First up, congratulations on your fifth studio album, Circus In The Sky. How is the buzz and excitement within the team with the album release and scheduled Bliss n Eso national tour?
BLISS: Yeah man, I’m pretty ecstatic about everything. This has been a long, long period of time where we really have put our heads together and done something creative, and it’s kind of at that point where all the hard work has come to fruition, and we are at that point where we are like…ok, we are ready to release this to the world, we have this crazy tour, we have Yelawolf out here to support, we have some amazing features on the album, and the songs themselves are artworks in themselves and they breathe life into me everyday, so I’m ecstatic man.
ESO: Im right in the same boat there with him…I’m just jolly in the background whilst his holding that captain flag. (Bliss lets out a large chuckle that vibrates throughout the room) It’s not only fresh for our fans who have been following us, or the fans who have just started to follow, [but] we needed some fresh music for ourselves, we need something new to say because since the last album, we have matured. Different things have happened in our lives, and we want to get it out there for the people. It’s a good feeling, it’s scary but kind of like a rollercoaster…like F*CK YEAH…(everyone laughs)
B: I know the first drop is going to be awesome, then we have the twist and everything coming up…it’s going to be crazy.
I have vivid memories of you guys playing in my home town of Newcastle in 2004. That’s just under a decade ago. Can you give us your take on the growth of rap music in Australia, and where you think it will be in 10 years from now.
B: The growth has been expediential, in all facets of hip hop, from the shows to the quality of the music, the releases, the amount of artists out there, the amount of awareness from the industry, the acceptance from the industry, the fact that it is now a fully blown genre and respected as a genre. It’s making sales, it’s making all the big wigs at the record labels go, oh what’s this [that] these guys have been honking on for, maybe we should listen to them now, you know what I mean… oh too late, there already off…
E: I think we have been asked this question all along the way, from our first interviews, “how do you see the scene at the moment in Australian hip hop, and what’s going on?” I remember we used to say its like a budding flower, or a new born baby… it’s very fresh and its got it’s own kind of new arrival, then about four to five years down the track, then I think we would say it’s got it’s nappies, it knows how to go to the f**k’n toilet (Bliss lets out a large chuckle), now it’s kind of painting all over the place, its got a bat in it’s hand saying lets go… and now I kind of picture it like a teenager that doesn’t have any kind of hat or t-shirt that defines who he is by a sponsor or anything, just kind of a kid standing there with a white shirt, black jeans, black shoes, quite confidently going, “we are here.”
B: Yeah…the kids are working fast out there…
E: Yeah, they’re making sure the production is top level, mixing and mastering, it’s like the game has stepped up to a much higher level.
B: the quality, you got M-Phases man, producing for big acts overseas. He’s one of the hottest producers in the world, at least bubbling up in the underground, people know his name now, it’s crazy and it’s great.
I get a large sense of pride in your achievements through your lyrics and production. It’s as if you guys have had this dream from the beginning and have never taken anything for granted. I sense a gritty and true nostalgic underdog story from your music and it’s inspiring. Would you say your longevity and success from the years of hard work is a driving factor lyrically behind Circus In The Sky?
B: The beauty about this fifth album for us is [that] we have a lot of stories that we have been sitting on for a long time, and this is the first time that we really felt like this is the right time to tell those stories, you know, and what your saying about all the nostalgia coming to fruition, the band growing and all that kind of stuff, it’s almost we had to get to that point and know it’s worth telling because people care, you know what I mean, and we are at that point now where people care, and want to hear how we got together, they want to hear some amazing stories of both us as individuals growing up…
E: I think it comes along with the previous albums we have done, where we had a lot of freestyles based tracks where we would throw the beat on and record for who knows how long, a couple of hours and then go back into it, then kind of see how crazy stuff was. With this one there was so much that we wanted to say that it was a less amount of that kind of freestyling, but it was more like, ok well, especially on ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is’, Bliss tells the story of how we met in high school. I’m telling you the story of me and my missus and our relationship at the moment. There is another track on there about Ozone, a break dancing dude that I met, so all these stories needed to be told, and they didn’t need to be thrown around as a freestyle. So I think you’re going to get a more concentrated and focused approach on topics on the Circus In The Sky album.
