Music News - Stylus - the mild bunch 'fess up
Stylus like to lighten the angsty themes with a sprinkling of humour.
27 August 2004 - 0 Comments
By REBECCA BARRY
Rock'n'roll can be so glamorous. When he's not on tour or in the studio, Stylus singer Matt Samuels stuffs envelopes and works in a bowling alley, handing out shoes.
"People go, 'Hey! Are you the guy from ... ?' I'm like, 'Here's your size nines'."
Today he rose at 6am because his 4-year-old daughter needed to go to the toilet. That woke his 1-year-old son. Later his $200 Mitsubishi Galant wouldn't start - something to do with the transmission.
"That's a true measure of a Westie," he says. "Not what car you're driving but how much you paid for it. I did own a Ford Anglia once but in true Westie fashion I sold it for some concert tickets."
To top things off, the heavens open as we grab the last seats at a cafe table outside. You could forgive him for ordering something potent to help him through the day but here's the non-Westie coming out in him - he doesn't drink.
"It's just so hard to do if you're drinking too much," agrees bass player and programmer Paul Matthews as I opt for an OJ.
"It's too hard on your body. We'll have beers at gigs. It's just the whole sex, drugs and rock'n'roll thing, I don't know if it's really us. It really is all about the music."
It's not hard to believe him. Despite the clapped-out car - new guitarist Aja Timu is also suffering vehicular problems - and the fact all four band members live in different parts of Auckland, they still manage to get together to rehearse five times a week.
The cult following they've amassed after years on the live circuit, and a high-profile slot supporting Alien Ant Farm on the Orientation Tour, hasn't given them an ego, either. Samuels and Matthews are probably the most mild-mannered, unpretentious, friendly rock musicians in New Zealand.
Even so, it would be easy to palm off Stylus as a band with a temper problem, given the name of last year's debut album Painkillers and songs such as Sick of This in which Samuels sings, "All the people here are diseased, infected with something strange to me".
But the song has been snapped up for use in an MTV show, as part of an icecream-eating competition.
Elsewhere they dilute the angsty themes with humour: "This situation is disgusting, like a naked hairy fat man. Our songs are so different from each other. We get labelled the whole falling between the cracks sort of thing," says Samuels.
"We did an in-store at Real Groovy and this punk came up to us and said, 'I love you guys, you're doing great work for New Zealand punk! And I was like, 'Punk!'
"Another time, in Dunedin, these hip-hop kids told us, 'Hey we've all got your albums! It's really good hip-hop and stuff.' It's good that some people are bridging the gap. I just say we're a rock band."
When guitarist Kenny Holt left this year "to get a real job" they replaced him with Timu, a veteran of the metal and punk scenes.
Matthews: "At first we were like, 'Are you going to be okay playing this stuff? It's not as heavy as what you're used to.' But he loved the songs, he couldn't deny them."
As for the nu-metal label, they're not entirely against it but are all too aware of the negative connotations. Last year, the band gained a degree of notoriety when ex-Formula 5000 driver Graham McRae stormed their Grey Lynn studio and threatened Matthews with a cross-bow, prompting one local critic to joke that he understood why.
Matthews: "I think everybody in the music industry thinks that nu-metal is dead but if you go to Papa Jacks or rock bars on a Saturday or Friday night, everyone's going really hard to nu-metal.
"That's all they play. They're still loving Linkin Park. I think some of our heaviest songs are nu-metal but the album on the whole ... I don't know."
The next album, he says, will be a little more live, a little less programmed.
"Studio is like audio deception. You think you're hearing a guitar but you're actually hearing four tracks of guitar. Or a piano but it's a guitar with some effects on it. There's a lot of manipulation that goes on there. It's never just a band recorded live."
Under the constructive eye of Murray Cammick, who signed them to his independent Wildside label, (Shihad, Head Like A Hole), Stylus are focusing their sound but they will continue to work on a "song-by-song basis". Their new single Never Again has just been released.
"Murray has never said, 'You guys should be doing this'," says Matthews. "He's just pointed out at times that we could do things a little differently. He said, 'You guys need to get your own sound. You need to develop'."
That goes for the studio, too. They've just refortified the locks and are considering getting a pitbull. Say no more.
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