The Valentinos

The Valentinos live in Australia where it seems they party just a bit too hard.  And they're aching to come to the States.


Chief Magazine: I heard somewhere that you guys like to embrace all types of music, but you seem to be grouped in with the whole “new wave” movement that’s happening at the moment.

NIK: In some ways it actually helped in the beginning, it helped because, well I hate saying this, but that was what was cool. I think also a lot of people tended to label bands with that “new wave” thing just because they like to write rock songs with “groove”, and dancey rhythms or whatever. I don’t think we would be what you’d call classic “new wave”. Its indie music but also dance based.

PAT: Also for the fact that, a year ago if you were a band that had any sort of synthesizer or keyboard in it you were a “new wave” band.

Well I’ve always hated the whole “new wave” label – it always seemed a little bit broad.

Nik: Yeah bands can be either way more techno or way more punk and they will still be put under the whole “new wave” umbrella.

Seeing as it’s such a shit name, if you guys could have fun with the name of your genre, what would you call yourselves?

Nik: What did we used to call ourselves in Germany?

Pat: Life metal.

Nik: Yeah, life metal or minimal junk-core [laughs]…New wave death metal!

Where did you guys all meet? Did you know each other before the band started, or did you start recruiting people after a couple of people were together?

Nik: Most of us knew each other before the band started. Well Pat, Andrew and I all went to school together.

Pat: Andrew and I are brothers. Nik and I have known each other since we were like eight so…

How is that? Playing with guys that you’ve known forever, rather than people that you’ve just met?

Nik: Hate it!  Nah, I’ve always felt like there has been two parts of our lives. The part before the band and everything since the bands started, so you know we are experiencing new things together. Not the same old garbage I guess…but it is actually the same old garbage…

Pat: And then there’s Johno who we met about a year ago, and well we just knew him from around Sydney. And we liked his vibe so we asked him to join the band...

What would was your best show/worst show?

Nik: In my opinion our best show was probably at Homebake [Australian music festival], late last year, it was our first show in front of like those types of crowds. That was all packed and it was awesome, but the 24 hours before the gig were pretty memorable as well. We were up on the gold coast playing at one of the worst festivals ever, possibly one of our worst gigs ever as well. It was called the Round and Round Festival or something.

Pat: It won’t be coming back. They should’ve called it the Lose More Money Than You Make Festival… poor guys.

Nik: We’d been out all night. We had, had to get a plane the next morning to get back in time for Homebake. So we go out, everyone gets home except for our guitarist Andrew and at like 9:30 in the morning no one still knows where he is… apparently he lost his phone that night.

Pat: No, I saw him he dropped it and it exploded on the dance floor and he couldn’t find the parts. So yeah he got lost and no one knew where he was. We ended up missing our first flight, and our second flight got delayed an hour. We got to Homebake 45 minutes before we were supposed to go on. Meanwhile, our drummer had gotten there earlier ’cause he had to play a gig that morning and he was freaking out.

Nik: Oh no, before we got there we actually went to a café as well, thinking we had more time, that shit always happens.

Did you have that second where you we’re like, “Hang on wait, we’re supposed to be at Homebake!”

Nik: Yeah we freaked out. It’s all Andrew’s fault! I think we’ve missed as many flights as we’ve caught.

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So are you guys doing what you’ve always wanted to do? There are no tragic computer programmer dreams being squashed here?

Nik: Pat actually does have computer programmer dreams that he’s living out simultaneously.

Pat: I’m doing graphic design stuff which I was doing before, and kind of juggling them both. But it’s getting a bit harder. But I don’t think that playing in a band is anything that you could really plan for. If you plan for that you get really desperate.

Nik: Jaded and shit.

Pat: You end up being one of those tragic musicians who never quite makes it. So yeah we never planned it, we just started a band and then it happened.

When was that point where you were just like, “Shit yeah, we don’t have to hold on to any of those crappy side jobs we can just do this?”

