Cyclic Defrost

While it’s been said that any publicity is good publicity, visit Fabulous Diamonds’ MySpace page and it will most likely come as a surprise that Jarrod Zlatic and Nisa Venerosa have quite proudly chosen to display the negative reviews they have received over the course of their career. “I find them a little stagnant, as though the Melbourne duo are no more than the sum of their parts” for example. Or, more abrasive, “taking a good ten to fifteen minutes to drag out a flatly intoned lyric was no crowd pleasing move.”

Whether the duo are truly apathetic to media hype or simply unwilling to show cracks in their seemingly nonchalant veneer, Zlatic is forthright and blunt in his opinion on the subject. “I didn’t put those reviews up there for ironic purposes,” he states somewhat abruptly before contemplating the polarising effect that Fabulous Diamonds’ music often seems to have on people. “It was more to do with how I find it kind of weird that people will always choose to display positive things on their MySpace pages over anything critical. It’s like weird, introspective promotion. I like that people are questioning what we’re doing instead of just taking it at face value, however it depends on the nature of the criticism because those particular things displayed online were about the first record and I think the points made were that obviously the music wasn’t necessarily for those critics, and that perhaps they simply had to come up with
something to say.”

“Reviews are merely different perspectives from different people with different areas of expertise,” he continues. “At the same time however, I don’t want it to have to have an effect on us, and I can understand why many other artists talk about never looking at reviews because they don’t want to get into that weird cycle where they become overtly self aware about that sort of thing. I have taken criticisms and comments on board before, but you only have your own angle when you’re making music and I guess reviews are enlightening in being able to see how everybody else interprets your sound.”

Delivering a near peerless aural experience, the Fabulous Diamonds back catalogue is so wonderfully extensive and varied that people have a difficult time defining where the band fits within contemporary music. A combination of pop, dubstep and minimalist drone-rock, their sound could be described as almost wilfully difficult. It seems inevitable that the band’s music elicits a variety of strong reactions. This musical breadth and myriad of multiple personalities pushes the confines of traditional songwriting. As listeners we are almost conditioned to expect certain boundaries within our musical consumption, but for their normal audience Zlatic is sure that what the band is giving them isn’t anything new.

“We’re not totally defining within our genre. There’s lots of different little bits and pieces in our music but it’s not anything particularly one thing over another. I guess I’d describe Fabulous Diamonds as experimental pop music because obviously there are a lot of experimental ideas going on but you can’t just squarely place it in one bag, figuratively speaking.”

“I imagine that we don’t have the sort of listeners that are totally unaware of our influences and the things that we draw upon in our sound, but Nisa and I don’t really think about it all too much. My dad was a punk growing up and he always played good music when I was younger so in a lot of ways I guess I was exposed to certain things maybe earlier than other people were. You know, obvious minimalist and The Velvet Underground and Krautrock and certain seminal stuff has been in the back of my mind when we’ve been doing things, but now I think that’s becoming less so.”

Characterised by fixed arrangements and spanning a scope of genres, much of the commentary on Fabulous Diamonds II has questioned whether their approach to songwriting and performing is largely improvisational or something more structured in general. However upon mention of this ambiguity, Jarrod is swift to clarify “we don’t improvise at all. It is very much fixed.”

“People seem to think we jam,” he explains. “When you play a ten minute long song people generally think that there has to be some sort of improvised element to it. We do kind of play around with things and improvise to a degree but we’ve got very definite structured points. Playing live, things will go longer than others sometimes but there is very much a framework which everything operates within.”

“I was kind of worried that our new material would kind of sound the same live as our old material,” Zlatic says of the band’s live performance technique. “Whenever you go to see a band – myself included – you’ve heard old stuff and then you hear new things that can be a bit kind of dislocating and may trip you up a bit, not in a bad or good way but just as something new. With us, we’ve got so many variables because of our old equipment and depending on the venue or the amp we’re using, the keyboards will sound very clear and clean whereas other times it will sound very bass heavy or really distorted. Those types of things do really affect the end product. When we went and recorded the latest album [we] made sure that there wasn’t particularly too much buzz and that everything sounded just right to a point where you can’t really replicate that live.”

That isn’t to suggest that Fabulous Diamonds II is merely a highly-produced manifest of technical nonpareil. Nor does is suggest that the record doesn’t prove an equally compelling experience live. Far from it. Veering closer to melodies more approachable even as they still operate under the firm minimalism of drums and organ, Zlatic is willing to admit that their live aesthetic is continually subject to change, and also acknowledges that the “unknown” is exciting and attractive within it’s own means. It makes a lot of sense given the way that both Zlatic and Venerosa have chosen to leave each track untitled, instead only referred to by the exact length of the song.

“There’s a couple of reasons we don’t title our tracks. The second song’s main lyrics is ‘obligational animal’ and so yeah, we could title it based on that but it’s obvious and is essentially kind of boring. In many ways by leaving songs untitled I suppose it adds a bit of mystique but simply put it just seemed like the thing to do. It’s easier than calling them anything,” Zlatic laughs.

It’s not simply mystique that appeals to Fabulous Diamonds though; throughout our conversation it is clear that Zlatic is obviously passionate about gradually extending his ideas and concepts over time into something more refined, in an almost reductionist sense.

“With any artist your concerns change depending on where you’ve gone and what you’re listening to and what kind of headspace you’re at. With our second record, particularly the first and last song, around that period of playing I was very specifically interested in trying to push the songs as long as possible with an obvious kind of minimalist influence. At the moment we’ve been trying to craft our sound a bit more. With some songs on the record, like the second song [3 mins 56 secs], technically that isn’t even finished. The sparse lyrical thing was more that I’d
come up with a set of lyrics and we’d want to add more to them but I just couldn’t think of any more to add. We always say we should go back and finish it but we never do. Now we’re trying to make sure we don’t take the easy way out and just leave unfinished things as is.”

With an upcoming overseas tour looming on the horizon the band are preparing to plough the familiar furrows of flights, hotel rooms and suitcases. “Compared to travelling interstate to places like Sydney where there seems to be a strong experimental scene and a strong rock scene but not many things existing in between, places like America are really healthy with so many more people and so much more to see,” Zlatic explains before hazarding a guess about their overseas achievements.

“It’s much harder to measure audience receptiveness. Do you gauge it on how many records you sold or how many people came to the show? When you’ve toured somewhere outside of your hometown before, it’s interesting to see whether people remember you or not. I’ll be very curious to see how the shows will go this time and whether that will be more of an indication of how successful last time was. Personally speaking, our last overseas tour was totally satisfying and regardless of profit or sales I imagine this tour will be equally fulfilling.”

Fabulous Diamonds II by Fabulous Diamonds is out through Chapter Music.

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