Their shows may be peppered with fairy lights, dance routines and glittery mesh pants (complete with codpieces), but Aleks and The Ramps are no novelty band. They speak to DARREN LEVIN about tormenting engineers with their new album 'Midnight Believer', bad breath in the studio and sparking up an e-friendship with Animal Collective.

Some things just weren’t made for radio. Like the sight of Ramps guitarist Joe Foley fellating a banjo or a choreographed dance routine in Lord of the Flies-style face paint.

Arriving late to Aleks and The Ramps’ live-to-air set at Triple R’s performance space, I get to experience the Melbourne outfit in wholly different guises. On radio, they sound fragile, serious, and studiously committed to replicating Midnight Believer – their intricate new album – on air. In the studio, it’s a wholly different affair. There are Christmas lights and flashing equipment everywhere, sequined jumpers and the ubiquitous site of Foley’s latest op-shop acquisition: a pair of sparkly black-and-silver mesh pants complete with codpiece. Unsurprisingly, they stole the show at a recent gig in Sydney. “People even wrote about it because they were a performance unto themselves,” laments his sister Janita – the band’s bassist – in an interview conducted in their labels’ warehouse-cum-office a week earlier.

A Ramps live show may be something to behold, but the band are wary of letting their on-stage costumes and goofy personas define them. Assembled in a stuffy, interrogation-style room, four out of the five Ramps – Aleks Bryant, the Foleys and new drummer Jon Tjhia (guitarist Simon Connolly is stuck at work) – speak warily about the novelty band stigma that’s dogged them since their inception in 2005. They also share in-jokes, witty banter and frequently veer off on wild tangents. Like the creative impulses that course through Midnight Believer, their personalities are difficult to rein in. Bryant is the brash and articulate spokesman; Janita Foley is softy-spoken and considered; Tjhia drifts in and out of conversation, but exudes perfect comic timing; and when he’s not playing with his phone or completing a cryptic crossword, Joe Foley – the band’s youngest member – dutifully plays the role of class clown. He’s pretty good at it too.

What’s a Ramps stage show like these days?
Joe: Fun. Well, we have fun.
Aleks: We’ve gone a bit more glam with the costumes. I’ve developed an obsession with fairy lights. I attach them to pretty much anything I can. I just bought a suit – well Janita bought it for me – and I think I’m going to sew lights into it; make a suit of lights. It’ll be difficult hiding the battery pack somewhere.

Does the show change every time?
Aleks: Yeah, I guess. What we wear sometimes changes.

Are you ever worried about the costumes overshadowing the music?
Aleks: Yeah, sometimes. The music is always the number one thing. That’s what we concentrate on getting right. The costumes are sometimes just an afterthought. I’ve seen photos of our shows where I’m like, “What the fuck am I wearing that for? That looks horrible.” Other times, it’s like, “Yeah, whatever. Just fucking put anything on.”

Jon: We tend to get dressed up for most shows, but I really enjoy it when we don’t get dressed up. It’s like a treat. We just look like ourselves and it feels so amazingly real. I guess with other bands you might wear a suit at your album launch, and that’s a bit special [laughs].

Janita: Sometimes it’s more appropriate to be ourselves – we don’t need the costumes.

Like when KISS take off their make-up?
Janita: Yeah [laughs].

Aleks: As much as we try not to take the whole thing too seriously, you don’t want to be known for something other than your music. Like, “Oh, they’re that band that …

Jon: … wear basketball uniforms [laughs].

Aleks: I always have to go, “OK. God. Yes. We wore basketball uniforms for a few shows.” We don’t lose sleep over it or whatever, but we try and keep people on their toes by being unpredictable.

Janita: We had kitten t-shirts for a while as well. I guess we’re just the kind of people who like to put thought into how we appear when we play.

Aleks: David Bowie once said something like, “I don’t see a point getting up on stage in the clothes that you’d wear to the shops.”

Jon: Well, Coco Channel once said, “The best way to keep people on their toes is with a pair of heels.” [Laughs]

Aleks: Boom boom.

In our first interview with you guys, Andy Ramadge asked whether you were Melbourne’s most talented novelty band or its most misread pioneers. Two years on, are you any closer to answering that?
Jon: Definitely misread pioneers [laughs].

