Australia’s disaffected punk underground is getting a gleeful makeover thanks to groups like Brisbane’s Blank Realm. Words by SHAUN PRESCOTT. Photos by DIMITY KASZ.

After an aborted attempt to interview Brisbane’s Blank Realm at the This Is Not Art festival in Newcastle, we manage to meet up after the R.I.P Society Success Summit, a mini-festival held at the Annandale Hotel on the first Sunday of October.

Matt Kennedy (Kitchen’s Floor, Eternal Soundcheck) is videotaping the interview for a forthcoming documentary on the band, so after the dismissal of punters from the Annandale (five minutes after headliners ZOND wrap up their set) we’re forced into an open air storage area behind a series of dilapidated town houses next door to the venue, attracted by the harsh flood lights in the area. The band attract an entourage, including Jack Mannix and Harriet Hudson of Circle Pit, who offer their services in the form of an a capella variety-show introduction to the interview. Nic Warnock of R.I.P Society and Brendan Annesley of Brisbane fanzine Negative Guest List observe the interview from the periphery, ever ready with quips and interjections. Despite the distraction and having just locked their keys in a rental car, the members of Blank Realm – siblings Luke, Daniel and Sarah Spencer, and Luke Walsh – are relaxed and friendly, and always laughing.

The group formed in 2004, though Free Time, their first widely heard CD-R, was released in 2007 on the Kyogle-based Music Your Mind Will Love You label. The group have since released albums on labels such as Digitalis, Breakdance the Dawn, Not Not Fun and Albert’s Basement, as well as independently distributed missives. Blank Realm has evolved from a brooding, free form aesthetic into a more streamlined and song-oriented affair. While they once sat comfortably next to Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood or Castings, they now sound more at home playing side-by-side with Royal Headache or Boomgates, as they did tonight. This stylistic shift reflects a wider philosophical movement in Australian underground punk music: a dismissal of the predominantly disaffected and angry music that prevailed in the last decade, in favour of something gleeful and celebratory. In two words: party music.

Blank Realm now sounds dramatically different from what it did in the group’s early days. What kind of headspace were you in when you formed the group in 2007?
Sarah Spencer: We actually formed in 2004, but no one knew we existed. I guess we always wanted to play music, it’s always been our passion, but it took us a while to evolve into something that could conceivably be enjoyed by other people.

Daniel Spencer: It was very much a living room recording project when we started. We got asked to play a show by Joel Stern [Sky Needle, Abject Leader], and when we played the show we got hooked on playing live, playing for people and not just ourselves.
Luke Walsh: I think when we were playing in the lounge room it was more cerebral. We were just exploring what we could do, and how we could work our sounds together. At first it was a lot more abstract and exploratory.

Sarah: I think we were trying to sound like Amon Duul and Can or something. [Laughs]

Daniel: We were also learning how to play instruments – these two [Sarah and Luke Spencer] had played instruments before but Luke [Walsh] and I hadn’t. I think we’re OK at playing now, which is good.

Luke Walsh: We believed in what it was as well, even though it was totally different to what we’re doing now.

Daniel: It kinda sounds the same way to me.

Sarah: Yeah, but actualised.

In a recent interview in Mountain Fold, one of the members of Royal Headache were talking about how that group is a reaction against some of the darker, more free form stuff that was happening in Sydney at the time. With Blank Realm, the early material had that brooding sensibility, whereas nowadays you fit well with the current pop-oriented groups. Was there an ethical or philosophical evolution on your part, or was it a natural formal evolution?
Luke Spencer: I remember Daniel once jokingly asked what kind of music we were going to make now that John Howard isn’t in government anymore. And it coincided with the transformation of the band into more of a party band.

Sarah: I think it was a conscious decision to lighten up a bit, and it was also who we were rolling with at the time. Around Free Time we were hanging out a lot with 6Majik9, the Music Your Mind Will Love You guys, and that was the scene we were in and we were heavily influenced by them in a collaborative sense. We recorded with them, we played with them every week, and I think that was a big part of the sound of that time. We always tend to evaluate things, and say we need to keep it moving, or mix it up a bit for our own sake, otherwise we’ll get really bored with what we’re playing. We’ve always loved music, and the bands we’ve loved the most are the ones who have evolved throughout their lifetime.

