Their live shows are a whirl of colourful costumes and schizophrenic samples sourced from around the world, but as DOUG WALLEN discovers there’s a method to Curse ov Dialect’s unique brand of madness. Photo by KARL SCULLIN.

Who else could possibly sound like Curse ov Dialect? The inveterate Melbourne five-piece raps and sings over a morphing collage of arcane samples and animated beats, fluently deconstructing race and other composites of identity. Ostensibly it’s hip-hop, and when the band formed as a trio in 1994, there wasn’t the genre-defying invention we hear today. But along the way, MCs Raceless and Vulk Makedonski and DJ/producer Paso Bionic picked up the equally quirky vocalists Aturungia and August 2nd, leaving Earth’s atmosphere behind them. In 2003, their second album Lost In The Real Sky saw international release by the cult US label Mush, giving the band the wider exposure it properly deserved. Three years later, Mush issued the follow-up Wooden Tongues worldwide, including in Australia.

Now on the roster of Melbourne’s discerning Mistletone label, domestically, Curse ov Dialect have returned with Crisis Tales, an hour-long journey into their bizarre world. Words don’t do justice to its mass or oddness, and yet it’s a damn fun ride too. Blistering tracks such as ‘Identity’ and ‘Media Moguls’ are affirming rather than preachy, while the 11-minute ‘Colossus’ succeeds despite more than two dozen guest rappers spitting in different languages. Not something you’d throw on as background music, the album is a fearless, challenging achievement.

Nestled back home after recent jaunts to Japan and Europe, Raceless sat down at a cafe on Brunswick Street in Melbourne to reflect on how such a unique act has survived and thrived in Australia for 15 years.

Do you describe Curse ov Dialect as hip-hop?
We come from the sort of Public Enemy school of hip-hop, like the late ’80s/early ’90s layering of lots of sounds and the political element, except taking it further. What I see on the TV, I don’t consider that hip-hop anymore. That’s my own personal definition. I think the sociopolitical, meaningful hip-hop is actually the real hip-hop. The other stuff is actually garbage and sexist, racist, homophobic shit. Our stuff, I’d call it fundamentally hip-hop, I guess. Or maybe post-hip-hop.

Yeah, I wasn’t sure how you felt about “post-hip-hop”.
Well, Mush Records made us put that on our first record [for them]. I’m equally influenced by Harry Partch as I am by Rakim, or [Karlheinz] Stockhausen or Tom Waits. I like a lot of industrial music and world folk as well. Let’s just call it post hip-hop for now.

The group is a real anomaly, but I was wondering if you have a circle of kindred spirits.
Well, when we toured overseas, we found lots of people in Europe and Japan that were totally on our level. But in Australia, no. There are a few bands that we’re working with, like Professional Savage, Ultraviolet MC, Hugo, Pataphysics. There’s a few Melbourne acts that are coming out. There’s a lot of groups doing alternative hip-hop. To be honest, we’ve got our own style. We started off doing normal hip-hop. In the old days, we were B-boys and graffiti artists and all that. So we came from that. As a lot of hip-hop got quite negative, we just started going off on our own tangent. And now we’ve gone so far onto our own tangent that it’s like a different genre.

How do you feel about the wave of Aussie hip-hop in recent years?
I call it colonial hip-hop. A lot of ethnic people might see as it as a representation of their oppressor, in a sense. Sometimes it’s good if it’s done positively. But a lot of it is so colloquial that it will never leave Australia. Our stuff is more global, even though we still rap in our accents. It’s not exactly ocker accents. And we sing as well. I applaud anything that’s positive, but I don’t align myself with it. I align myself more with the electronic and indie acts, I think, because they seem to be our fan base.

That’s the kind of music Mush puts out, and they brought Curse ov Dialect to the States.
Yeah. When we first went there, it was funny playing with a lot of hip-hop artists. We wear costumes on stage, and that made it even weirder for people to deal with.

But in the States there are more acts somewhat similar to what you do, like the Anticon roster. Do you identify with that stuff?
Yeah, I think we do a bit more. But a lot of people that are doing stuff like us aren’t necessarily political. We are political, and surreal. I like a lot of surrealistic art, and that inspires me to write lyrics as much as Chuck D.

With two singers, two MCs, and a DJ, how do you go about assembling a song?
Well, everyone produces the tracks together.

That must be chaotic.
It is. That’s why it turns out chaotic. But some people put more into one track, and some put more in other tracks. A lot of us are sample gatherers, and we all want to get our idea into the song. Because it’s a hip-hop track, you can probably fit it all in. You can just have a different section for something and mix into the track somehow and make it work. So it becomes an eclectic mix within every single song.

Have you had those five set roles since the early days?
In the beginning, in 1994, it was only two MCs and a DJ. We were 17 or 18. But it was normal back then. It was still political, but it was more straight. All of us in the band are what we would call outcasts of our hip-hop youth. That’s our initial inspiration, but then we’ve just progressed. Then we added two more singer types.

How did you all meet?
The DJ and I just met through a friend. We’d [hear each other] on the hip-hop shows on Triple R and PBS, doing shout-outs. Then you’d actually meet them in person at a gig.

“I think the sociopolitical, meaningful hip-hop is actually the real hip-hop. The other stuff is actually garbage and sexist, racist, homophobic shit.”

