Issue #004 (June 2003) Upshot Email this article to a friend With the rise of the DJ and dance culture in the late 90s, live music went through a downward spiral. Venues closed, people stopped going out to see live music, and musicians were left, like laid-off middle-aged men, without a sense of purpose or belonging. The eternally optimistic kept at it, playing to empty rooms full of empty people; and the pessimists simply stopped trying and faded into obscurity. Between these poles, however, were those who attempted to incorporate the sounds and attitudes of dance music into a live music situation. This spawned both the sublime and the ridiculous, from the live drum n bass stylings of the Hive and the subtle glisten of Multiball, who took their cues from the structures and arrangements of dance music, to shithop bands like 28 Days, who seemed to incorporate raps and scratches as a fashionable adjunct to their sub-metal yahooing. Thankfully, Upshot are firmly placed in the sublime half of this dichotomy. A fact that Paul Johannessen, keyboard player for Upshot, is pleased with when I catch up with him in his Sydney home. Upshot avoided the pitfalls of some of their ridiculous forebears by remaining honest to themselves and their music. ‘For me music – correction, all art – is about honesty’ Paul says, ‘through honesty, one can hit on some kind of universal truth, that someone else will understand, and that connection is the ultimate, but it all starts with honesty.’ A five piece backline including drums, bass, saxophone, keyboards and scratching, is augmented by a stanza of MCs and the occasional singer. Their particular take on playing live hiphop is very much grounded in a respect for the loop-based structures inherent in the form, and they display remarkable restraint in letting the music speak for itself above any concerns for individual virtuosity. Upshot was borne of frustration at the burgeoning DJ culture and its cult of personality, as Paul explains “We were all fed up with seeing DJs and sampling musicians getting such religious followings by our contemporaries. People without any kind of musical grounding just ripping off old records and gaining some kind of demi-god status, whilst all our jazz muso friends were playing to 10 people in some side show alley, making $50 a gig…” Uninspired by straight up jazz, the core unit of Upshot sought musical direction elsewhere and ended up following the paths hewn by acts such as the Roots and Common in an attempt to blur the line between live band and sampled, produced music. As Paul states, ‘contemporary production values, but with our own chords, our own beats and our own melodies’. This blurred line is displayed in their debut EP, released on vinyl by Melbourne’s Obese record label. The four tracks and two instrumental versions are at first unremarkable, but this is their great asset – they allow space for the MCs while creating a unique atmosphere, both rhythmically and harmonically. It’s only when listening to the instrumentals that the subtleties of the tracks are fully highlighted. From the start MCs were a big part of the Upshot experience. Originally they were fronted by the renowned Sleeping Monk, his silky smooth flows complementing the bevelled edges of Upshot’s instrumentation. Though he has now parted ways with the band, his legacy remains in the form of three tracks collected on the EP, including the brilliant ‘$’. Though releasing an EP with vocalist no longer in the band may seem strange, Paul remains pragmatic, ‘They’re good tracks, and we weren’t going to let them rot. The opportunity arose and we took it.’ Sleeping Monk has now been replaced by a number of different MCs who feature in guest spots; Quro being the mainstay, and Serreck and Brass from Celsius, and Urthboy from the Herd, chipping in for the odd track. Although on stage the relationships between the MCs and the musicians seem to flow with ease, the difference in culture and musical training is brought out in the rehearsal studio, with the MCs sometimes falling foul of the ‘just-so’ nature of the musicians. ‘They probably think we’re all a bunch of cunts at first,’ explains Paul ‘but then they start to see the detail that we put into our music. I grew up playing classical piano, and constantly had my work torn to shreds by examiners and teachers, and it just became part of the process. Bedroom MCs seem to have all grown up with their mates singing their praises, so when we get critical it’s really foreign to these guys.’ He is quick to add, though, that the MCs they work with are an integrated part of the group, and provide the essential link between band and audience. This has its ultimate expression in the distilled precision of their live shows, in which each measure is accounted for, and each pause is militarily precise. Though the MCs bring some aspect of chaos to the equation, some may criticise this almost clinical approach as lacking in soul or spirit, and the trade off between musical virtuosity and expression is one that Paul is all too aware of ‘It’s treading between the intellect and the primal, the rehearsed and the improvisatory, the refined and the raw. The baggage of being classically trained leaves me more on the intellectual side of things, but as I get older I’m learning to cast that off and just try and find the most pure expression I can, regardless of technical value.’ When I ask whether he feels constrained by the pressures imposed by sticking so closely to a genre, he smiles and explains, ‘I’ve never felt constricted in this band. The simplicity is what we love, it’s what we set out to do. It allows for more freedom, and less introspection, and makes for a really focussed sound.’