Daniel: We’ll probably be doing this when we’re 60 and sounding completely different, whether anyone cares or not.

Sarah: We’ll finally be a folk band.

Daniel: We want to sound like the Fairport Convention [Laughs].

When Blank Realm began did you plan that you would keep moving forward into different directions?
Daniel: No, I don’t think we thought that far ahead when we started. It was just to amuse ourselves. We were like, “We should have a band.” That’s as far as it went…

Sarah: ... then we thought “we need some instruments”. Daniel: We had an acoustic guitar and a couple of plates.

Luke Walsh: I felt like the music was really intense, but after a while we sort of shifted away from that.

Daniel: I never thought about it in terms of light and dark.

Luke Walsh: I think it’s still intense. One thing is that we never set any rules, and we didn’t judge anyone else’s contribution, so it’s a really democratic thing that has naturally evolved.

Sarah: Except Daniel is the older brother so he can pull rank. [Laughs]

As you were saying, when you began you were playing a lot with all the groups Michael Donnelly was involved with. But has there been a personal development on your part? Stylistically there’s been a shift from something free form and brooding, to something that is quite colourful. Are you happier now? How has your mentality changed?
Daniel: I’ve never thought about that, but I guess I am happier now than at any other time in my life. We started music as a way to alleviate the tedium of living in the suburbs, but life has gotten better.

Luke Walsh: It’s exciting [to play music] and you get hooked on the energy. As soon as you start to do it you want to do more and more, and push it further. It’s like a rush. In the beginning it was different.

Daniel: Maybe it was more of a catharsis thing, where we’d have a bad day at work. I worked for five years in a call centre and it was really shithouse. Maybe it was just coming home from that.

Sarah: I remember we were recording the Digitalis record Street Bananas and I was having a really shit day at work, and Daniel would say, “Just channel it into Street Bananas!” [Laughs] I don’t know where you came up with that name.

Daniel: I can’t remember.

Where in Brisbane are you from?
Daniel: We’re all brothers and sisters [Spencers] so we all grew up in the same house in the western suburbs.

Does coming from the western suburbs have the same connotation in Brisbane as it does in Sydney?
Daniel: Not really, it’s not like Parramatta.

People in the inner-city of Sydney generally deride people from the west as bogans.
Daniel: It’s not so much like that. Walsh is from Bulimba, which is Kevin Rudd country.

Luke Walsh: We felt kind of alien to what else was happening, especially [in regards to] music. It took us a couple of years to find people who were similar. At first it felt like we were making [music] in a vacuum, just from what we were listening to, be it kraut rock, Wolf Eyes, all the stuff that was coming out at the time. Then we met people and it expanded.

Six years onwards, from an outsider’s perspective things seem to have changed in Brisbane. There’s a very healthy scene. Are you happy in Brisbane at the moment?
Daniel: It’s good. There’s a lot of venues. One in particular – Burst City – is really good. I’m not sure how long it will last...

Sarah: It’s a bit of a liability I think, but it’s been going pretty well so far.

Friend interjects: It’s been going pretty well so far. We’ve never had any noise complaints. No cops have rocked up except once, because there were 12 year olds drinking out the front or something. [Laughs]

Daniel: It’s good, the shows there have been really fun. You can have hundreds of people turn up and there’s no bar arsehole or sound arsehole, so it’s good. Definitely the venues are much better now than they have been.

Luke Walsh: It’s pretty close-knit in Brisbane too. The DIY thing – and I hate to use that word – but, we’ve found more people [through that network]. There have been things like Audiopollen, which ran for a couple of years [2006-2009] and was fantastic. When that stopped a lot of people picked up the flag and kept going.

Sarah: It kind of split into a lot of different cultures.

Luke Walsh: A lot of younger bands – we’re a little bit older – kind of kept it going, like Kitchen’s Floor.

