Probably the first string quartet to inspire moshing, FOURPLAY will be turning on punters with their chunky riffs and fat bass lines at THE NORTHERN STAR HOTEL this Friday night.
Blurring the boundaries of classicial and rock music, the electric string quartet will be performing a host of new original material as well as songs from the album CATGUT YA TONGUE. Fourplay have put a contemporary spin on string since storming the charts with its cover of METALLICA'S ENTER SANDMAN. Originally playing rock songs for friends, they bought pick-ups in early 1995 and transformed thremselves into an electric string quartet to win the NSW Uni Band competition.
Celloist PETER HOLLO said the band performed like any other rock group on stage and had inspired many a moshpit at its headline gigs.
'We use a lot of guitar effects in our arrangements, we play with bows normally but we have pick-ups stuck on our bridges to go through a PA system, some tracks have distortion and delays,' Hollo said.
'We also use different playing effects, like playing close to the bridge in a scratchy way to imitate the sound of electric guitars, and a lot of plucking strings, to some extent, to imitate the sound effects of rock music as well as doing our own thing.'
While the group deliver covers of songs by HENDRIX, NIRVANA and VELVET UNDERGROUND with seemingly little effort, playing rock music with the classical instruments is far from simple.
'The main criteria is that we play what we like, when we were trying to do the BEASTIE BOYS SABOTAGE that was quite a challenge to bring off,' Hollo said.
'Tim started scratching away on his viola to emulate the sound of their rap, that was a really intuitive thing that came off well.
'The other way we do things is sit down and jam a lot, trying to analyse the music too much doesn't always work.
'We're just really trying to have fun and play the music we really enjoy, which we would not have the opportunity to do unless we invented our own form of music, it's really quite innocent, we just want to play rock,' Hollo said.
Having established a strong network of fans since independently recording its own album, they are now working on new material.
'We're trying to write stuff that is recognisable as a rock song . . . we're not writing as a classical string quartet but try to have bass lines and riffs,' Hollo said.
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