make each song bloom.

ALEX: And that's the joy of it. I'll sit in my room and I'll come up with an idea for a verse riff and for a chorus. I'll loosely create a very traditional song out of the guitar parts, which are kind of a bit off kilter anyway.

But  then you bring it to the band, and it's almost like putting it in a wild blender or something. Our drummer is really great, Joe is so good at it. He will come up with these great ideas like “instead of that being the quiet part of the song, you put like three fuzz pedals on it  and then that's the loudest part of the song.”  It’s cool because I never would’ve thought of something like that, but sometimes that works out to be the best part of the song. 

So I think it's all about collaboration. 

KEELEY: I hear you guys have new music coming out!

ALEX: We do, we have a record that's finished. 

We're gonna put out a new one soon called More Curse, which is more like our older songs. It's a bit more sinister sounding. It's got a pretty evil riff that, like with our old songs, just unravels as it goes on rather than in sections. 

I think one thing that we do quite well as a group, is just simmer on a sound and let Mal do her thing and spit out some wicked lyrics. It's lovely having songs that are focused on the music and then songs that are focused on Mal doing this Patti Smith kind of type thing. And this next one is a bit more focused on that, which I love personally. I think it's the most unique element of the Placement. 

After that, we're going to release the record. We're gonna release the title track, which is Insect, because the album is called Insect. I personally think that song is probably the best song on the album, so I’m excited to release that.

STU: It's my favourite one, it's got very distorted clarinet and saxophone bits, which I like playing.

KEELEY: If you could invent an instrument and play it, what would you want to play? 

STU: Maybe a Nike TN and you've somehow made an instrument out of that. I don't know what that instrument would be, but maybe it’s a Nike TN that's made out of silver mesh, and you run a pickup through an echo distortion tape machine, and it runs a loop within the silver mesh. I don’t know, but it sounds cool.

ALEX: That's much more interesting than I was going to say. I would love to play the fridge. I feel like the fridge has some cool sounds in it that we haven't tapped into yet, maybe. 

KEELEY: What can we expect? You kind of already touched on it, but what can we expect from you guys? 

STU: Lots of shows. Big things coming. 

[All laugh]

ALEX: Yes, stay tuned. Lots of shows, lots of music and I think as soon as we've finished the rotation on this record, we've got another EP cooking 

STU: That's going to be Sounds of Fridge.

KEELEY: I’ll be keen to hear that! 

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