Love them or…well, love them I suppose, The Optimen definitively are among the backbone of amazing QLD, nay, iconic Australian hip hop arists that make up our local scene, and their name is synonomous with the catch cry of an entire city; Boomtown!
Drop That from TheOptimen on Vimeo.
As they sit perched, about to embark on their latest national tour to promote the new album ‘The Out of Money Experience’, I thought it was appropriate to catch up with the guys and probe them deeply (as the actress said to the bishop) about growing up in the 80′s, the changing sound of local music, and the undeniable question faced by every man, woman and child today:
Was Empire Strikes Back REALLY the best Star Wars movie of all time?
So you’re self confessed 80′s babies; did your Commodore 64 have the disk drive or the tape player?
Dats – I think the first console I ever had was an Atari 2600. My friend had a Commodore 64 I believe. I remember being pretty enthralled by the 8 bit graphics of Pitfall haha…
Samsonite- I grew up with very limited TV access, let alone gaming consoles! I did get busy on the rubiks cube; and I did go quite mental for ‘Countdown’, comics and shithouse 80s music.
Kristoff the Russian – We were poor so we couldn’t afford technology – the closest thing we had to technology was an Atari 2600. We used to go ape-shit on the Trading Post and buy multi-game cartridges from what must have been 30-something weirdos that still played D&D and lived in their mothers’ basements – selling their wares because they were trading up to their first NES, I imagine. My dad had just left us so he would spend some of his money on video games for his sons so that he wouldn’t have to interact with us as much. Parents are smart like that.
The new album is called ‘The out of money experience’ (Brilliant name btw), however your first release was 2005′s ‘Boomtown’; 5 years is a long time between drinks, what were you guys up to in
the interval?
D – Well, we did release the Red Tape Renegades compilation and shortly after that the Pure Product album – the production on both those releases was pretty much handled by Sammsonite and I. So it’s not like we were on a complete break from making music.
In retrospect we perhaps should have come back with something sooner (strike while the iron’s hot and all that) but the truth of
the matter is the follow-up would have been completely different if it had been released/conceived sooner. I guess you could say our taste in hip-hop, and music generally, matured somewhat from what is was back in 05, and The Out of Money Experience reflects that in terms of more complex song structure and a broader range of musical influences on display.
I’ve been a huge Dilla fan for a minute now too, and in terms of the beats I contributed on the album I really aimed to bring that funk and swing element that was probably missing from Boomtown.
S – we also got live musicians into the studio. I had a real fascination with what Mark Ronson does with horns, so we got a few handy brass players to interpret/beef up some samples. Both DATS and I became bored with the sequencing software we were using for Boomtown, so we also moved to another platform for fucking with beats (Abelton Live son!)
K – Thanks for the backhanded compliment! Haha. I don’t know… We did ‘Red Tape Renegades’. That didn’t happen by itself. A lot of what has been happening has been our developing of the Red Tape label and working with new artists – working on the Pure Product album and the such [..]If we had released another album two years after Boomtown, it would have shown very little progression. We also made a ridiculous amount of beats for other cats and worked on a lot of tracks that never made it anywhere in that time too.
Would you describe Brisbane’s hip hop scene as one that varies compared to the rest of the country? and more to the point, do Queenslanders generally have a different ‘sound’?
D – I don’t think we necessarily have a distinct Brisbane sound so to speak. I think one of the major reasons our shit may sound a little different/unique to other releases in the country is we handle our production in house and you tend to have producers in Melbourne/Sydney/Adelaide feature across many artist’s albums and that creates a bit more of a familiar sound tied up in a geographical location.
S – I think there is a bit of a ‘purist’ mentality which works in favour in some ways, but can be quite detrimental. You probably wouldn’t consider Qld as a very progressive place and that is reflected in the music scene. We look further a field to get that inspiration, but certainly look no further than the back yard when keeping the musical integrity intact.
K – I don’t listen to a lot of Australian hip-hop really, when I actually realise how much is out there. I try to, but there really is a lot being released or otherwise made available these days, it’s pretty hard. If Brisbane has a sound, I guess it’s a bit more ‘underground’. Well maybe not underground so much as ‘classic’. I guess cats these days would say that classic is just another word for ‘dated’, and maybe they’re right. I just don’t like futuristic music that sounds terrible – call me crazy. Brisbane’s sound is ‘honest’.
Your music strays between the traditional stalwart of uptempo anthems and general reflectiveness; is this what the Optimen are all about? or do you prefer to write one type of music over another?
D- I don’t really have a particular preference as to the style of beat I’m making or writing to. I guess when you’re compiling an album you do think about having those up-tempo party jams that will work well in a live setting, but we also aimed to have some songs that were more of a listening experience in your headphones on the way to work or whatever. And, yeah, there is quite a bit
of reflectiveness on this album. We’re all turning 30 this year and there’s plenty of looking back and wondering how we fucked up so bad in the last three decades haha…
S – It’s such an organic process that you aren’t aware of what shape the album is taking until you can view it as a whole. I can certainly say that the evolution of sounds and musical ideas are changing from week to week. You’ll hear a different palate of sounds on the remix album. The ‘Remixperience’ is 90% finished, we are just in the process of writing 2 exclusive (new) tracks for it.
K – Hmmmm. I really don’t know. I guess we’re probably getting a bit more reflective now we’re at the precipice of our undeniable adulthood. We’re all wisecracking bastards at heart. We love to drink and get messy and have some laffs. I guess we just make the sort of hip-hop we like to listen to. We don’t preach about whether hip-hop is alive or dead or how it all came from Kool Herc or here or there, and we aren’t on some dragon spaceship crystal castle junk, or about how we’re going to feed a third world nation with the love of our listeners. If it rhymes, great. If it rhymes and makes sense, even better.
