Baz Ravish — DIY BABES ZINE

There's More to a Gig Than the Sound

Performance is the key to engagement, as Baz Ravish has learned this from fellow underground punk bands. They want to give the audience all the energy they want to return from the pit.

Baz Ravish is: Tom Gosling (guitar, vocals), Hudson Taig (guitar, keys, and vocals), Angus Moller (bass), Otis Namrell (guitar) and Carlo Fisher (drums).

By Billie Estrine

Fri. Aug 9 2024

Photo via Baz Ravish

Where are you all from?

Carlo: I'm from Lismore.

Tom: I'm from Byron. We're from the Northern Rivers collectively—different towns.

Tom: What's your hometown, sir?

Hudson: Oh, that's hard. Evans Head is where I left off for Melbourne. But Nimbin, shout out there, too, because I spent most of my years there.

Tom: He used to run a show on the Nimbin radio station.

Hudson: Yeah, when I was 13, [it was] on the community radio there. They let me have a radio show.

That's awesome. What was it called?

Hudson: Accidentally on Purpose was the show name. 102. 3 FM. Shout out to them.

What inspired you all to start making music?

Carlo: My dad's a drummer, and my mom plays guitar. They were in a band through their twenties and thirties. I was around it, so I might as well.

Tom: When I was young, probably in year one, [so] seven. I saw a TV ad for Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown and bought the CD. It was my first CD, and then I was like, "I want to be in a band." It's not the greatest album, but it's my most nostalgic one.

Hudson: I got indoctrinated by my parents a bit. My dad played drums in Melbourne. My mum loved music, and [I] gravitated towards music. I ended up tinkering on the keyboard and starting to play the guitar.

When did Baz Ravish form, and where?

Tom: It formed in 2019, maybe the end of 2018, in Lismore at Carlo's house. It originally was a band called The Nine Elevens with a guy named Banjo. That fizzled out, and then Wally was our first name formed out of the ashes, named after Carlo's dog.

Carlo: We changed that because we were like, "That's a bit corny."

Hudson: Sounded like an old guy.

Tom: We've got a song about that called "Ode to Wally (The Nine Elevens)," which is the opener for the new album that's coming out.

Carlo: It was just a band with friends; it had eight people.

Hudson: Yeah, it had 12 evolving members.

Carlo: We ended up taking it more seriously.

Tom: Yeah. It was a Brian Jonestown Massacre rip-off for a little while.

Hudson: It took a few formations to become Baz.

Tom: We had eight, then three, and now we've got five.

Where does the name Baz Ravish come from?

Tom: It comes from an episode in the latter seasons of The Community. Matt Berry plays a con man in this episode, and he's like, "My name is yadda yadda yadda, AKA Baz Ravish." [The name] starts high in the alphabetical order, and it sounds cool; that's the name.

Hudson: It was not taken.

Tom: Yeah. I googled it, there's fucking nothing.

Now there's you.

Carlo: No competition.

Tom: No search results.

Soon.

Carlo: That's right.

How do the towns in New South Wales where you all grew up influence your music?

Tom: Big time, [there's] a lot of psych out there in Byron and Mullum and the towns surrounding that, [and] a bit of dad rock.

Hudson: The DIY culture back home is a big influence. It's on a lower level [here. Back home, there are] so many buskers on the street, 'cause it's lots of artsy fartsy towns. It really embraced people being creative everywhere. Heaps of performances are free to go to. It won't be amazing musicians, but it'll be a great time. Those DIY events back home [are] pretty cool.

Carlo: [There was a] constant amount of stuff going on all the time, which was great. I didn't want to make music like it was made there. I wanted to do something different because there's lots of psychedelic and that's cool. [There's] singer-songwriter-esque stuff, [but] I wanted to make something a bit heavier.

Weirdly, there was a lot of metalcore in Lismore. A bunch of bands, especially from the university there, formed and just played metalcore and tech metal. Sometimes, at one of the hotels called The Gollan, which doesn't have music anymore, they have an upstairs area, and twice or three times a year, they'd have stacked lineup shows of metalcore bands. People come up from Canberra and Melbourne bands [come too].

Hudson: It's a niche little town on the northern rivers. You guys played at The Gollan a few times, didn't ya? Before I joined.

Tom: Yeah.

Hudson: Queen Elizabeth was there.

Carlo: She stayed there in the fifties, and they haven't gotten over it.

Do you know why they don't have live music there anymore?

Carlo: It flooded back in 2017, and it fizzled out as well.

