8.

Black Ryder – Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride

They’re an Australian band associated with Brian Jonestown Massacre and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and they’ve played with both bands. They played with us in Australia and I was really taken by them. They’re very cinematic. There’s a whole new age of bands where rebellion is very important and they have these 60s and psychedelic influences and some introspection. The idea is that you’re not railing against The Man, you’re taking this thing inward, so you get into this rich, textural world of Eastern and psychedelia-influenced music. That area of transcendence and altered states of consciousness comes into the music and you get to that beautiful place where you get the traditional arm with things like Pink Floyd and the Stones and then the more cinematic areas where there’s an opiate quality to the music.

You’re very drawn in immediately here because of the space in the music and it leaves a really good feeling. I don’t feel like I’m in some piss-sodden, beer-soaked, violent environment here. It feels like I’m in some opiated, expanded space which is luxurious and gorgeously textural. It’s erotic and sensual and I think that’s a great place. It’s like that feeling when the day’s been washed away and you’re left with night.