Janita: I like “misread pioneers” because I don’t like the “N” word.

Aleks: Dunno [laughs].

Janita: When I asked Andy about that he thought he had solved that quandary within the article, but people still seem to focus on that … It was a rhetorical question in the way he was posing it, but the answer is no. We’re not a novelty band.

With with so many songwriters in the band, I was wondering how you rein things in. Are you the ringleader, Aleks?
Aleks: I guess I lead the rings [laughs]. The process with this one was mainly me recording demos and fucking around. We never recorded demos ever. So I’d have some song-esque type of thing and then bring it to the band. We’d rehearse it and flesh it out and make it better. Joe has an awesome analogy for that.

Joe: Aleks’ brain is like an udder and we’re four tiny teets squeezing out the juice and [engineer/mixer] Casey [Rice] is the farmer.

Janita: He makes it into cheese [laughs]. A fine cheese. Oh, he’s going to hate me.

So what was Casey’s role on the album?
Aleks: He wasn’t a producer or anything. His role was predominantly technical because he’s an engineer. First, we went into the studio and we recorded the drums and bass in a proper fancy studio. He was there to get good sounds. Then we went back and recorded it ourselves in my shed.

Janita: With his microphones [laughs].

Aleks: With his microphones and a little bit of his advice. Then we gave it back to him to mix … He didn’t work with us on the arrangements or the instrumentation. It was like, “Here’s our songs. Here’s our 70 fucking tracks. Deal with it.” [Laughs] He definitely left his mark on it. He’s got a golden touch; an awesome spacey thing going on. He uses reverb not as an effect, but as an illusion of space.

Joe: It all just sounded like it was out of the reach of my arm [stretches forward].

I wish people could see all of these hand gestures.
Joe: I’ve got some pretty gold ones at the moment [laughs].

How different were the mixes to what you had given Casey?
Aleks: [Pauses] It wasn’t really that different. I mean, we gave him mixes and it sounded like a turd because it was all dry. There were a few bits where he would take it in a certain direction, put the focus on a certain instrument. And I’d be like, “It’s not about that. It’s about something else entirely.” So we’d have a huge argument and he’d start crying [laughs].

Janita: It was an overwhelming task. The first few tracks might’ve taken him a while to get the gist of what we – or maybe just Aleks, because he’s the only one that went to the mixing sessions – wanted. He had to make changes just in terms of keeping the backing vocals in check. Stuff like that.

“I always have to go, ‘OK. God. Yes. We wore basketball uniforms for a few shows.’ We don’t lose sleep over it or whatever, but we try and keep people on their toes by being unpredictable.”

Aleks: It was a pretty fucking tough job. He got lumped with a job that was a bit more epic than he thought it would be … So many times he was just like [in an American accent], “What the fuck? There’s another guitar in here? You’re driving me insane.” It was hard for him because he was using a program he never uses [Logic] and there were so many tracks of audio it was just absurd. I told him there’d be a lot of instruments…

Janita: … and you like to double track.

Aleks: Yeah, we double-tracked heaps of shit. And he just had a baby as well so he wasn’t sleeping much. He must be glad it’s over.

Do you think this album would’ve been possible pre digital recording?
Aleks: Not really, but there’s always ways around it … Even with Pet Sounds, it’s a fuckload of tracks but they just bounced it down.

Joe: Same with The Beatles.

Jon: We probably wouldn’t have gone to the effort though if we were living back in that era.

Aleks: We wouldn’t have had the money to.

Joe: We would’ve rehearsed it for a day, gone in and worked our arses off. It would’ve been like, “Alright [clicks fingers]. It’s showtime.”

Aleks: The whole digital thing affects the songwriting … That was the process. Any idea that seemed worthwhile, we just recorded it and then later on we deleted it, or cut it, or pared it back. It’s something you can’t do on analog.

Joe: But being Melbourne’s most misread pioneers we probably would’ve found a way. Maybe just invented digital recording technology? [Laughs]

Aleks: “So how are we going to do this? Actually, I have an idea. Instead of recording to tape we’ll use this thing called a hard drive.”