Sarah: They’re like, five. [Laughs]

From my experience in Sydney, there’s an imperative among a lot of artists that they need to move to Melbourne. I imagine that has been more extreme in Brisbane. Has the healthy scene changed that?
Daniel: No, it’s still the same. Everyone wants to move to Melbourne, but we want to move to Sydney, we like Sydney more. We have more fun in Sydney. Can I say that?

Please do.
Luke Walsh: I think Sydney reminds us more of Brisbane, we feel much more at home. And people have fun with the music.

Daniel: Don’t rag on Melbourne, we’ll get in trouble.

Luke Walsh: I love Melbourne, and there’s some fantastic bands. Brisbane has grown up, but connections between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne have been strengthened as well.

Daniel: Definitely, for us anyway. Through touring we’ve become good friends with Circle Pit, Naked on the Vague, Chrome Dome. It’s exciting, it feels really vibrant. All my favourite bands are Australian at the moment and it has never been like that for me in the past.

Blank Realm release a lot of limited releases. A lot of artists use limited run releases to give a sense of what they get up to between major releases, but each Blank Realm album – no matter the print run – comes fully formed and cohesive.
Daniel: We definitely put as much effort into a tape as we would a record. That Déjà What? record was kind of an accident. We did it because we were going to Melbourne and Albert’s Basement wanted something. It was done really quickly, but when we finished it we liked it a lot more than other stuff we were working on. It’s going to get a wider release [on Bedroom Suck in November].

Judging from the sets you are playing at the moment, should we be expecting a more song-oriented album next?
Daniel: Definitely, I think the next record will have the songs we’ve been playing in the live set.

Sarah: We’ve been meaning to put them down for a while.

Daniel: Brendan [Annesley] wants us to record an Alex Chilton cover. It’ll definitely be more song-based and feature the live “hits”. [Laughs]

Luke Spencer: It’ll be our first record that’s not entirely improvised.

Was the song ‘Full Moon Door’ improvised?
Luke Spencer: Yeah, it was recorded in one day out of nowhere really.

Daniel: We improvised it and then put the vocals over the top. We had to listen back and learn how to play it.

Luke Spencer: It’s the first song we’ve taken that was an improvisation and actually tried to play again. The other songs we’ve done we haven’t laid down or committed to anything, they’ve evolved through rehearsals. What we played tonight we haven’t released but we’re definitely going to soon.

Sarah Spencer: We want to go away for a weekend, get a house in the country.

I’ll wrap it up shortly. Having released music in the past quite distinct from what you’re doing now, and having introduced a lyrical element, what are the lyrics about? Who writes them?

Daniel Spencer: Me. I write and keep journals, I write things down when I walking around, pretty much. Then when we jam those things will pop into my head. That’s how they’re written, they’re written separate from the music, and sometimes I make them up on the spot.

Sarah: Anywhere Daniel is there are books of poetry, everywhere.

Daniel: Stop it, they’re my secret books.

Luke Walsh: I think Daniel is really good at making lyrics up on the spot. I don’t think they change from the original performance like the rest of the music does. The songs we’re playing at the moment came out of a moment, and they don’t really change the better we get at playing because we can do it again.

Daniel: But eventually we get sick of it and ditch it. There are songs we’ll never record because we played them live too many times and decided that was enough. We can only play a song 20 or so times before the energy is gone. Though a couple have been around for a while.

Is there anything you want to add?
Daniel: We’re happy that people are interested.

Luke Walsh: We’re amazed that we’ve had the opportunity to go to Melbourne and Sydney and play for people, and that people are willing to organise shows for us. Same in Brisbane, people have some sort of faith.

Daniel: I guess we always assumed before we played live that everyone would hate it. And then people didn’t hate it. That’s good.

Nic Warnock, R.I.P Society: Do you guys still have to play with terrible minimal smart guy free jazz anymore?

Daniel: [Laughs] We’re not gonna slag off other bands...

Nic Warnock: ...a guy sitting in a trolley dropping coins, remember that bullshit?

That’s going in, Nic Warnock’s interjection.

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Blank Realm’s ‘Deja What?’ will be reissued on Bedroom Suck as an LP on November 5.