‘The Eighth Note’ is 8 quick Questions with Wellington Musicians.
A chance for us to catch up with people & see what they’re up to, or introduce you to a new musician/band and their music.
Up next is Grayson from new band Loner and the nobody’s (featuring members of Macho Macho), who have just released debut E.P Bowie’s Dead.
Who are you? Tell us a bit about your music:
We’re loner and the nobody’s. Comprised of Loner, and Milhouse and Cone, comprising the nobody’s. We write songs about being lonely, and a nobody – we guess our genre is somewhere between punk and new-wave. We put ourselves under the umbrella of no-wave but I’m sure some music geek out there will kindly explain to us why we’re not.
What have you been working on lately? Any new tracks or albums on the way?
We’ve been trying to add to our set. We used a bunch of loner’s old songs as well as writing some new ones, but now we’ve run out of the old ones and so we have way more freedom and wanna mess around with way different sounds.
Where is the best place people can follow you & find your music?
Right now all we’ve released music-wise is our EP on Bandcamp. We’re going to release on Spotify when we are more organised and are certain on what we want to do with distribution stuff. Boring really. You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook – just our name.
What were the 3 most influential albums to you growing up?
At least for this project, 1st would probably be Violent Femmes’ self titled debut. One of the greatest projects ever, really builds this world of loneliness and corruption of the mind and all that good stuff. It’s a concept album which is based 100% in real life (in my opinion) and I think that’s really inspired what we do with this project. 2nd would be Weezer’s Pinkerton. It’s one of the first album’s we really bonded over, and the vulnerability Rivers Cuomo lyrically has on that project, as well as that dirty, dirty mix, just too good. Third would probably be Talking Head’s 77 – that album just defines new wave – one of Loner’s favourite records of all time – David Byrne playing the smirking idiot throughout that record is just too funny, and the music’s amazing.
Which other Wellington musician (s) would you most like to work with?
There’s really too many to count. We already collaborate with members of other bands with jams etc – Loner’s even got a project in the early stages with quite the prolific welly musician, a young legend we would say. Cone and Milhouse already have multiple other projects so they’re pretty busy – we’re also really shy so we don’t wanna spill the beans on our welly music scene crushes haha – Harris and Plaines already know we love them anyways – I guess the answer is all of them really haha.
What’s your favourite Wellington venue to play in?
At this point we’ve only played one – so couldn’t answer. There’s something extra special about a dingy Wednesday at Valhalla – there’s something so magical and wholesome bout that place. Same could be said for Sanny’s too – we’re playing a show there tomorrow and we’re pissing ourselves with excitement haha.
In your songwriting or composing (or the band’s songwriting) how do the compositions and songs take shape?
For the stuff we have out now – Loner writes them as slower folk songs, and then the band comes in and fries them in some radioactive waste. Same message but different sound type thing – if Loner had his way he’d probably just write 8 minute long ballads about a rat slowly dying in a sewer – However, we’re getting more collaborative because we want to have our music be a lot more complex structurally and sonically.
Where/when is your next gig?
This Friday @ San Fran. Free gig with Miss Cressida and The Stogies. We’re on at 9:45, come die with us.