I want to know the process you go through to create an album from that blank canvas. From selecting the beats and production, through to creating concepts and topics for tracks, through to DJ Izm bringing his turntablism and digging/sampling skills to the table. Can you give the reader a little insight to your creative processes when creating a new album from scratch.
B: It usually starts with the beat, generally first as a rule of thumb, not always, but yeah usually the beat, so this time Eso was keen to get into the production, so me and him went down to work with Fizzle (M-Phases) very closely and we made a lot of beats together, the three of us. That was kind of the first step. Once we had a few kind of nice soundscapes or skeletons, we can start to talk about vibe. Some of its not even “so man, what do you want to talk about in this song?” You know, it’s not even as black and white as that. It’s let’s just start writing, on ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is’, I didn’t even think of anything. Eso just started writing something about him and his missus, and I was like, I don’t have a missus, how am I going to come on this, and I was like, this is a nostalgic track. I felt like he was talking about a few memories and things, and I was like, I’m going to come on this approach and it just worked. So sometimes it’s very organic how songs come together with topics. Sometimes one of us can lead, where we can kind of compliment, and sometimes we come together and really try and let it out and go, what are we feeling on this, what kind of vibe and sometimes the hook is the first thing, you know what I mean. We can get a rowdy hook which gives us this energy, lets do some fun wordplay and just have fun with it…so it’s a mixed bag.
E: Plus I think on the last couple of albums, we have always had one base where we were doing it. With this one you know, to add to the name Circus In The Sky, Bliss and myself have been down in Frankston on the beach in a kind of shack house, we have been up in the Gold Coast, and to Orange County in Los Angeles. So this album has been done everywhere with so many different emotions and kind of inspirations going on in the same time. I imagine it, like space. Have you seen Water for Elephants? You don’t have too really. Have you seen Dumbo? Imagine the Dumbo circus train [and] there is no rail, the rails are the stars connecting and aligning and it’s just going through space like a rollercoaster ride, every carriage has it’s own energy which is like every song which has it’s own characters, feel and emotions, and I think we didn’t stick to any certain style and I love the fact that our fan base trusts us, because we jump around from so many different styles from song to song, different tempo’s. They trust where we take that music, because it’s not the same. For Red Hot Chili Peppers for instance, love those c*nts, but you know when it’s a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. With us you don’t know what the f*cks going on. We just start rhyming and it’s like there’s those c*nts again…so they love the music because you never know where its going.
B: Especially on this album. With all of our albums I felt like we had a great depth of variety, with all the different vibes, all the things we are talking about, the concepts and everything, but this album in particular the concept was we wanted to create this circus in the sky. We wanted to bring in all these different genres, different feels and also different artists to work with and make this crazy record. That’s how we imagined it. It was literary our metaphor for what we wanted to do, and I really feel like with this album we have achieved that. It’s a real journey going through it.
You guys have NAS as a very special guest on ‘I Am Somebody’ from the new album. Can you fill us in on how that came about, and what it was like working with one of Hip Hop’s most respected MC?
E: Ok, I can remember going into like a second hand CD store. I didn’t know much about Hip Hop. Me and Bliss starting very young loving Ice Cube, Public Enemy and N.W.A, and when New York started bringing their style and NAS came about, you know, we were first on the boat with that c*nt as well…we were like this c*nt knows what he is doing. I remember finding his Illmatic CD for nine dollars in that second hand store and taking it and thinking like what a bargain, and later just thinking it was just godly. We’ve had the chance to be overseas at South by Southwest and actually witnessed NAS perform his first album Illmatic from the beginning through to the end. We had some serious respect for that lovely bastard, not bastard…lovely ahhhh c*nt. That MC is one of our favourites and we have loved him for a very long time.
B: Exactly man, I’m sure we all have those special moments when we first heard it. For me it was. Still to this day I remember the first time I heard a Nas song. It wasn’t even Illmatic, it was, It Was Written, and it was ‘The Message’, track two, which is still one of my favourite tracks, and it’s like I still remember the feeling I had. I was sitting in the car with a chick, I was 16 years old in America in High School, it was like the first time we got licenses and we were driving around with this new found freedom and then there’s this NAS song. Oh shit, it was just my soundtrack dude…it was the soundtrack of my life, so for me personally it was this amazing achievement and feeling to come full circle and be able to work with him, you know what I mean…it’s just crazy, I’m so stoked.
