SYDNEY group Gerling will support Spiderbait at the Newcastle Workers Club on Friday and they have vowed to make it up to their fans for a couple of self-described horrible gigs in the city.
SPOKESPERSON for Sydney electronic/rock group GERLING, one DARREN E SPIELBERG CROSS, is looking forward to Friday night's SPIDERBAIT support at the Newcastle Workers Club.
It will be a chance for the trio to redeem itself, Cross said, after a less-than-memorable gig at SJ's and the Northern Star Hotels last time the band played here.
'We just got really drunk as well before we actually played so it was like a back-to-the-roots tour or something, but yeah we really sucked,' Cross said.
The refreshingly disarming Cross, who plays guitar, synths, voices, samples, tambourine, bugle, recorder and drum machine in Gerling, describes the band's last two gigs as 'both really horrible shows'.
But take that assessment with a grain of salt - Gerling's sound is more likely to be intoxicating to the listener.
Live they are astounding, if a little schizophrenic, alternating a standard rock line-up of keyboards/bass, drums and guitar, with songs that have the three members operating banks of 20-year-old synths, keyboards and computers.
Gerling's charm is also its ability to pull apparently loose arrangements into precision formation.
In electronic mode the trio, wearing their matching backpacks (sponsored by Caribee), jerk back and forth like members of 1970s electronic music pioneers DEVO or KRAFTWERK, two obvious influences.
On the band's full-length album CHILDREN OF TELEPATHIC EXPERIENCES through RELIANT RECORDS Gerling pulls sounds that could be best described as rock soundscapes.
'With each song we tried to get a different kind of mood happening,' Cross said.
'Once we're happy with that mood, and the name, and the kind of imagery it all conjures up, we move onto the next one and try not to do that mood again.'
The band's favourite bands are PAVEMENT, SEBADOH, JON SPENCER, BECK and BOSS HOG, groups at the cutting edge of Lo-Fi experimental rock, sometimes blended with electronic music.
'We just wanted to make a lot of collective songs that still sound like Gerling but using all the different kind of influences that we had and stuff,' Cross said.
'We just wanted to put out a body of work that you could just put on and enjoy yourself and not have to change CDs six songs after the thing.'
TE has three SPIDERBAIT PACKS, containing a double pass, a CD single of Spiderbait's PLASTIC and a Spiderbait T-shirt to give away.
To go in the draw mail an envelope, with your name, address and telephone number on the back, to SPIDERBAIT/GERLING GIVEAWAY, PO Box 615, Newcastle, 2300.
Or enter on-line at www.nnp.com.au TE
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