How long did you spend in the shed?
Aleks: A long time. We recorded in September at Eastern Bloc Studios [in Melbourne] and finished the shed recording this year. But all kinds of shit happened. I was working a job that all of a sudden got really busy and inadvertently turned into a full-time job [as an animator]. There were whole weeks where I wouldn’t do anything. There were microphones just sitting in the shed gathering dust.

Did the process finish for the rest of you at Eastern Bloc?
Joe: Somewhat. Jon came in and did some sounds.

Janita: We had days where Joe would come in and do a portion of his parts: his guitars, his keyboard, his vocals.

Joe: Just sort of knock them over – as you do – and go back to nailing sluts and doing coke. [Laughs]

Aleks: Out of everyone Simon had probably the least to do with it. It’s weird because he’s the real techy guy in the band.

Joe: When we were tracking Simon had 20 ulcers in his mouth.

Aleks: He was the sickest he had ever been in his whole life. It was really tragic because he loves hanging out in studios and recording. We did five days and he missed the first three.

Janita: He tried to come to the third day, and when we got to his house we basically told him, “You need to go back to bed now.”

Aleks: He had his jumper on backwards or something … Even when we were recording he’d be groaning most of the time.

Joe: He couldn’t really brush his teeth because it would sting and he had the worst breath.

Aleks: I thought there was an open sewer. I didn’t realise I was being so insensitive, but there was a construction site next door. I thought they must’ve bust a pipe or something. I was like, “Fuck, those cunts are making so much noise and now they’re stinking up our studio.” [Laughs]

Janita: I actually remember what the question was before we got onto ulcers.

Aleks: What was it?

Janita: Where the process ended for the rest of us, because I actually did more stuff.

Aleks: Well, Janita sings a lot more on this record than the last one. There are a few duets and stuff. There’s one song that we scrapped from the record, which we might put out. It’s a bit of a Lee [Hazlewood] and Nancy [Sinatra] type of song.

The duets are interesting; almost like you’re eavesdropping on a couple’s private conversation.
Aleks: [Laughs] Yep.

Janita: Because the studio’s at our house, it’s pretty to easy to just go out and record our dinner conversation.

For the rest of you, it must be like being in Fleetwood Mac.
Jon: [Laughs] But wasn’t Steve Nicks going out with everybody?

Joe: Yeah, Stevie Nicks was with John McVie and Mick Fleetwood.

Jon: Aleks is no Stevie Nicks. But it’s also like being in Fleetwood Mac because we hear a lot of Fleetwood Mac songs on the road.

Joe: Did they listen to Aleks and The Ramps on the road? [Laughs]

[To Janita and Aleks] Do you write your parts separately?
Janita: I did this time, yeah.

Aleks: Whatever we’re singing we generally write ourselves.

Janita: Aleks tried writing words for me, but this time I just wanted to write.

Aleks: I think we also did a few sessions where we talked about the song.

Janita: Yeah, and we were always like, “What if I’m like this”, and, “What if you’re like this?”

Aleks: We’d go away and do separate writing sessions and see how they worked – sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t. We have a lot of offcuts; a lot of lyrics were written that didn’t get used. I’ve got a handy little stash.

Are they based on real-life domestic moments?
Aleks: The duets not so much [laughs] … My life really isn’t that interesting, so it’s not worth writing about most of the time. How it normally works is a spark of interestingness – something personal or something that we have experienced – usually gets taken off on some sort of weird tangent in the hands of another character.

There seems to be a real emphasis on percussion on this record.
Janita: There are two-and-a-half drummers in the band, because Joe is kind of a drummer.

Joe: I can drum but only if someone else is holding down the beat. It’s like being a coward in a fight. Someone’s holding down the beat and I’m just laying into it. I’m not a violent person but if someone was like, “Hey, I’ve got this guy … free shot?” [Laughs]

Janita: I’d probably spray him with some mace [laughs].

Who played most of the drums on the record?
Everyone: Jon.

Jon: It was kinda half and half I think … Three out of seven real songs.

Aleks: Didn’t we do eight? There’s like eight actual songs.

It’s a real feature of this record though, the percussion.
Joe: I think Jon’s drumming is really inspired. I was listening to the record last night and was listening solely to the drums. There’s a particular song, ‘Walking In The Garden’, it’s just really joyous.

Janita: We get really excited about fills [laughs].