You have sampled Australian artists such as Angus and Julia Stone on Flying Colour’s ‘Eye of the Storm’, and Bluejuice on Circus In The Sky’s ‘Act Your Age’. What kind of response do you get from the artist?
E: There always super excited.
B: Tell them about the Angus and Julia Stone story, when they came down to the Metro.
E: When you’re talking about recreating someone’s track, you obviously have a great respect and love for, it’s always a little bit scary but it’s also a bit of a thrill to think about how that artist is going to feel about your recreation of their track. With Angus and Julia Stone, it was nothing but love, they even came down to one of the first shows at the Metro for that tour.
B: (jumps in excitingly) Julia was bloody crying, she came up to us after, and couldn’t believe it. It was the first time she had really seen it live and how it translated onto our fans. So it was a beautiful thing for them to see that, because they have their genre, and their style which is a quite a relaxed cool style, and then we bring in a little more with the Hip Hop vibe. [It] was something special to them, and it means the world to us, because obviously we love what they have done, too sample it in the first place, so for them to get the love back is awesome.
E: How it happens is weird. Me and DJ Izm saw a poster of Bluejuice, when we were very young, and they were both standing there in the poster with white undies on looking very peculiar towards the camera, and one of them is pulling the others pants down, and we thought these guys are very crazy… or there funny as all f*ck! and they were. We have seen them at a lot of festivals and partied with them afterwards and stuff like that. It was kind of easy to go OK, these guys would be cool guys to work with, and they came back with just…lets do this.
I’m impressed by DJ Izm’s role in the new album. The sample selection to the seemless cuts really infused with the rhythms and melodies of the beats. At what stage does his role come into its own? Are songs structured around his sample selection, or does he bring his creativity in more towards the end of the production process?
B: Yeah it’s like he is an instrument in the band. He has done amazing stuff in the past, but this is the first time I really felt he brought a whole different dynamic of DJ’ing and turntablism to the album. It’s not just straight up classic cuts, he is making melodies and complimenting things in parts. Like at the end of ‘Act Your Age’, where he does the laser cuts, its like f*cking Space Invaders sounds going off. And in ‘Jungle’, the patterns and… the f*ck, I just had a mental block (ESO jumps in, “the crabs the crabs”) Yeah, the crabbing, the crabbing, and to me that’s just something special and adds another dimension to the album.
How important is Community Radio’s role in the Australian music landscape, and what role has it played in Bliss n Eso’s long career?
E: It has been very important. This question makes me think of the quote we put up on Facebook from the Foo Fighters David Grohl…talking about X-Factors and American Idols and things like that, and I’m not putting anything down on any of them shows, go for it, get your talent out there, but I think the whole thing of starting from getting together and just giving it a go, whether it be in the garage or whatever…
B: And just be shit for a while! That’s it….that’s the f*cking way, everyone starts somewhere, you know what I mean.
E: Go to a local pub and play in front of five people, and know what it’s like to be on stage and the growth of hitting that, and I always think of it as exactly how a lot of Australian bands did it, like Jimmy Barnes when he started, it was all about hitting every single town, from bloody Lismore, to Dubbo, to Wagga Wagga, the in betweens, you know, because all of those towns are so thirsty for any artist to come through and even play. So we have got a lot of love over the course of our career by going rural and hitting these small towns and getting on Community Radio stations, and spreading the message as far as we can, get it to the people, let this message be heard.
B: Yeah, this question reminded me of one of our first Community Radio interviews ever. It was with Nick Toth, he was on some little Community station based down near Central, and it was everything. There could have been five people who heard that thing, but for us it was everything man, it was the sh*t. And everyone like FBI and 2SER, that’s where you come from. I remember when Mark Polo had the one Hip Hop show on 2SER. It had to do with Stealth Magazine. Anyways, it was a big deal back then to get on the air, and it was when we were just starting out, and to have your song played was awesome. It was an important aspect of coming up as an artist, I think it’s very important.
In terms of role models and mentors, who had the biggest influence on your career on a grassroots level?
B: I think coming up locally in Hip Hop, there wasn’t really any mentors or role models, man, we were on the frontline with a handful of other groups.
E: We were like the only ones doing it. Its like we were on a small cave on the side of the mountain, it was very outcast, we didn’t really know anyone else was into it, it was very much the minority, and now it seems to be a majority. Like we were saying before, the radio stations and the industry have accepted it more and it’s the cool thing, (in a funny voice) and we are like, it wasn’t when we started (everyone chuckles).