Tom: It flooded in 2021 as well.

Hudson: Toward the end of us leaving, at least Lismore was struggling, even prior to the flood, and [not] channeling the right resources for the music scene there because [there] was so much potential but not enough follow through. It's been cool to see that blowing up back home recently. 'Cause people are getting eyes on the right things in Lismore, Liminal, and all the cool people down there.

Tom: Liminal is a band from Lismore that has been a big influence on me. Not my music particularly, but the way I approach being [in] a band, they are big hustlers. They put on festivals, and they're 100 percent all the time. They're really prolific, doing lots of things. They do a TV show.

Hudson: They're massive for the Lismore scene.

Tom: Yeah, I watch them to figure out how to do stuff.

When was your introduction to the Naarm underground music scene?

Tom: Probably when I started getting into King Giz. Then Flightless Records, and off of that, Amyl and the Sniffers were coming up at that time. This is probably 2017. That was when I started noticing it. I thought there was way more psych than there is here cause it's all punk.

Carlo: Probably a similar time I started hearing about Amyl and more of the bands from here. It was a really strong scene, but not necessarily in the mainstream yet. Also, there were bands like Drunk Mums and DUMB PUNTS.

Tom: They came from that back home and moved down here.

Carlo: I remember our friends always playing music. We first had direct contact with it when we moved here.

Tom: It was much different than I thought.

Carlo: We moved in 2021.

Hudson: We're definitely not the first people to have friends and influences come down here. We all gravitate towards [it]. I was piggybacking off a lot of my mates, like you guys and everyone else [we were] listening to. Then, all of a sudden, this influx of Melbourne stuff started coming through. It pointed us in that direction.

How does the underground culture differ between Melbourne and Lismore in terms of DIY and generally?

Carlo: There are actually people [here].

Hudson: Yeah, a thousand percent.

Carlo: There are people really committed all the time, and it feels like more of a subculture. In Lismore, people are playing music to play music for the fun of it. It's more stratified; people are doing their own thing. Whereas you come to Melbourne, people stick together much more, support each other, and try to create a more specific scene. That's also a matter of however many million people here, and there are 30,000 people there, and most of those 30,000 people are over the age of 50.

Hudson: And they have four kids.

Tom: Sonically, there's a lot more synth punk here. That's a big trend I've noticed in the past two or three years. Back home, seeing a synth player in a band was rare. Let alone two or three bands.

Carlo: It's small-town shit. That's the biggest thing. Everything you hear about a small town being more closed off and less. It is not behind the times, but its own little environment and not many people are stepping out of it. Whereas in Melbourne, they're people bringing influence and ideas from all over the place.

Hudson: As an artist, you have the possibility to network here.

Tom: There's also funding; the venues can pay out.

Hudson: There are venues here to play. You can only play at the two locals so many times.

Tom: They're not fond of punks that are gonna break glasses. They want people playing dad rock music so that the oldies come and buy wine.

Carlo: There are underground parties that went off in the DIY scene. People would just be like, "I've got a fucking property, and no one lives within two kilometers of me.

Hudson: You're never going to get shut down. You're not going to have randoms coming up because you don't fucking know the place.

Carlo: You'd have 400 people there and put on shows; it was very much EDM dance music.

Tom: Bush doof.

Hudson: That whole thing back home where it's off the back of that, Aquarius movement in the 60s and those kids staying in the Northern Rivers areas. It's a bunch of hippies, free-thinking people. Those joints just went. They were the place to be, rather than a hardcore show or rock music.

Tom: There was one spot, Howl & Moan, Mario's Record Store in Byron. They'd do these shows on Tuesday nights. He was limited because there was [a] French restaurant next door that hated him. I remember one-time Drunk Mums showed up and did a free show, and it was packed to the rafters. People were standing on the record shelves and on the desk. There were so many people in this tiny space. That was a really memorable moment. Fuckin Mario, put it on. He was a legend.

How did the band become enmeshed in the scene during the first few years you guys were here?

Tom: It didn't. We didn't network enough and we didn't have an image yet. When we first played, people would come because they were like, "Who's this new band?" After the first couple of shows, that new effect wore off, and we were scratching at nothing for a little while. This year, we started to think a lot more about the band's image and where we're going. We honed the lineup.

Carlo: Yeah, trying to find people to play with. There was more thought about the sound of everybody as a whole and the lineup being more consistent.

Tom: We still don't have a name for our sound, but you can tell there's punk, psych, and rock all thrown into one pot. It's all starting; the ball's rolling now, and it's growing.

