Soaking up a different kind of sound

By SCOTT KARA


This is the sad tale of three Australian youngsters from Wollongong. As teenagers, stuck in their bedrooms listening to the Cure and Jean Michel Jarre records while the other kids were listening to grunge, they didn't have a chance.

That is until they started making dance music - a blend of chunky house, new romantic noodlings, and a smattering of Duran Duran pop.

Then, midway through this year, the three lads from Infusion found themselves performing at 2am in front of 10,000 writhing Danes at the Roskilde music festival. A couple of weeks before, they had played the famous British music festival Glastonbury. The trio - Manuel Sharrad, Frank Xavier and Jamie Stevens - had made it.

"I was never really a very social person when I was growing up," says Stevens on the phone from Byron Bay where Infusion has just played a gig. "I spent a lot of time in my bedroom reading and drawing. My childhood was a little bit lonely - but that was my own choice."

"In all, we weren't the most popular kids at school since your popularity usually depends on what music you're into. Everyone else was into the grunge stuff.

"I was just looking round for lots of acid house compilations, and stuff like the Beloved, My Bloody Valentine, and we were still listening to things like Jean Michel Jarre, and the Cure, New Order, and I slowly got into my older sister's record collection and discovered that maybe Duran Duran and Pseudo Echo weren't all that bad after all."

The Centro club, where they're playing in Auckland tomorrow, is a long way from the Glastonbury festival. So how did a little known dance act from Australia make that bill?

"The way it happened for us was a whole series of events starting a few years ago by eating a lot of bread and water to save money to pay for our first tour to London, New York and LA. The more gigs you start playing overseas, the more other organisers and promoters are going to notice that."

Infusion played at this year's Miami Winter Music Conference - an annual gathering of the who's who of dance music - where the organisers of Glastonbury saw them and invited them on to the bill.

"You always actually dream of attending Glastonbury, let alone performing at it," he says.

The world has grown used to disposable dance music so it is novel to come across an act that is conscious of not sounding dated in six months.

Infusion's formula is simple: "We try to concentrate on the music and just write good songs."

One of those songs is their cheeky single, Girls Can Be Cruel. It snared them a record deal, made it on to a compilation by globetrotting DJ Pete Tong, and is easily the album's most catchy track.

"When you start thinking, 'Oh, I want to make this house track, or this breaks track', it's going to sound pretty nasty in about a year or two. It's very easy to get caught up in the technology and that's one thing we're aware of, not getting too tricky with the latest technology because it might not be so obvious at the time, but a year or two later you can almost pin-point when those tracks were made. We wanted to make an album that we'll be proud of in 10 years."


Performance

* Who: Infusion

* Where: Centro, Wyndham St, Auckland city

* When: Tomorrow night

* Also: Album Six Feet Above Yesterday is out now.