How important is the element of freestyle?
B: I personally think it’s a lot of fun. I don’t really freestyle much anymore but I do it too myself a lot. When we were young there were a lot of times, but it’s just a lot of fun for me now. Sometimes Macca (ESO) surprises the f*ck out of me when I’m beatboxing with his freestyles. He will come out with some outlandish shit that I would of never of thought off. I don’t know how the hell it popped into his head, and I often think, like m*therf*cker, have you been thinking about that idea before…or did that just literally just pop into your head.
E: I think it is absolutely detrimental. When we started it was so huge, actually, f*ck the word detrimental, it needs to happen. You can not be an MC and had a past or still be involved and not freestyle. Bliss and myself, when we were younger it was all day. We had sessions where it went for like four to five hours, you know like that kind of training is priceless. It wasn’t like going around to a friend’s house for twenty minutes and kicking a rap over a Tupac beat, it was like we were stuck together, and we would just ride it out. If we were going to the next show, we would be freestyling in the back of the car with beats playing. You need to do that. I find it to be mind exercise and you train your brain to think faster. It does take a while, you cant just go, alright drop it. It’s really healthy, you know, just do it with your mates and train your brain to learn what words rhyme with what words, but you don’t have to be a freestyle fanatical crazy c*nt to write a song.
How does it feel to break the U.S. market and what is it like touring the U.S.?
B: It’s incredible. We are going to be going back for another full run this year and also hitting the whole of Canada, as we have only really done the west coast before, but it’s incredible man, and you know, when you think about five or six years ago how daunting that whole thing was, this whole curtain was there and we just didn’t know what was there, you didn’t know anyone, you had no contacts, how are you going to get your music out there, and now these connections are coming, you know what I mean and suddenly you’ve got avenues appearing in front of us. It’s a combination of everything, the momentum of what we have been doing for years. The music has also really helped with that, its just awesome, and to go to another country and have f*ckin hardcore Bliss and Eso fans in Idaho, you know what I mean, (everyone chuckles) what the f*ck!!!
E: Through the Rockies we had two tour buses of college/university students from different campuses following us from show to show to show, and it was just like F*CK. It’s a reassurance that the message is that deep, that solid, and that positive that it can travel across seas and hit these people that hard that they are willing to travel with it and support like they’re waving a flag. It was amazing, because there was a big question mark the first time going over, well this is where the culture was founded and how are they going to think of us coming over, but it was nothing but huge arms, just a warm embrace because we stuck to the craft, Jonathon’s on the beatboxing, I’m freestyling on stage, DJ Izm is actually cutting, like they have seen it but that was back in the day.
B: 95% of the touring acts don’t even have a real DJ anymore and no one knows what the f*ck beatboxing is. They might know what it is, but no one does it…it’s crazy, it’s like the foundation to us, and they’re like what do you mean? And were like f*ck really!
What do you have in store for us on your upcoming Australian tour? Can we expect to see the greatest Australian Hip Hop tour to date?
B: We have got some pretty amazing ideas in store. We can’t spill the beans on anything in the touring capacity, but just the fact that we are about to do a tour in July and we have Yelawolf supporting, to me that’s an honour, you know what I mean because I look up to that guy and I think he is an awesome artist and to have him come to our country and play before us is incredible, and also to have other people looking at that it’s a crazy thing…It’s like here is this Australian group who have Eminem’s dude who is a killer MC.
E: And on the other hand you have PEZ, who is a, you know, a beautiful f*ckin Australian MC who is doin his thing at the moment as well, so there is this beautiful balancem
B: We could be adding one more crazy F*ck to it, but we can’t say, were not sure yet.
E: But it’s always been about the music. It has to be strong, for the show to be, for us to be…and to have this strong music behind us from this new album. It’s not only going to be a pleasure to do it for the first time but also fresh for the crowd and the fans. And they will be like yeah these c*nts are back…this is Bliss and Eso’s new shit but it’s the same cool shit!!! (Everyone cracks up laughing)
Interviewer: OneMike
Bliss n Eso performs at the Enmore Theatre, Sydney, on Thursday July 4, 2013, and Friday July 5, 2013. Circus In The Sky will be released Friday June 28, 2013, through Illusive.