DANCE - MELBOURNE // VANDALISM
Club Smash to Smash Clubs Globally Andy Van, Kam Denny, and Cassie Van make a formidable trio. With tireless energy and incessant beats, Vandalism are back in Australia for a brief tour before they once again embark on a rampage of worldwide dance destruction. DAVID WILLIAMS spoke with Andy about where they’ve been… and where they’re going… Tell me about the world trip you’ve just been on? We’re about to goon another one in three weeks… The one just went was Korea, over to Paris, then down to Athens, over to Mykanos… did gigs in Korea and three gigs in Mykanos… it was crazy… the biggest club in Seoul and the biggest club in Mykanos as well…
getting out as much as we can, you know, we’ve done gigs in all different places around Australia and in New Zealand and… we just wanna try and facilitate that more and more – you know, we’ve done gigs in Miami, up in Manchester and Dublin, we just wanna continue pushing that angle, you know…
What did you learn from your time overseas? It took us seventeen hours to travel from Paris to Mykanos because [of ] the airlines and slight cancellations and engineer strikes in Paris and… it was crazy, I learnt that, and I learnt that the clubbers in Seoul love partying really hard. We had all these crazy, modular type kids screaming and jumping around on stage, getting thrown off stage… it was crazy. Mykanos was very sort of, tribal and crazy – it was an outdoor gig – both of them were outdoor gigs, really vibed, and lots of Aussies came along for the big Aussie angle as well, so it was a really successful tour.
Is this the busiest you’ve ever been with this act? It kind of equals when we did Madison Avenue with Shane – we did six months of touring, but that was a lot more concentrated. We were sometimes doing two gigs, three gigs in a night… doing a gig at ten o’clock at night, then at midnight, and another one at two or one at eleven, one at three, one at five so that was absolutely bananas! At the moment we’re trying to do one strong gig… twenty minute live show with Cassie bustin’ them out – it works amazingly well. Its fun, and it’s good because the club angle… when it was Madison Avenue it was a lot more pop orientated, so this time it’s a lot more club orientated, which I love.
Where are you about to go? I’m loving the list… We’re doing gigs in Poland, London, Russia, then across to North America and doing about twelve gigs in the ‘States and Canada. Does that kind of daunt you a little bit? No, no, we just jump in the deep end, man, it’s really good - we love it, the clubs are being hugely responsive. We’ve got a big eight thousand people party in Canada, got a really, really big party in LA that we find out about this week… big gigs, onward and upwards! You go from doing the huge gigs to the smaller gigs in clubs here in Australia – how do you approach the two things, is it much the same? It is much the same… If a room’s got five thousand people in it or three hundred people in it, it’s still people having a party, jumping around and having a good time – that doesn’t particularly bother us. We just like doing good gigs – that’s what our hope in life is to do as many good gigs as we can and get ourselves out there, because we don’t wanna do the same gig each week like a residency, we’re not really into that vibe. We’re into
What do you like more about the club environment rather than the pop environment? Pop is disposable; you know what I mean? So you hear it at that time and then you’re gone… pop artists from around the world are kind of seen around the world when they’re popular and then they go… it’s a shame, but it’s very disposable, the pop industry – and not that I wanted to do pop the first time around anyway, it’s just Madison Avenue became so big it became pop… with Vandalism it’s been a three year steady build in club land with remixes, productions… Never Say Never was number one in Australia for eight weeks, and number one on the Kool Kuts in the UK… Smash Disco has done top ten around the world on dance charts… and that’s really something I think that’s good for us… it’s got longevity, you know…
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…we had , razy all these c e kids yp modular t g and screamin nd on rou jumping a stage…
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VANDALISM PLAYS HOTEL SOHO, AUGUST 11. CATCH THE REST OF THIS INTERVIEW AT SAUCE.NET.AU. DAVID WILLIAMS
Do not miss your chance to see one of Australia’s finest live rock acts on tour:
British India
5 # ia r A W O N T U O s e v E Thi Presented by Triple J and Channel [V] N ation al Tour August 2008
Thursday 28 August LONNIES NIGHTCLUB Launceston Friday 28th & Saturday 29th August REPUBLIC BAR Hobart 16
SAUCE #74