Hudson: It took the first year to try and land on our feet, even if we didn't. [We had to] get to know the scene before even participating in it properly. You have to become aware of your surroundings before you can jump right in. Baz was playing a fair few shows, and we had a lot of mates who had moved down with us and were coming and supporting us. That definitely [was] getting us through those times where we were having [to] get our name known at the venues. See how to book these places out in the West and the East.

It was good to have people here that we knew for sure when we first landed to get the ball rolling for us. It's taken us a year or two to properly get our heads screwed on how to market ourselves, network, and start pushing this thing properly and from all those angles.

Do you do all the graphics and visual artwork?

Tom: The new stuff has mostly been me. The album artworks have all been done by Lockie Harley, a tattoo artist in Footscray. He's a brilliant guy, and he does not ask for enough money. He deserves more. We always overpay him what he asks. He's a really nice guy. Other than that, I learned how to do graphic design this year and started doing the posters, doing that black and red theme that we've got going on and doing those black and white photos that Sarah Sez does for us. That's become our new image for the moment.

Carlo: You've also been getting into gig photography and making posters for others.

Tom: Yeah, it's a new skill I've added to my belt, and I'm enjoying it.

Hudson: I always find I'm scrolling on Instagram, and I'm like, "Oh holy shit, that post is so cool. Or damn, those pics are sick. Who took them?" You're constantly inundated by really cool shit here to try and reach.

Has the punk scene in Naarm influenced Baz Ravish's sound?

Tom: Yes, but not heaps. Not specifically the Naarm punk scene. Not so much the sound, the performances [more]. I watch Billiam, and I'm taking fucking notes 'cause he is a great performer. Other people like The Antics, SPLIT SYSTEM, The Unknowns, Drunk Mums. They're all fucking great.

We're taking notes on their performance because I'm comfortable with how our sound has turned out. [Still], our performance and engaging people visually on the stage [are] really important to set yourself apart from the other bands. My favorite bands, King Giz always had crazy projection visuals, The Osees, John DeWise, swinging his head around, flicking the guitar around, doing all sorts of weird shit and that's really important to cut through.

Carlo: It's the performance aspect the most. 'Cause we didn't put on a good show when we started playing here. We played the songs, and then you go out and see these bands give out the energy they want to get back from the crowd.

Hudson: Not only is the music good, the performance is fucking sick.

Carlo: It's more than listening to a recital. I've taken that on board more and think about what I'm giving out while playing.

There's also sound influence; even if it's hard to pinpoint what it is, it makes it in. You go out, see these shows, and listen to this music. You're gonna get these ideas popping up in your head, at least subconsciously, that will begin to influence [how] you write, what you think would be sonically interesting, or even [how] we produce and mix stuff.

Hudson: That's the great thing about being here, too. There's so much stuff happening; whatever way you're leaning into at the moment in time, they're [a] stepping stone. There'll always be something, even if it's a ska band. You're gonna be able to find a fucking sick ska band here and be like, "Holy shit, you can do that."

Carlo: We've got no choice [because] we're immersed in it.

Has the scene's community in Naarm impacted Baz Ravish's ability to grow as a musician and people?

Tom: It's starting to. We're starting to get to know people who are embracing us, and that's positive to see. We were batting around in the dark, and now there were some hands on our shoulders pushing us.

Carlo: We've found where we stand as well.

Tom: It took a while to find the right people because there are plenty of idiots. You can't take everyone's advice.

Carlo: Also, we've got to establish ourselves, where we could be idiots.

On a personal level, I [also] made friends [who] were more involved in the scene before I became involved in it. I wasn't just putting myself out there or my band out there immediately. I ended up meeting these people who work at Last Chance, or The Tote. Or they're so involved that they go to all these shows. Eventually, I'll start seeing them around.

Tom: The best part is [that] they're the most accepting and tolerant people, and they're not bigoted. It's really nice here.

Hudson: We've [found] our voice more on personal issues that we believe in, which has been cool. There are great examples of that here. It's really inspiring that people can stand up for [the] shit that they believe in and portray it through their music.

Also, there's a fair few fuckwits around here because there's so many fucking people. You're bound to run into one. So we've had a few dealings that have not been so favorable, just with interactions with people. It's ultimately a growing lesson for us, too; it's like, "Alright, sweet, that interaction didn't work, we gotta be more careful about that." It's been good for us to be able to see these positive influences and find our voice and use it in the moment when shit's not so good.

