TIM SCOTT talks to guitarist Matt Kennedy from Brisbane trio Kitchen’s Floor about the origins of their shambolic sound, their lyrical inspirations and what it’s like to be described as a “terrifying Beat Happening” by UK rock crit Everett True.

You won’t find a better descriptor of Kitchen Floor’s music than on ‘Deadshits’, a song from their debut LP Loneliness is a Dirty Mattress. Its boozy, nonsensical line, “Find her soul in the drunken wreck of deadshits”, aptly sums up the Brisbane trio’s brand of shambolic, no-frills punk that’s almost autistic in its repetitive riffs and melodies. Lo-fi guitar, bass and drums barely hold up songs about self-loathing, drunken paranoia and clammy insecurities.

Guitarist Matt Kennedy goes from a wail as if someone has just stabbed him in the thigh, to a monotonic drone that has him sounding so bored he could stab his own thigh. Combined with Julia Norris’ slurred OxyContin-fuelled floor tom beats and the crud-rock bass lines of Glen Schenau, it all fits together into one beautiful and ugly mess.

‘Deadshits’. Great expression. Great song.
The title of that song is directed at me more than anything else. I wrote it one night when I was drunk alone in my room and probably had some sort of self-loathing thing going on. The lyrics don't make any direct sense but I think it's about knowing you're fucking your life up but doing nothing to improve it, and instead you take that frustration out on the people around you.

Your album art has been similar both on the EP and LP. That similarity is plain black bleakness.
I've always liked the idea of keeping the art simple because too many times I've associated the music of bands with their artwork, which isn't always a good thing if the art is crap. If people are going to associate any image or art with our music it might as well be black nothingness.

How would/do you describe your sound?
Short and simple downer pop music.

Of the Everett True review I read, he pretty much likens to you as a brutal Beat Happening.
That's a pretty cool thing to hear from him. We're also a lot uglier, dumber and more Australian than them too. Beat Happening are awesome.

Do you see Everett around Brisbane much?
I see him around a bit, he's pretty awesome. He's been fronting The Deadnotes for the last few months and we've played with them a few times. They’re a really good band. He could've easily just moved here and become a recluse but I like how he's actively embraced Brisbane and the music scene here.

There is no drum stool for Julia? That can’t be too great for her posture.
You're right, it's not good for posture but we don't practice very often so it's not like she does it every day. It's just neat having a Moe Tucker vibe in the band and I believe it allows her to hit harder.

“About 90 percent of every magazine/website/radio station I send our stuff out too gets no response. I'll save the postage costs and quietly enjoy the fact that YouTube exists.”

You have a music video for ‘Left’ which I have yet to see on Video Hits. Have they gotten back to you?
About 90 percent of every magazine/website/radio station I send our stuff out too gets no response. I'll save the postage costs and quietly enjoy the fact that YouTube exists. I've never been on TV before though so hopefully someday, someday.

What has become of Glen’s blog, Permanent Dirt? Has the activity moved onto to somewhere else?
The blog died earlier this year from a soup accident. Glen always recorded everything he put up on Permanent Dirt with an iRiver mp3 player. One day he bought some takeaway soup and put it in his bag and as he was walking along he was unaware the soup had spilt in his bag, destroying his iRiver and ending his promising bootlegging career. It was a really good blog that hopefully will be continued in the future. I've started my own blog in the last few months called Eternal Soundcheck. It's very similar to Permanent Dirt but focuses on video footage rather than audio.

Do you play many bar or pub venues? Judging by the photos I've seen, house parties and warehouse spaces seem to be the norm.
There are only so many bars and pubs to play in Brisbane that after a while you realise that playing at most of them is a shit waste of time. To fight the boredom of that, we set up and play a lot of our own shows in houses, warehouses, squats, parks etc. because that way it's on our own terms and it keeps things exciting and fresh. The problem with that is you're usually playing to the same 30 people every time so the occasional venue show with a more general audience can be OK, but we don't get asked to play those places very often anyway. If we go interstate we enjoy playing anywhere, pubs included, just because it's somewhere new.

What is the reaction to you in the Brisbane music scene?
We get a lot of support from a very small community of other like-minded bands, artists, friends and weirdos. Outside of that we are pretty much ignored or overlooked. Brisbane has a reputation for championing mediocrity in music which can be frustrating when you're missing out on decent support slots to boring middle-of-the-road bands. Reading the street press or listening to 4ZZZ, our local radio station, can also be very depressing. In my opinion, the best band in Brisbane right now is Blank Realm and the best thing to read is the Negative Guest List fanzine.

Back in the day wasn’t your former band French Horns considered shit-stirrers in the Brisbane scene?
French Horns was a pretty harmless band. At the time, around 2004/05, Brisbane live music was stagnant and we just came from nowhere and put on this crazy live show that was a bit different to anything else in Brisbane then –some people liked it and some didn't. We never took French Horns that seriously, it was a band we did for fun and we broke up when it stopped being fun.

How did you hook up with [Sydney label] R.I.P. Society? They seem to be one of the more interesting indie labels in Australia right now.
Nic Warnock who runs it is just an awesome guy and I asked if he'd be interested in releasing the album and he agreed even before he heard it. He used to go to high school in Cairns with my housemate Andrew, who plays in Brisbane's legendary Cured Pink Radio. I definitely feel privileged for our album to come out on R.I.P. Society, it's a great label.

You’re playing in Melbourne this weekend [at the Empress on November 6 with Wasted Truth and Acid Casualty, and at El Joyero with Ghosts of Television and Super Star]. Do you enjoy playing there and in Sydney?
We always enjoy it, if we don't it's usually because we've run out of money or are dealing with brutal hangovers. When we played Sydney in August the crowds were the best we've ever had, totally enthusiastic and great. Melbourne is like a giant playground for fucked up 20-somethings, it's really nice. Some of our favourite bands are from there like Super Star, Acid Casualty, Fabulous Diamonds, Chrome Dome, etc. It's always a downer when we have to leave.

My favourite song on the CD is ‘Back Home’. I like the simple tambourine and dual vocals. Are the characters based on real people or events?
The hitchhiker bit is a reference to something that happened to a girl in America in the ’70s. I remember reading about it in the library at high school and there was a really brutal picture that went with it. Naturally I thought, “Whoa that's fucked up!” The rest is all fictitious. I just wanted to write a country death song. It's also a song that pre-dates Kitchen's Floor. I wrote it about five years ago when I was 18 and always thought of it as a joke song.

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