Brisbane has always struck me as being one of Australia’ most decidedly odd capital cities. While it’s perhaps still best known to international audiences for its gaudy, commercial exterior – witness the numbers of overseas visitors who flock to its casinos and nearby theme parks, it still manages to sustain a thriving underground arts scene, with more than its share of unconventional figures. Alongside the likes of Japanese expat Potato Masta and breakcore rap duo Anal Cookie, the work of Suckafish P. Jones – real name Jesse Sullivan – certainly befits the above description.
Emerging towards the end of 2007 with the first volume in his Stagger/Swagger CD-R “mixtape’ series, Jesse managed to turn more than a few crucial heads with his eclectic and rambunctious mix of dubstep, ragga, dancehall and hip-hop; the added edge being that it was pretty much all his own production. In any event, Stagger/Swagger Vol. 1 provided the perfect appetiser for his debut mini-album as Suckafish P. Jones, Mr. Cloak And Dagger, recently released independently and featuring collaborations with fellow Brisbane artists including Potato Masta and Dragonfly. It’s also a record immediately suited to its eerie, retro-tropical postcard sleeve art. You can almost feel the sticky humidity seeping through on bass-heavy dubstep moments, such as the speaker-heaving “Straight Outta The Garage,’ as well as a decidedly more tangible grime influence.
When I catch up with Jesse, one the first things I’m keen to find out more about concerns his first forays into studio production. With so many different genres and styles floating around in his music, is there any specific musical ‘background’ he particularly identifies with?
“I came into production pretty early on, way before I knew how to DJ,” he explains. “When I was 16, my good friend lent me his four-track for a while, and I really got hooked – recording keyboards and vocals, and doing loops really stupidly with pause and record. It was pretty nasty at first, but it got me started. The whole process of recording and making something like that. I really found my swing. I got my first decent computer in 2002, and in 2003 started to make hip-hop and drum and bass with my friend Mizoon as OVA. It was pretty rough stuff. I was rapping and pushing beats out of my laptop while Mizoon played synths and samplers.”
“We didn’t know anything back then,” he says. “Like how to MIDI-sync or any of this handy complicated stuff, so our live shows were us desperately trying to keep everything in time, keep everything changing and to keep me rapping. As OVA dispersed, I took it on solo, getting a lot more focused on understanding the equipment, to make it work for me, not the other way around! My production style is still pretty hectic, as is the live show, but I like it that way – it keeps it fresh every time.”
“Before I got into production, I was doing more writing and MCing, having been into hip-hop since I was a teenager. I’ve always MCed with my live show as well, but over the years I got a lot more focused on production. When I first started making Mr. Cloak And Dagger, I was looking at it as beats I would send out to other rappers, but as I progressed I naturally started filling the songs with raps that I liked, and next thing you knew, I’d done most of it myself! There are definitely better MCs out there than me and better vocalists in general, but I really had an attitude and vibe I wanted to communicate – something not too serious or esoteric. Something that had an upbeat feel, but also enough humour and abstraction to keep it on another level. I also wanted to make sure the grime vocals weren’ too stupid or blokey.”
It’s exactly these sorts of macho/blokey hip-hop stereotypes that Jesse would appear to be lyrically skewering on “Totally Debase,’ a collaboration with Babymachine from Brisbane breakcore rap outfit Anal Cookie, which provides one of Mr. Cloak And Dagger’ lyrical highlights, as well as a neatly edged twist on the whole “playa’ fantasy.
“I just wanted to make a kinda classic boy meets girl song, but not that totally deluded fantasy that’s everywhere in hip-hop,” Jesse replies, when queried about his intentions on the track. “I mean, you hear a lot of songs where the dude is rapping about getting a girl at a club, and he’ like god’ gift to all the women and they just line up for him or whatever – when the reality can be a lot more awkward or embarrassing. What you never hear about is when the girl rejects you or calls you a stalker or whatever. So I wanted to take the piss out of that whole exchange. It’s not really a specific slamming on macho hip-hop, I reckon it’s just more of a parody of the whole boy meets girl thing.”