A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi?
D – Empire Strikes Back. The special fx were superior to A New Hope and there’s no fucking teddy bears.
S – Return of the Jedi. Not sure about the re-release where they fucked with the original CGI. I like to see a bit of dodgy splitting seam-lines in the b-grade puppet man-suits.
K – Please refer to question 1. We grew up without a VCR or pocket money for movie matinees. As such, I missed out on the Star Wars. Fun fact: The Star Wars looks pretty fucking gay. I’d get unfathomably intimate with Natalie Portman though.
So you’re about to embark on the ‘Out of Brisbane experience’ tour; how far out of Brisbane are you going? and is there any particular place you love to rock more than others?
D – We’re still sorting out some dates but at the moment there’s Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and possibly Adelaide and North QLD. We actually just got back from some shows in Sydeny and Canberra and the turn outs were pretty damn good and I had some fucking fun.
We have a new addition to our live show Greg “Mint Slice” Arnott on keys and our dude Peter Beatty playing a range of instruments and tapping out some shit live on the pads, so our live show (in my opinion) is better than it’s been. People really need to come out to our shows and try and prove me wrong…and buy me a beer AFTER the set (please not before ha).
K – Melbourne is probably as ‘far’ as we’re going. As for places to rock, I’m liking Sydney the more I get down there. Melbourne is still probably my favourite spot though. We just had our first ever Canberra show. I got so drunk that I blacked out in our hotel bathroom while throwing up. When you come back to consciousness, cold and confused, laying in your own vomit, that’s when you know you’ve made it.
You’ve managed to snare some big names on the album, Jehst and Phil tha Agony to name just a few. Were these by chance? or did you have plans to have them on the album from the day of its inception?
D – We’ve wanted to have Jehst on something for a long time. We’re all huge fans and after a Bris show fell through when he was last touring, we decided we would still reach out and see if he was interested in a collab. I think it turned out pretty fucking good actually. As someone pointed out in something I read, it does sound like he’s smoked a pound before he recorded his verse haha…it suits the track though.
S – I think it was actually our Manager (Duff) who hooked up the Jehst spot? Not to sure how though… he works in mysterious ways…
K – As with anything that’s happened to anyone in the music business since December 31, 1979, there was nothing magical about it. I think the opportunity to work with Jehst (though we’d already talked about it) was brought to us by Adam @ Shogun at the time… though I’m not sure. With PTA, I just hit him up on MySpace. He seemed willing enough, so I transferred him an undisclosed amount of money through Western Union, then held my breath hoping he wasn’t just going to take the money and run. Kids, if you’re still awake, I wouldn’t recommend any of you wire funds to an overseas rapper without some formal sort of agreement in place.
For the discerning traveller, what are some local bris-vegas spots for food, wax and other assorted goodness that other cats might now know about?
D – No No’s for unfuckwittable kebabs, Sultan’s Kitchen in Paddington for unfuckwittable Indian food and Miltonios for cheap pizza. In terms of wax you can’t go past Rocking Horse Records in the city (Len-One works there and will sort you out) and for a beer I’d say hit up the Rumpus Room in West End for an unpretentious setting and the possibility for some good music in the background.
S – No No’s in Red Hill for the Kebab that won’t require a stomach pump. Stay away from Fortitude Valley pubs to avoid drinking watered-down contaminated tap beer.
Butter Beats put on a mean $2 record fair that will leave you sneezing and carrying on – infact, if you make it out of the maze of crates and dust you might find yourself with some gems amongst those unforgettable 90s power anthems.
K – There’s a Thai place nearby to where I live called ‘Thai Thani’. It’s pretty funny; they have David Boon on their menu, like “David Boon ate here once! That’s a pretty strong recommendation!” David fucking Boon. Anyway, everything they touch turns to shit… but only about 12 hours after you eat it. It’s fantastic before the shit stage. For wax, because DATS said Rocking Horse, I’d just say keep your eye out for the record fares. Flyers start popping up on record store counters and then BOOM! It’s on.
Do you think Arnold was eventually able to find out what willis was talkin’ about?
D – Well, now that he’s dead maybe not. From what I recall Willis became a crackhead so maybe he was just talking shit high off the pipe anyways…
S – Arnold wasn’t a simpleton. But when it came to trying to comprehend what Willis was talking about, he had no idea. I actually thought Willis was a straight talker.
Maybe Arnold wasn’t the midget genius we thought he was.
K – I’m sure it had something to do with crystal meth, robbing a 7-11 and double-teaming Kimberly Drummond.
So let’s take a moment to recap; you’ve now got two albums that are described as among the best hip hop releases this country has ever produced, but seriously, what’s next for the Opees?
D – Our next project is actually a remix album of the Out Of Money Experience which should include a couple of exclusive tracks and should be released by the end of the year. There’s a few joints on there I prefer to the original album and also has several remixes from our dude Cam Bluff (who’s been doing some beats for the likes of Spit Syndicate). We’re just putting it out there because we had quite a bit of time between when our album was originally going to be released and the official release date, so we kinda fucked around and before we knew it we had remixes for most tracks and have been using some of them during live shows. It will give people a chance to hear those beats away from the live setting. Other than that, maybe a few new releases from Red Tape artists and hopefully a new OP album within 5 years haha…
K – I think that was the first time I’ve seen them described that way – haha. Again, as DATS said, The Out of Money Remixperience is going to drop in a couple of months – with a couple of new joints on there too! We’re also days from releasing a new film clip for Drop That (which some of you have probably viewed by the time this is printed or uploaded or what have you). We have a bit more touring to do for now, and then hopefully some more at the end of the year, and then hopefully the soonest-ever follow-up album from The OPees!