Nik: That point hasn’t come yet [laughs]. Yeah I don’t know, it’s happened quickly but it’s all happened pretty steadily so there wasn’t one point where we were like, “Yes! A one million dollar check!”

Pat: Yeah, it might happen like that for some bands but it hasn’t happened like that for us.

Speaking of dodgy side jobs are there any funny jobs that you guys have had to take on to pay the rent?

Pat: There’s always welfare.

Nik: What like undertaker or something?

Pat: I used to work on a removalist truck. [Laughs] That was a highlight.

Nik: I was a sex worker in Bangkok for six months.

Pat: Mad money, bro.

Nik: Some good money.

What was your sex worker name?

Nik: Oh man… “Hot Lips” is all I have. [Laughs]

Kim from The Presets [fellow Aussie band] produced your first EP. Were you planning to rehire him for the second one?

Nik: Nah, we tried, we would have had him back but he’s super busy. We really enjoyed working with him, and we really wanted him to do it again, he really wanted to do it again but it just couldn’t happen.

Who produced your second EP?

Nik: Littlemore and Peter Maise.

Are you were happy with the new direction?

Nik: We were happy with the direction the songwriting went in definitely, but production-wise we learnt a few things. We did it a lot less live. We learnt that we liked it done the way that we did it with Kim.

What’s happening with your DJ side-project, Knife Machine, Pat?

Pat: Well it’s just the same old story when most bands sort of DJ on the side I guess. I was just doing DJ sets for the band and at indie nights, I was just inadvertently playing more techno and then when Johno, who’s a DJ as well, joined the band we just kind of joined our forces and we played together. After a while we we’re like fuck we don’t want to play indie nights anymore ‘cause we were playing techno and everyone was just staring at us. So we just went in this other direction with Knife Machine. Pretty much just techno stuff and we’ve done some remixes and everything. It’s kind of taken on our own little bit of life, but just as an offshoot of the band. The band is where our focus is. We might even take a break from Knife Machine when we’re doing our album. But you know, how fucking hard is it to go out and play for and hour and make some good money. [Laughs]

Why did Knife Machine start? Did you always enjoy DJ’ing and felt you couldn’t really incorporate your techno sound into The Valentinos?

Pat: It was always a part of The Valentinos sound. We listen to a lot of electronic music. Knife Machine is a little more techno than our sound, but it’s not like oh this is something that I need to get out that I’m not getting out in The Valentinos, you know, it’s just something different.

Nik: Who knows the album could be all techno.

Pat: Could be.

Any underground talent that people should be listening to?

Nik: I think that the best upcoming talent at the moment is probably bands that we have played with about a year ago now and are just starting to flourish. Probably The Damned Arms, Teenagers in Tokyo who are just about to bring out their EP and the Midnight Juggernauts, Expatriate.


Favorite place you've played?

Nik: The J Pop Café in Japan, in Tokyo. That was the most amazing gig ever. It’s this crazy place on top of a building, a glass dome, like a circular room with TV’s all around. And it was a dress up night; it was in the middle of Tokyo, in the crazy area. Tokyo is, well, crazy, but this is the craziest area in Tokyo, in Shibuya.

Any plans to travel overseas any time soon?

Nik: We have a release coming out soon with [French label] Kitsune. So we have good intentions of going to Paris soon. I’d love to go to New York as part of a tour.

Nik: Yeah we’d love to go over there, definitely. So if anyone over there wants to bring out The Valentinos then they’re welcome. [Laughs]

Pat: It only takes, like, a million dollars to take a band from Australia out!

Nik: Oh well, next time we go to Europe we’ll have to go to New York as well!

Best thing to do after a gig? Best rockstar stories?

Pat: Well those stories just end up with you losing equipment. So like you play your show, you just get wasted and then you lose equipment, so they’re good stories but they’re bad stories as well. Dude that happens every time we go somewhere, we play, get wasted someone loses the drums, someone disappears and we miss flights, same old garbage.

Website

www.myspace.com/thevalentinos

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