Phoenix Foundation transport their live shows into a different realm

Phoenix Foundation

When NME editor Conor Nicholas visited New Zealand in March, he had some sage advice for Phoenix Foundation's Sam Flynn Scott.

"He's like, 'Look dude, you've got to grow the beard back, you've got to be a fully bearded band. It would work really well if you came to England and you were this incredibly hairy band. I'd really advise that'."

Scott, the band's singer, guitarist and chief songwriter, can scoff with good humour. Sure, like his bandmates he is a bit on the woolly side but he has done his fully bearded days. And he is not about to pander to the superficial wants of the music industry.

It was scary enough signing to a major label this year, although he admits he has been pleasantly surprised about how it has all worked out. The band still have creative control, crucial when your music is as unconventional as theirs.

Those who own their albums Horsepower and its follow-up Pegasus, will know it is almost impossible to peg them down. Their songs veer from psychedelic pop to country-tinged rock and epic soundscapes, drawing on an eclectic repertoire that ranges from Toto to Van Morrison and Quincy Jones.

While some of their songs are simple, folksy guitar numbers, Hitchcock, the track that won a bNet award for best unreleased song, would certainly be at home as the soundtrack to a dark, psychological film, as would the epic Cars of Eden, which ends with a saxophone spluttering like a dying animal.

Elsewhere, they experiment with mellotron, music box chimes and Moog synth.

"I have always been into exploring to see where the sound takes me, trying to find new things," says Scott, who moved into a bigger house in Wellington's Island Bay so he would have more room to concentrate on songwriting.

"That's what keeps me interested. I like to try to find surprising things and combinations of sounds."

Although he grew up listening to "60s alternative dad music", he says he was no good at studying the subject at school. Then he met Conrad Wedde (guitar, keyboards) and Luke Buda (vocals/guitar/keys) in fourth-form French and they formed a band playing funk and heavy metal.

"I was just into playing with those guys because I thought they were cool," says Scott. "But I was always an indie boy. It just took me a little while to convince the other guys that might be the way forward."

Through the annals of "various hippie bands" and mates' girlfriends, they recruited Richie Singleton (drums), Will Ricketts (percussion) and Tim Hansen (bass), who was later replaced by Warner Emery.

After making their name by playing gigs around Wellington, they released the sublime Horsepower in 2003, the critically acclaimed debut album which hinted at the greatness - often mellowness - to come.

While you're not about to find any sneaky Slayer riffs lurking on Pegasus, their metal education rears its head in other ways - namely in the precision of the guitar playing.

Later in the year they hope to do a low-key venue tour, performing seated gigs to suit their quieter, more subtle songs. "We're from pretty middle-class, arty-farty families," says Scott. "We're not kids from the wrong side of the tracks who have got to play angry music.

"We all have our own angers and we feel the pressures and constraints of the weird lives that humans have to live these days. But we do that from a fairly lateral and artistic perspective because we have grown up watching a lot of art movies and going to art exhibitions."

He credits his dad, cartoonist, writer and satirist Tom Scott, for his adventurous tastes - and for getting him a job writing the soundtrack for TV One drama, Seven Periods With Mr Gormsby.

"My dad always made me listen to Bitches Brew by Miles Davis because he thought it was an amazing musical journey."

Yes, it all sounds rather lofty for a good old Kiwi rock band. And you can sense there is something deeper going on when you listen to Phoenix Foundation's weird bleeps, layers and complex arrangements.

When they played at an industry function there were moments where they appeared to have tapped into some otherworldly realm, getting lost in a jam session that took on a life of its own.

Although it worked, not all bands that take an exploratory approach to music are successful, and can sound pompous.

"That's a risk you have to take to get inside the music," says Scott. "I don't think there are a great deal of bands who make pop music and jam out in weird, trippy 70s ways, and I quite like the fact there's that slight danger of us falling into pretentious territory."

He cites successfully indulgent bands Can and Kraftwerk because they "take you on a long-distance journey, not a quick high".

Wedde: "It helps if the band is playing together and staying sensitive to one another, rather than one person going off on a 10-minute guitar solo. It can be difficult sometimes having six people in the band. In the practise room it can be hard to get a focus sometimes."

Scott: "But we need that many people to accomplish our ideas of big arrangements and new sounds.

"A big part of the band is playing simple folk or country songs. The other side is the synthesizers and arrangements and lateral lyrics that might not really mean anything."

He admits this is where he has the most trouble, that the words only seem to come out when he's suffering from insomnia or in a "weird spazzy mood.

"If I'm putting too much effort into them they usually come out quite bad. But when it's working, you have no idea what's going on. Music, when it works, is a sort of transcendental thing, you're transported into a slightly different realm."

* Phoenix Foundation play tonight and tomorrow at The Classic, Queen Street with support from Cassette