END OF FASHION

One could have easily mistaken this Sunday afternoon interview as a Sunday detention, as four bearded men, each with their own unique “rock star style” sat down beside one another on the long bench seat at the backroom of the Sorrento Hotel.

The leader of the pack, Justin Burford, sits with his hoodie over his head, hands in his pockets and cheeky grin on his face. To his left, is guitarist Rodney Aravena, who appears slightly more relaxed and has a jovial nature to his appearance. To the other side of Burford, sits Mike “Hobbsy” Hobbs, their old/new drummer; and further right hides bass man and sunglasses wearing, Tom King the mysterious and somewhat silent member of the group,

These four men are End of Fashion.

Light-hearted humour and playground antics appear prevalent amongst them all as they take their place in the firing line for yet another interview.

How’s it feel to be on the Road again?

‘Great! It feels great’            

What’s the hardest part about touring?
‘Bedbugs’
‘Running out of clean clothes’

‘Waking Up’

‘Interviews’

And the best part about touring?

‘Playing Shows’

Strangest Thing Experienced as a Band?

‘Ross – the albino guitar tech’

Seemingly not interested by the questions asked, the band go off on their own tangents, finding that seeing Giant black birds and random Hotels in the middle of nowhere, are more fascinating to discuss than what it is like to be back on the road after over a years absence.

The interview then turns 180 degrees as they start to question us. We weren’t sure if this was to avoid our line of questioning or if it was general interest in the people behind the words. Either way it was our job to flip it back, and after a couple of nervous laughs from both sides of the camera we ploughed on with a quirky fact which appeared to encapsulate their attention for a few minutes

The mention that their picture appeared on the ABC Financial News Report caused for a moment of surprise and great amusement from all four as they added it to their list of ‘Strange Experiences as a band’.

Back into interview mode we continued:

How do Local Festivals compare with Overseas Festivals?

‘More raincoats’

This was followed by a reminiscent moment as we delved into their first festival experience. This took place at ‘Rock It’ in Western Australia. As they tried to palm off the blame to a bass player called Maria of why it was a bad experience, Rodney, took up the reigns and divulged the story;

‘I forgot my pedals’ but was quickly interrupted by the Justin,
‘he forgot his entire guitar pedal case’ and then preceded to explain the geography of Perth, the location of the festival, and the house where the guitar pedals were waiting with some demonstration assistance from Hobbsy that illustrated the distance Rodney had to travel to pick up the forgotten equipment. As the other band members waited Rodney’s return there was an imminent threat of loosing their spot if they didn’t get on stage in time as the opening act.
Rodney, like the hero of the story took back the reigns, ‘it was the last minute, I literally got out of the car with my pedal case and ran and had people ushering me through and ran all the way onto stage, pulled out my guitar and played.’

Further festival banter led us to believe End of Fashion really do enjoy festivals for their own unique reasons;

Big Day Out;
‘Big Day Out is one of the best festivals’ ‘It is really band friendly’;

RockIt
‘instead of a rider, there is a bar backstage, you can drink yourself into a stooper’;

and

Homebake
‘you can hang out with bands you might not usually play with’ ‘and watch all the bands you really love’

Festivals they would like to be involved in as you might expect most rock bands strive for are ‘Glastonbury’. ‘Tea in the Park’, ‘Reading’ and a few more obscure festivals including ‘Rack It’, ‘Download’ and ‘Coachella’.

With the release of their new album, ‘Book of Lies’ that appears a little under the radar they hope their upcoming festival appearances at Homebake, Southbound and general touring will bring it more to the forefront.

As we fought on to obtain more substance for our write up we explored their views on albums.

As appeared a common occurrence throughout the interview, one liners bounced around as they made more jokes followed with the comparison of their first release, the second album was ‘More of a hum then a buzz’ ‘you can hear the white noise in the background.’ 

But it was questions about the creative process of songwriting where the attention of Burford was completely captured.

He doesn’t consider himself as much of a musician as ‘a guy who writes songs’. He fell into the throws of becoming a musician as he used his songwriting as an outlet for his teenage years that developed into the albums End of Fashion have produced.

‘The more times you do it, the more conceptual you can get, cause you get better at the actual craft of putting a record together, and that takes a few albums I think.’ As he gets stuck for words its Hobbsy who helps emulate and articulate what Burford is trying to express ‘a concept can come out just by the songs you are writing when you’ve got a main songwriter in the band, whatever sort of headspace he’s in, he may not think there is a concept but you can sort of see one growing and the more songs you get together you can see a theme.’
Burford finds his words as he explains the aim for the current album
‘Overall we knew we wanted to make an album that was a little more darker, a little more grittier….a little bit more intense’.

As more words are extracted from the mind of Burford, we discover the future album is already in the process of development with a few songs and ideas. Some words they are using to describe the direction of their next album ‘polished, big, bombastic, fun’ as they aim to emulate some bands they grew up listening too.

As the impending restlessness started to settle we focused on the year ahead;

What does the rest of 2009 hold?

‘Touring heaps’

And with the entrance of one of their “people” announcing- “I have limes”, the interview comes to an end. Tequila!