Resin Dogs stick to their guns

Brisbane's Resin Dogs are proud of their Aussie flavoured hip-hop. The band are, from left, Dave Atkins, Geoff Boardman, Chris Bosley and Andrew Garvie.

If you see an Aussie guy with an Afro buying some drink coasters in a souvenir shop, then say hi.

It's probably Andrew Garvie (aka DJ Katch) from Brisbane hip-hop outfit Resin Dogs.

And if that souvenir shop happens to be in Kaikoura then it's definitely him. The Resin Dogs play the Kaikoura Roots Festival with Salmonella Dub tomorrow. Although the festival is sold out you can catch the band tonight at the Studio on Auckland's K Rd.

Katch has never been to Kaikoura but his parents travelled and worked in New Zealand during the 60s and bought some drink coasters from the South Island town.

"I might bring them back a fresh set," he laughs.

The band - whose core members also include Geoff Boardman, Dave Atkins and Chris Bosley - will hopefully be kipping on the couches of Salmonella Dub while they're at the two-day festival. "If not, you'll see some blokes pitching a tent on the side of the road," he says.

The two bands know each other well. Salmonella has just remixed the Resin Dog's new single, Gunshot Dub, which features British MC Spikey Tee, for the Kaikoura Roots compilation album.

"We liked the [Salmonella] remix so much that that's the version we play live now," says Bosley, the bass player. "So yeah," he continues in his slack Aussie drawl, "we've dumped our version and gone with theirs. They've dubbed it out quite a bit, it still breaks, but it's much more of a dub flavour."

"I think it's the best thing I've heard in a very long time," continues Katch. "It does sound like what Salmonella do, but it's us. I'd love to have the luxury of handing the song out to all my favourite people from Australia and overseas, and say, 'Do me a version'. Just like a class project."

While the band's hometown of Brisbane isn't a particularly funky town, the Resin Dogs have worked hard since 1996 to put the funk and soul into Australian hip-hop.

They've never been the phenomenon in Australia that Scribe was in New Zealand. They're more the equivalent of Wellington pioneers Upper Hutt Posse. The Resin Dogs are the pioneers of Australian hip-hop.

"Pioneers is a funny word," says Bosley bashfully. "I think once you start patting yourselves on the back like that it's time to give it away. I see it more like we had to battle like bastards early on.

"When we started there was no one doing what we were doing which was kind of Australian accent hip-hop, break beat, turntables and electronic sampling on stage. So we had our fair share of battles through certain attitudes to get that happening live."

Back then the Resin Dogs "bashed" their heads against the wall explaining to sound technicians at venues that the turntables would be playing with the band.

"I think we won our battles on the live scene. We only started playing live because we needed to raise money to press our vinyl. People came to shows and people came back to shows, and we clawed our way up like that, on our live reputation."

That's where Brisbane, and the hip, yet stylishly seedy, Fortitude Valley area of the city comes in. This is where audiences first started picking up on the Resin Dog's live mash-ups of hip-hop, funk and break beat.

"Brisbane used to be quite isolated - the moving and the shaking of the music industry was based in Sydney and Melbourne - so people in Brisbane developed their own personality. Whereas in Sydney it was all a bit transparent and sad.

"But Brisbane developed its own thing and I think it shows in that a lot of the hip-hop out of Brisbane is Australian based and not so much of an American copy," says Bosley.

"The Resin Dogs thing is about hip-hop ethics, like sampling and turntables. But," says Katch, "in the end, I think it's more about the live music combination."

Their huge live reputation has also been backed up by a number of releases, including two albums, Grand Theft Audio (2000) and last year's Hi Fidelity Dirt.

On Hi Fidelity Dirt what is noticeable is the number of collaborations, including LA rappers the Pharcyde on party tune Shut Yo Mouth, Abstract Rule on Rebel, and, as mentioned, Spikey Tee on Gunshot Dub.

Spikey Tee is the "king of collaborations" according to Bosley. The British geezer spends a lot of time in Australia and New Zealand where he also features on the new album by Wellington drum'n'bass fiend, Agent Alvin.

Meanwhile, Katch says it was a "friend of a friend" who introduced the band to the Pharcyde. This friend of a friend was DJ EQ from Las Vegas whose hip-hop compilations from a few years ago featured emerging MCs from the West Coast including Xzibit and the Pharcyde.

Katch says, "We started talking hip-hop and he just sent us a huge list of who he could get - everyone from Jurassic 5 to Pharcyde. Things can happen, just like that."

Performance

*Who: Australian hip-hop band Resin Dogs

*Where and when: Tonight, The Studio, K Rd, Auckland

*Albums: Grand Theft Audio (2000), Hi Fidelity Dirt (2004)

*Also: Remix of single Gunshot Dub by Salmonella Dub is available at www.hydrofunk.com.au