What was the effect of Mush releasing Lost In The Real Sky overseas?
It made us wanna keep going. Before that, we were just local artists in Melbourne. When we found out an American label wanted to release it, it baffled us. We heard the Anticon stuff and thought there were people who were similar to us. We sent it to them and then that network ended up giving us a deal. From that, it hyped us to go further. And then we got a lot of fan mail from Europe and America. Then we toured, and our fan base overseas has been building. We had the support, and it started involving into a cult band, on a certain scale.

What’s it like when you tour overseas?
In Europe, because we’ve been there three times, the fan base has gotten bigger and bigger. Playing in Paris [recently] we did a really massive gig. Japan wasn’t as big, because it’s only the second time we’ve been there. Performing in Australian accents in France is weird. [Laughs] They think you might be American. [But] we act strange on stage and a lot of French people seem to relate to that.

There’s a real theatrical element to your live show.
Yeah, it’s fun to get dressed up in our traditional costumes of different cultures and just rap over lots of different sounds and present it in a different way.

Most hip-hop acts feel canned live, but you pull off such complexity and physicality.
Even in the early days, I used to wear a clown wig. I had a flat top and stuff. We started getting dressed up, and when our music changed and we started sampling more world folk music, we started researching our own backgrounds [as a source for the costumes]. It started off as more of a fun thing, and then it evolved into something symbolic.

Was race always such a big part of what you tackled?
Lyrically? Yeah.

And you’re all from different backgrounds?
Yeah, but that isn’t necessarily why we do it. That’s just coincidental that we happen to be from different cultures. I think because the initial inspiration for Curse ov Dialect was talking about serious issues, that’s how it evolved. But then it got into other issues as we got more open-minded as people. We tackled other issues. There’s always that hardcore anti-racism, but then there’s other tracks where it’s anti-materialism and anti-sexism and anti-homophobia. But then it’s also surreal and creative lyrics.

That’s what makes it so interesting. You’re not just lining these things up and decrying them. You’re actually getting into the whys of it.
I studied sociology just so I could write [better] lyrics.

You guys often dissect the identities people create for themselves.
Yeah, and the idea of being a patriot or whatever. We might be representing our cultures but it’s more embracing the idea of anti-homogenisation. You know when you’re traveling and you see the unique things in each city? You want to keep the uniqueness. You want to keep the cultural elements there so it’s not forgotten and just eaten away by McDonald’s. I’ve always been interested in diverse experiences, whatever they may be. Cultural and sub-cultural. Growing up in Melbourne is a perfect example of that cross-cultural development. Our music is the soundtrack to that environment, in a sense. All the influences coming in.

I’m curious about the samples you use. A lot of it sounds like world music, which is a great idea because people will never recognise the sources. There are these abstract, diverse elements, but they inform everything you’re talking about thematically.
That’s why, a lot of the time, we’ve made the beats first and written the lyrics after. There’s a track on the record called ‘Honesty In Monasteries’ where we used Turkish psychedelic, Cambodian funk and French musique concrete.

How do you find all this stuff?
I’m just an audiophile. We all just look.

Does touring overseas help you scour little shops in random countries?
Yeah. I’m looking for the [country’s] folk music most of the time, or the psych. Usually the psych stuff from the ’60s, because it’s got folk instruments in it. It’s still got that bounce that hip-hop music has, but it’s got folk in there. In Japan I bought heaps of Shinto music. I got some really awesome Ainu music. They’re the indigenous people of Japan. It was more a quest for … when I heard Gravediggaz and Wu-Tang in the early stages, they were using a lot of classical. That just clicked in my mind. I just thought, what the hell can’t I use? They opened the door to getting away from James Brown and funk [breaks]. I like that stuff, but people are still doing it now. It’s like, why? But we still keep the beats hip-hop, and we still have scratching. Those things make it have that foundation, so it doesn’t sound like some cheesy world music with a techno beat.

The track ‘Colossus’ on Crisis Tales brings in guest MCs from all over the world, rapping in different languages.
Putting it together was fun. We met [those] people on tour. A lot of it was done through the mail. Underneath every single vocalist is a different sample, so it doesn’t get boring. It keeps changing. And then at the end it’s got that “Too Much Posse” scratch [from Public Enemy], which is perfect. It was fun making that, and I wanted to make a point of showing that it’s universal. That doesn’t mean I have to understand what’s being said. I know the vibe’s right. We gave them all a theme though. The theme is change and what you wanted changed in your personal life or globally. My favourite is the Indonesian girl [Sista Nova] towards the end. There’s some indigenous [Australian] rappers too. There’s quite a lot of people on there.

Despite so many samples and political ideas, the album is quite catchy. How do you balance such density with that bouncy element you mentioned earlier?
To be completely honest, we just made it and hoped for the best. We didn’t plan on doing anything poppy or non-poppy.

Did it take a long time to come together?
It usually takes a while. Everyone’s doing different things and everyone’s busy. It’s a lot of people to get together at one time. It did take about two years to finish. It could have been quicker, but things happen. When you’re our age, it’s not the same as being 18 and having all the time in the world.

+

Crisis Tales is out now through Mistletone. Launch dates here.