“It’s definitely not your standard Aussie rap affair. There’ also a lot of instrumental tracks on there because I have been really influenced by dubstep lately and had a lot of tracks loosely fitting that title, tracks that were really full and complete without the need for vocals. At the moment I’m producing some rhythms for a few different MCs around the world, and will probably release another production-style “mixtape’ with guest MCs before my full-length album at the start of 2009,” he adds. “I wanna do a whole bunch of the “mixtapes’ – something quick with a lot of different artists collaborating over beats and remixes of friends. Stagger/Swagger Volume 2 will be out by November, after I get back from overseas.”
It’s Jesse’ interest in dubstep that I’m particularly keen to touch on further, and I ask him about his experiments with the aforementioned genre as well as bhangra and grime – the latter in particular being one form that still doesn’ really seem to have taken hold locally.
“I’m just really interested in rhythms,” he responds. “I like beats of all tempos and time signatures, so I’m not about to make a straight 90BPM funky hip-hop CD or a 140BPM sub-step thing. I think when you’re listening to music at home or in the car or whatever you want something that shifts around. I think a lot of producers are forgetting this when they put out an album. I mean, in the club or whatever people may want to listen to two hours of dubstep, but maybe not at home. I know I don’t, and I don’t want my music to be seen predictably as dubstep or hip-hop or whatever.
“Australia’s a new country, and we really have a cultural stew – a fresh stew that’s just been put together and is starting to simmer. It’s not like London or New York or Berlin where there are really specific styles that have emerged from a long history of music. So I like the idea that we can kinda take the best bits of everything musical and make something totally alien and fresh that’s not like the rest of the world.”
“Trying to do self-consciously “real hip-hop’ or “real dubstep’ in Australia by following rules made overseas is like trying to eat a photocopied watermelon. You look at it, telling yourself it’s gonna be some juicy explosion, but the aftertaste is bland, thin and not something you’re gonna eat forever.”
As an outsider, Brisbane’ always struck me as being quite an odd city, with a glitzy commercial side to it that often obscures the myriad smaller divergent music and arts scenes going on at once in other areas. It’s also a city that seems to have always been able to sustain its smaller, more cult-like scenes – witness the sunshine city’ healthy goth population. When I ask about Brisbane as a creative environment, Jesse’ the first to admit the apparent paradoxes.
“Brisbane’ a weird place to work. First and foremost, there are heaps of talented groups and individuals here, but the club culture around here is really shit at supporting original electronic music. You get a bunch of clubs that fetishise cookie cutter house music, and combined with Queensland’ draconian drinking and “having fun’ laws, you get a lot of problems. I mean, you can have a show in a nice venue every now and then, but chances are your friends and the people who are coming to see it won’ be let in due to dress codes.”
“So, naturally, the progressive music moves underground. And because there aren’ a lot of “party zones’ in Brisbane and everyone seems to know each other, people tend to gig together. So you’ll have dubstep DJs playing with rock bands and breakcore MCs and whoever else is around. It’s a good thing because it means there’ more communication between musicians and bullshit scene politics are kept to a minimum. That said, Brisbane’ clubs have really got to open their minds. So many talented artists just get jack of pushing shit uphill and end up moving to Melbourne or overseas, where they generally do really well.”
At the time of interview, Suckafish P. Jones has just played shows in Tokyo and Osaka, and is on his way to Europe. I’m keen to find out how he’ been received so far by overseas audiences, as well as the basic logistics behind his juggling so many different simultaneous roles onstage. How does he hold it all together?
“Suckafish P. Jones live is an octopus show of hectic proportions,†Jesse confirms. “I mix beats, I tap out beats live, I rap, I dance, I throw my underwear into the audience – it’s a hard life to maintain. Mainly, I do live shows of all my own material, sometimes I’ll mix it with a kind of DJ thing, with me and other microphone molesters handling vocal duties. It’s always a bit different from the last time. But these things are guaranteed – you’re gonna have fun, the beats are going to shuffle a lot and the bass will be there with a suit and tie to make sure your arse is still bouncy.”
“It’s kind of like a tour, but it’s also a holiday. I haven’t really travelled out of Australia before, so I’m out here to see the world as well. I organised it all through Myspace. I mapped out the places I wanted to see and then hit the internet to find out who was doing parties in these places and now, here I am. The shows so far have been incredible; people are really digging my stuff and I’ve been really lucky to play with some awesome artists like Ove-Naxx, Haguretic MCs and Goth-Trad. I’m also working with a lot of musicians I’ve met out on the road as well, the results of which should come out on the next Stagger/Swagger mixtape.”
Chris Downton
