2010 has been a pretty exciting year for up and coming Blue Mountains indie band CLOUD CONTROL. The group’s bassist, Jeremy Kelshaw, sat down for a bit of a chinwag with BMA to discuss their impending move to the UK, their stunning debut LP Bliss Release and what it was like to support The Temper Trap and Tame Impala.
I hear the band is relocating to the UK next year. What prompted the move? We’ve never been a band with a five year plan. The idea to spend some time in the UK next year has only come about recently after some love from our now UK label Infectious Music (home of The Temper Trap and Local Natives). It’s always been a dream for us all to play music full time and this move is one step closer to doing that. So who knows how it’ll end up?
Bliss Release has been nominated for a swag of awards this year (and won some too!) at the ARIAs, the Air Awards and the J Awards. Is it nice to receive this sort of recognition from the industry? Along with no five year plan, we wrote the album with no expectations or thoughts towards how the album would go critically. So is it nice? Totally! Crazy, even. We worked real hard on the album and think it turned out great, so it’s inspiring when other people agree.
Your upcoming show in Canberra at Transit Bar will definitely be an intimate affair. Do you prefer smaller shows like that or bigger ones, like the sets you will perform at the Laneway Festival early next year? Big or small, I don’t care – I just like playing venues that are full. It makes people go nuts and demands you play till you’ve got nothing left. Laneway will be awesome. This will be our first travelling festival experience and it’s great that it’s with Laneway. Lots of mutual love!
You’ve played some shows in the UK recently supporting some other rising Aussie talent, specifically The Temper Trap and Tame Impala. How important were those shows in getting your name out there internationally? Any interesting tour stories you’d care to share? All the shows in the UK have been great and both of those bands are full of great people too. We also played with Local Natives who are also an amazing band. Getting your name out there is about playing as much as you can with likeminded artists, so that’s what we’re doing. Tour stories, hmmm… Briefly: Noel Gallagher, Noel Fielding, baked dinners, Stonehenge, X Files and snow fights. Good times.
What plans does Cloud Control have for 2011? Do you plan to work on the follow up to Bliss Release while in the UK? Shows, shows and more shows. We will try and write where we can but we are in unchartered waters so we’ll sort something out!
Catch Cloud Control with support from Cat Cat live at Transit Bar on Thursday December 16. Tickets are available through Moshtix.
