Trish speaks with Davide Carbone about the power of dance at the Big Day Out.

By official estimates, FSOM are the best dance band in Australia, but for this talented Melbourne trio, that's no reason to pump out product unnecessarily. The winners of the 1996 ARIA Award best dance release for their debut mini album Chapter 1, Future Sound of Melbourne have not been in a hurry to cash in on their acclaim, though as Davide Carbone admits, the time for a new album has arrived. Speaking for himself and fellow band members Steve Robbins and Josh Abrahams, who also rose to internationa; acclaim for his solo album The satyricon last year, Davide observed that "we haven't recorded any new material for an album yet, but we certainly think it's about time we released one. We haven't made the effort to get one out immediately because we've had so much publicity in the way of live gigs and media attention around the ARIA award that we thought we might as well let the hype die down and then release an album. It's the typical thing to do, a band wins an ARIA award and the first thing they'll do is release an album and stick their ARIA award stickers on it. So we thought we'll let all that hype die down and just do some touring, and obviously our record company [Volition] has a few problems so we're going to wait until March. That's our deadline for recording an album and May is when we'll release it. There's quite a possibility of overkill when you get mentioned a lot so we're just trying to lay low and then do an album and hopefully let the music do the talking, because at the end of the day that's what it's all about".

Davide admitted that a couple of months back the band had decided to lay low in every way including playing live, but with a new year ahead of them the bear is slowly coming out of hibernation. After a quiet period with only a couple of major shows for Pushover and the New Year's Eve party Pleazure, they now return to the Big Day Out for the second year running as national tourists. Thinking back to last year's tour, Davide noted that the highlight was playing in Sydney. "The room was awesome, the Hordern Pavillion, it was packed out with several thousand people in there. It was just a great experience because we just didn't know what to expect, we just went up cold and the crowd seemed really responsive and really enjoyed it, so it was definitely the highlight. The Gold Coast was also interesting, it was the Boiler Room, literally! It was about 45 degrees, so it was incredibly hot, we were just soaking and we only went in there for twenty minutes! Adelaide and Perth weren't so much Boiler Rooms as stages off on the side, so the actual set ups weren't too fantastic, though it was great for us to visit the actual cities".

As for this year, Davide and his FSOM crewmates are hoping to make the last ever Big Day Out something really smart. 'We want to do something slightly different than we did last year, just have a more polished show and introduce a few new things, but basically we'll do the same thing in that it will be an energetic set. We're looking forward to doing it all again and we're very, very happy to be part of the last Big Day Out, particularly because it's going to be our third one in a row". Though he observed that the loss of this major event from the Australian music calendar will probably result in more dance focused events like the forthcoming One festival south of Sydney in February, Davide lamented the loss of the diversity that has been an important feature of the Big Day Out. "It's given a lot of exposure to dance acts like ourselves to a much broader audience than we'd get just from playing at dance events. You get all kinds wandering in from the rock based bands to see a bit of the dance acts which is really important in raising their profile. That kind of music doesn't always get a lot of support in Australia". As one of the official stars of dance music in Australia, Future Sound of Melbourne are very capable ambassadors to the cause.

Future Sound of Melbourne play in the Boiler Room at the Big Day Out on January 27th.

from BEAT MAGAZINE January 1997

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