Joe: Just the last verse: boom boom paf, boom paf, boom paf paf paf, diggidy do. [Laughs]

Janita: Yeah, that was a great diggidy do.

Aleks: I was reading somewhere that when you listen to music, there’s certain types of people that listen to certain things. Some people lock in with the percussive element more. They can listen to their favourite song and never know any of the words. That’s probably me. Some people listen to the human voice a lot more.

Joe: It’s like when you’re at gigs and there’s a guy with an acoustic guitar and there’s an underlying beat. Some people are just like this [headbangs to an imaginary beat]. It’s like, “What are you doing?”

Jon: “Is there an invisible iPod?” [Laughs]

Well, I guess the banjo is a percussive instrument as well.
It depends how you play it: junk da junk or widdly widdly. But I’m really into drum sounds. It’s almost obsessive. If the drums sound good and if they’re played well and it’s all interesting, you can have a badly recorded guitar or something. It doesn’t matter to me – to an extent.

Were you guys listening to a lot of Jim O’Rourke by any chance?
Aleks: [Laughs] Insignificance and Eureka are like my favourite records ever.

Joe: I’ll listen to Insignificance until the day I die.

Aleks: We made this mix CD for Casey of what we wanted the drums to sound like on certain songs and one of the songs was … ‘Get A Room’. That snare sound. We didn’t actually end up capturing it, but I really like Jim O’Rourke a lot … He’s fucking rad. We almost met him, sort of, maybe, in Japan. It’s a long story. I’ve been in email contact with one of the guys in Animal Collective. We were in Tokyo when they were playing there. We couldn’t get tickets so I emailed him … and he put us – myself, Janita and Reuben [Stanton] from Because of Ghosts – on the door.

Janita: They clearly don’t know many people in Tokyo. There were four people on the door: Reuben, us and Jim O’Rourke [laughs].

Aleks: We didn’t see him there, but I really don’t like meeting famous people that I admire. I met Lee Ranaldo once and it was horrible … I was 17 or something. You can’t really just go up and talk to someone just because you like their music.

Joe: [In a hippy voice] “I feel like I know you, man.”

Aleks: So if we saw Jim O’Rourke, I’d feel like I’d have to talk to him, but I don’t know why I’d be talking to him. And he’s kinda got a reputation for being a misanthrope. He’d probably just be like, “Piss off … Come back when you’re somebody.”

Where does the Animal Collective connection come from?
Aleks: When they toured here last time, they saw us play by some weird coincidence … I looked at their tour schedule and saw that they had all these nights off, so I sent them an email asking them to come to our show. I don’t think they came because of our email, but they were at the show coincidentally anyway. And then Brian [Weitz, aka Geologist] sent me an email saying he watched us play.

Janita: He said, “Your bass player is totally awesome!” [Laughs] Because of my tasteful use of the distortion pedal.

Moving on, I just wanted to talk about Lily Coates’ album artwork. Did you give her a brief?
Aleks: It’s pretty much her own invention. I’ve known her for a while. I went to film school with her.

Joe: And you play in a band together.

Aleks: Oh, yeah. Three of us play in a band with her called Marcel and The Blow Waves. It’s a ’60s girl group.

Joe: That’s not going to help our relationship.

Aleks: Well, that band has unofficially broken up. Pretty Much. Kind of. Maybe. Anyway, Lily is ridiculously talented and she’s an awesome singer and film-maker. She’s one of those people that’s really disorganised as well, so she rarely gets an opportunity to shine.

Janita: Basically, we trusted her great mind to come up with something good that’d suit the music.

Aleks: She came up with the idea before she even heard the album.

Janita: Wasn’t the idea originally for a film clip with us and children with lasers coming out of their eyes?

Aleks: She’s got this whole cute and dark thing [going on], which is like a cliche now – a teddy bear with a gun, or whatever – but she’s a bit more subtle. Hers is a bit more morose and twisted

Janita: It’s really elegant as well, because she’s a pretty elegant lady. Everything in the cover art is hand drawn.

I guess the whole cute/dark thing is central to the band’s aesthetic.
Aleks: Yeah, we’re kinda fantastical and kinda cute; kinda twisted and kinda morose.

Janita: Someone who reviewed us in Sydney said that we were quaint and dangerous. I like that.

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Midnight Believer is out through Stomp. Tour dates here.