Article about Australian band INFUSION

[REV]

http://straight.com/content.cfm?id=17072

Dance-pop Infusion is a band in the classic sense
By martin turenne
Publish Date: 6-Apr-2006



The three members of Melbourne’s Infusion live together, record together, and tour together, operating like a modern-day version of the Monkees—except without the shag haircuts and the televised antics. Over the past six years, multi-instrumentalists Jamie Stevens, Manuel Sharrad, and Frank Xavier have shared the same house, somehow fending off domestic turmoil to become Australia’s biggest dance-music export. Asked how he and his mates have managed to tolerate each other’s quirks for so long, Stevens admits their relationship hasn’t always been rosy, especially not last year, when the threesome almost broke up.

“We were living in the U.K. for six months in the hopes that we would be playing gigs on weekends and working on an album during the weekdays,” says the Aussie, reached at the tail end of Miami’s Winter Music Conference. “But with all the years of being together, it had become too much, and we hardly got any work done at all.…We just needed time apart.”

After taking two months’ holiday over Christmas, Infusion reunited with renewed energy, quickly writing 20 tracks for the trio’s next album, scheduled for release later in 2006. That LP will be the follow-up to last year’s Six Feet Above Yesterday, billed by Rolling Stone Australia as one of the country’s 50 best discs of the year. A standout in the live-meets-electronic field, SFAY epitomizes the prevailing trends in post-superclub dance music, updating ‘80s-era new romanticism for the progressive-house generation. These days, the intersection of those forms is choked with opportunistic beatmakers, but what sets the Aussies apart from those laptop jockeys is their reliance on live, rock-style recording sessions.

“We’re a band in the classic sense,” says Stevens. “Most of what we’ve done has been in the live context. What we like about being in the studio is that environment gives us a chance to go all out, to make music in the broader sense with no worries about how we will present it in clubs.”

When Infusion plays tonight (April 6) at the Plaza, don’t expect a Kraftwerk-style exercise in robotic precision. According to Stevens, the trio never rehearses, preferring to let instincts rule the day, no matter what the hazards.

“In every show, there’s little moments where it does threaten to fall apart, but you’ve just got to grab hold of it and have fun with it,” he explains. “We look at it as a great opportunity to take those risks and try and do something new in front of people every night.”

[Liqwid]

I like The Veronicas!!!





The Veronicas - 4ever

.dalyn.

[.muffy.]

so stoked for the show tonight!!