Snout

"It got kind of nutty for a while there," says bassist Ross McLennan of the band's hectic touring schedule, which came to a temporary end earlier this year. "It was supposed to have finished up around the end of the Big Day Out, but it kept going for another month. We just got all these added shows and we just started freaking out about playing live. And Greg (Ng, Snout's guitarist) and I have got really bad skin disorders from stress - it's really freaky and it's kind of got worse from being home, so I think maybe we've turned into some terrible touring monster." 

'Hey Hey Hey' is classic Snout: chunky bass, thumpin' drums and guitar explosions. But if the single is a skewed pop song of the kind we've come to expect from this band, the B-sides hold some pleasant surprises. Mind you, the idea of Snout bringing in a turntable and sampler is not such a foreign one. 

"It's something that we've always had a fascination with because it's such a rhythmic thing," McLennan says. "It's very moving and if you're having a bit of a dance it's the thing that really gets your feet shuffling. So it's a pretty natural thing for us to do - apart from the fact that there's only three of us and so to do it, one person has to stop doing something else. So live it's probably a bit impossible at the moment." 

Not that it would be at all out of place in Snout's extended live jams. "Well, it's pretty similar to what we're doing there," McLennan says. "Greg's at the stage where he's a bit precious about his turntable because it's still really new and it's worth a lot of money, so I don't think he'd want to take it on the road. But we had a bit of a go at it on the recording, though. I've kind of been doing it for a while, though. I started out doing it on an abstract thing, that Meuscram thing I did with Link (Meanie). It's gradually gotten more archetypal as it's gone along - less random and more rhythmic and Greg's got the right equipment to do it and make it sort of sound like the way it's done with hip-hop." 

The forthcoming Circle High And Wide was recorded during Snout's break from touring this year, and is currently at the mixing stage. "It's just a step forward, a logical progression," McLennan says of the album. "The arrangements are very nutted out on a lot of the newer stuff. Not that they weren't on The New Pop Dialogue, but I was thinking about it from the word go (this time), just making sure that everything does lock together, so that when we started jamming on it together, we started from a comfortable point to move on from and experiment with. I guess I've kind of been a bit lazy on some of the previous albums." 

In the past, Snout's material has always changed somewhat when it's transferred to a live situation. "And these will, too," McLennan says. "There's no doubt about that because of the overdub factor. And some of these weren't even played live before we recorded them so they're bound to change a little bit because we don't have a keyboard player, we don't have this, we don't have that; although we've tended to use those things pretty subtly. Blended rather than upfront." 

On Circle High And Wide, you'll find a guitar band who don't mind experimenting with a few not-so-regular sounds and structures. "There's probably going to be a few strings," McLennan says. "We've always just kind of added these things in. They've always been there to sweeten the pot, rather than be overblown. I prefer the idea that we can easily get away with doing all of the songs as a three-piece. In our instance, we're generally doubling guitar lines or bass lines - it's more like ear candy than a part in itself. Like, there'll be Hammond organ sitting below a descending bass line. 

"It's the kind of experimentation that when we start playing live, at volume - I don't know how other people's brains work, but I tend to conceptualise - there's so much harmonic activity going on that I can hear the organ lines because it's the same as the bass line anyway. I remember seeing a Screaming Tribesmen gig years and years ago and I could hear all these harmonies and stuff that no-one was doing... but then again, I hear voices in my head every day." 

Snout play The Chelsea this Friday, October 17, with Dumpster and St Jude, and the 4ZZZ Market Day, Albert Park, this Saturday, October 18.