Clingtone interview by James d’Apice

Your spaceship has just crashlanded. You’re on a strange world; strange, yet eerily familiar. As you step out and leave the wreckage behind, you’re unlikely to be thinking, “what is the perfect soundtrack for this experience?” It’s not a question many have asked before, but it is one considered by Richmond Lamarr and Mip Fumo of Clingtone. A cinematic, paranoid twenty-three minutes of quirky, synthy, introspective head nodding; Mary Had A Little Lamp is Planet of the Apes translated by a couple of guys who spent an intense four days in the Victorian outback.

Barramunga is a tiny bushland settlement about one hundred and fifty kilometres south west of Melbourne. Not far as the crow flies, or the car drives, but far enough for the our heroes to bunker down, adopt a siege mentality and emerge with – well, emerge with what they emerged with. Lamarr explains, “we each brought a collection of sounds, ideas, beats, fears, samples, melodies, snacks, half finished tracks and whatever. We didn’ know if we’d finish one cohesive track or a hundred little pieces of crap. And we didn’ care as long as it was fun.”

To an outsider, it doesn’ seem like the experience would have been especially fun. That something like Mary Had A Little Lamp could have come from a warm experience is counter-intuitive. The ticking time bomb ‘With My Heart Throbbing’ could hardly have been joyful. Nor the psycho-sexual mini-narrative of ‘Serenade, Fuck’.

If not from the subject matter, then, the “fun’ of Mary Had A Little Lamp came from the process. Unlike most hip-hop and chin-rubbing electronica, this album was not the result of continual refining and perfectionism, it was a drop, chop and go affair. If magic was made, it was kept, unaltered. Dross, abandoned. So says Lamarr, “we worked on one idea at a time and tried to find sounds that fitted together. When we did we added more to it spontaneously with little reflection or revising. There was a belief that whatever came out in that moment was how it was meant to be; not something reworked or too considered. If it sounded a bit off, then great. It was recorded music as a snapshot of a moment.”

Fumo explains the logistics of the slapdash recording process. “We set up all our equipment on the dining table in the middle of the lounge and peered at each other. Straight away we were into it. We were racing against time right from the beginning. It was concentrated but stoned.”

A little alchemy but not a lot of sleep: “sleep wasn’ a concern to us. We needed to rest but it didn’ happen often. To me some tracks sound restless and sleep-deprived. Mostly the ones I don’ remember making…”

Despite the assertion that Mary Had A Little Lamp is one for the tin foil hat brigade, Fumo steers away from the paranoia interpretation. For him the sound of the album is very much a product of the atmosphere it was recorded in. “I wouldn’ say paranoid. I think we were motivated by the process of creation. The fact that we both lead extremely busy lives: I work and study, have two young kids. So, to get away for a short intensive spell of recording, I suppose, culminates in an exorcism of sorts. We burnt our fingers.”

For Lamarr, there was “an intensity inherent in this approach and the time limits we had. I hope that comes across in the music, and that the “imperfections’ make it more interesting to some people.” He continues with something of a non sequitur, “really I think we’re just shit.”

If this album was, in essence, its recording process, then could it have been made in a city? Is it so remote, so outback that it could not be conceived among buildings, and people, and noise? The boys are unanimous, “yes… but it wouldn’ have been the same.” So… No, then?

No response.

Interviewers are lucky to get answers even this straight from Clingtone. Their press reads like a J. R. R. Tolkien riddle. When asked whether they were poets, fascinated by a world of lyrical beauty and prosaic passion, their response was – perhaps predictably – a poem. And, judged by the high standards set by the few lyrical grabs we get on the album, not a very good one.

Poet poet deep inside,
What secrets do u hyde
Shhhhh
Hush
Puppies
K9s, dogs, Alsatians,
Alsatian wagon
why do birds fly
they should walk instead

Similarly elusive is the tale of the two musicians coming together. Both lead busy lives and struggle to find time for music, but have managed to put together a Trans-Tasman collaboration recorded in country Victoria. How? What was the occasion? Did their passions intertwine immediately? All issues worth considering. None of them addressed, though. Instead, more poetic riddles:

Lamarr: We met on a windowsill. I was alone among hundreds of revellers in a large ballroom on the outskirts of the city. The buffet was huge and I had just decided to move from savoury to sweet. The éclairs were amazing and fragments of pastry and chocolate flew through the air as I demolished one after another.

Fumo: I was rolling down a hill. When I finished I took my helmet off and I noticed there were bits of mince pie all over it. I immediately thought “pastry party’. I looked around to see where it was, I wasn’ going to miss out. I rode down on my bum.

Lamarr: I lingered by a large open window with a view of the hills. My eyes darted left and right, hoping no one would discover my guilty, gluttonous secret. Years of hiding in corners, self doubt, anti-vanity. I heard a commotion outside and turned to look through the window. It was the first time I’d seen Fumo but I knew it wouldn’ be the last.

Fumo: He caught my eye, when it was ripped out of its socket by the guy I was fighting. I don’ normally get into bar brawls, but at a pastry party you have to be prepared for anything.

For a couple keen to be deliberately obtuse, Mary Had A Little Lamp begins uncontroversially. ‘Lover’ Rasp’ is rap banger as IDM. But if it’s the track played as the credits roll, ‘With My Heart Throbbing’ is where the film begins in earnest. A prison escapee scrambles free, looks around, and sees no sign of any Martian. It’s an evocative image, particularly in a time when the Australian East Coast is occasionally haunted by clouds of South Australian dust.

After four tracks of chop/change excitement, we discover the Fumo is a rapper. With a hint of his New Zealand drawl, he takes us through the looking glass and – oddly – provides a more than passing likeness to straight up and down ozhiphopper Yuin Huzami, a rapper from Brisbane’ Coalition Crew.

‘Toffee Apple’ wouldn’ sound out of place on a mid-90s Rebirth of Cool compilation. The trip back in time to Bonds raglan t-shirts, Reality Bites and cargo pants was not a deliberate one, though, explains Fumo, “we did two three minute recordings of us pissing about on the melodica. The first one I would puff into it while Lamarr played around with the keys trying to get a melody. On the second take we reversed roles. It was an awkward hybrid, playing a one person instrument with two minds. We just re-listened to it back and picked out the best bits. There were not many.”

The overwhelming intention in making this tasting plate record was that there would be no post-production or refinement. On first listen, that impulse doesn’ gel with the album’ title track. Elusive initially (this is Clingtone, after all: they don’ want to make it too easy), it is the closest the album comes to a single. It even has a bit you can hum. Lamarr explains, “there are only really three elements to this track. The long filtered synth noise and the beatboxing were things we both already had, separately, and brought to the table. They fitted together ok and we put a delay on the beatboxing. The pop mini-melody was spontaneous and was recorded once and left as it was. This process really summarises our whole approach for this album.”

Barramunga is outback, but not really outback; people can walk there from Melbourne with several bottles of Gatorade, comfortable shoes and a great playlist. It’s escape within boundaries, then pure country, right near the city. No over-commitment. As a microcosm for Mary Had A Little Lamp, Barramunga’ location is eloquent. Just as this album strains at its leash and threatens to wander too far into the world of the obtuse and unintelligible, something familiar jumps out and grounds the experience all over again.

Clingtone’s Mary Had A Little Lamp is released independently.