by Laura Kazdan
Fishing is an enigmatic electro pop duo from Australia. Founded in 2010 by Doug Wright and Russell Fitzgibbon, they have developed a finely tuned sound at once both deep and breezy. They’ve earned cred opening for bands like SBTRK and playing for Australian Vice parties. That Mag caught up with them on the verge of their latest HOOKZ release.
That Mag: Hello Russ and Doug, how did you meet?
FISHING: Russ and I grew up in the same area, and met through school friends during the year that we graduated. We started hanging out with a similar crowd at uni, and before we knew it we were the best of friends.
TM: When did you start creating music together?
F: Pretty soon after we met really. I think we just had similar tastes which was pretty refreshing as not too many people that we knew around that time were getting into the same sort of music that we were. We were both already writing stuff separately so it was pretty natural to just start jamming together. We first started writing and performing together in another project, a synthesizer band which also included Russ’s brother, Peter. Fishing came about by being an instrumental offshoot of that project.
TM: How important is the visual aspect of the work you create? Is that you guys too?
F: Almost everything is in-house. Except for the “OOOO” video clip which was produced by one of our friend’s very talented friend. But Russ does all of the album covers, and we work together to make the videos, as well as the visuals that we use live. I think it’s not a creative decision to be like ‘we must have complete creative control over every aspect,’ we do it all ourselves just because we really enjoy making video and images that accompanies the work, and it’s really satisfying to make everything from the ground up. I think we would like to collaborate on more of the visual stuff in the future, because it could be really interesting to involve some other people in the process and see what happens.
TM: In some ways both are a collage; you use a lot of samples and have a lot of remixes, can you talk about that a bit?
F: I kind of feel like the music is less of a collage really. I mean, we do sample, but we don’t really glean entire phrases and use them as a basis for tracks. We prefer to pick out individual hits or solo instrument notes that have nice color, and map them to samplers and then write songs with those sounds in the same way that you would write any sort of other instrumental music.
TM: Do you have a concept when you start or are you just feeling it out and seeing what works and what doesn’t? How does the creative process work for you guys? Can you walk us through that a bit?
F: I don’t think we have a strong concept behind anything, we do exactly that, feel it out and just write what sounds good to us. In terms of how we write, usually Russ or I will come up with a little 30 second beat or melodic idea, then we swap beats, work on each other’s stuff, and then often bring it together and work on things at the same time as well. It’s good to get a mix of all these, sometimes if we’re working together, we hear something the other person is doing and think it’s really cool, and sparks another idea. But other times when we’re working together we just end up listening to the same 4 bars over and over and we need to take stuff away and do it in our own time. Mixing and matching these is generally what works the best for us.
TM: How do you like touring?
F: Touring is heaps of fun. It’s like going on holidays with a purpose. Quite often we drive when we’re touring, and try and get a bit of time either side of shows to go and explore a bit. We love camping and walking so we try and build that into our trips.
TM: How about the USA?
F: Soon!
TM: What are your live shows like?
F: We both bash away on MPCs and other controllers. We try and make it as live as possible for two people to play, and figure that the more margin for error that we have, the more exciting it is to perform. We’re in the process of hooking up some really sweet new reactive visuals as well which is really exciting.
TM: What can we expect from the upcoming mixtape? Is there anything on it your especially excited for people to hear where you feel particularly accomplished?
F: The mixtape that we’ve got coming out with the release of the Choy Lin 7″ is all remixes of Waaga artists that we like. I think we’re pretty happy that it worked out into a nice flowing little mixtape, we were a bit worried for a second that remixing five bands and slapping it together could have sounded a bit disjointed, but it turned out OK! I rapped on the Monster Rally and Rumtum remix which was a first. That’s a bit nerve racking. It’ll be interesting to see how people respond to that one. Is it a joke? Is it not a joke? It’s all very confusing.