Tom: I realised at some point that you need to be careful who you play with. That stuff does come out of the woodwork. It does matter, and I've noticed a couple of bands [that'll] wait to know which side of the line you stand on before they accept you and will play with you. This needs to happen because there's a lot of bad shit in the world.

How do you choose the bands that play on the lineups with you when you're playing a headline show?

Tom: We try to play with bands we've seen because that's important. You want to know how they perform, how much of a crowd they pull, who's in the lineup. It's really important 'cause we're an all male band that we get lineups with fems on there. We've been trying hard to stick to that as a rule of thumb. If there are any signs of bigoted thinking, "See you later."

Hudson: Being a good person is a good thing, too; we'll [often] have personal interactions with these bands before we reach out. So we'll be able to get at least a first impression of "These people seem pretty cool" or follow them on Instagram for a while, or they'll reach out to us at a gig. We'll have a bit of a connection and be like, "Oh, hey, got this show coming up." It's hard because you get some gig offers, and it's hard to say no sometimes. But it's also important to pick your sound and your people.

On your upcoming album, Severed Heads, did you try to explore specific themes lyrically?

Tom: It ended up being like that. All the songs are pretty old except for Hudson's ones, which are the newest. They were written last year or the year before. Some of the songs, like the title tracks "Severed Heads," "Pretty Name," and "Ode to Wally," we've been playing for four years.

They all have a theme of severance, leaving something behind, or trying to separate yourself from something. That's why I chose "Severed Heads" to be the title track. We wrote those songs when we were leaving home, and when I split from a friend group, our band dissolved and turned into another band. That was another cut tie. There are a few songs that have this theme of burning bridges and leaving stuff behind.

Hudson: There's also that more existential thing, at least that I pick up in a lot of your lyrics. You're 18, 19, writing, voting, doing these big decision-making things [and they come up in] Severed Heads, and coming to terms with what we're entering. Big questions come up in adolescence.

Tom: There were a lot of things going on when I wrote Severed Heads. There were bushfires in our hometown; the sky was red for weeks because there was so much smoke. Hudson's town was almost wiped out. Then the floods happened, and there was all sorts of stuff happening with Indigenous rights at the time. Dante's Inferno really inspired me, and I was imagining all these people that are behind this shit for decades and decades are all gonna burn in hell.

Hudson: That was a big thing with the fires, too; there hadn't been any Indigenous input into how to keep these national parks from becoming tinderboxes. Which they were because the white people [are in control].

Carlo: You realize that this is a manifestation of inaction.

Tom: Australian bush is meant to thrive in the fire, and that was the complete opposite because it wasn't being taken care of. Another significant influence was the experience of going to the snow. I went to Mount Perisher for the first time, and I went to Jindabyne, and I went to so many shops and people living there; I even called the park rangers, but no one could tell me whose land we were on. That was stark from where we come from because we do a welcome to country every time we had an assembly in school. The elders would come and talk at our assemblies, [but] this place couldn't even say whose land it was. It was a very stark difference, and that's where I came up with the idea of Severed Heads.

Can you tell me about your creative writing and recording process and how it has evolved since your EP Just Dying?

Tom: The EP consisted mostly of songs I wrote before the band was formed. Now Carlo writes most of the riff, and I'll write lyrics over them. Hudson also produces stuff on his own, and we bring that into the band and add our flavor. I can't play the guitar properly at the moment. So I rely on Carlo and Otis to bring me stuff and Hudson. I add my thing on top.

Carlo: This is the first time we've had the recording process close to the writing process. Usually, the songs, ideas, and things we want to hit in the song are well-established. 'Cause we'll write the song, bring the ideas together, form the structure, then rehearse the fuck out of it for a year and a half. We play it and play it and play it. That has come into the release of this album.

The next thing we're writing and trying to record now is much more immediate. We recorded the ideas for a song called "Don't Wanna Die." Tom showed us the song a month ago, and now we've got [it] locked down. Of course, there's still more to do.

Tom: Yeah, definitely taking inspo from King Giz and wanting to be as prolific as possible.

Carlo: Yeah, put out the ideas. 'Cause you ruminate on them too much, and they lose meaning for yourself. How can you create something that you think will engage with people if it doesn't engage with you anymore? 'Cause you've heard it 80 times in the last two weeks.

Hudson: Each recording and releasing of an album is a big learning lesson for every person who's working on it. We've been able to dial in our process more with the last recordings. I wasn't there for much of the recording on Just Dying.

Carlo: It took us a year and a half to record five songs.

Hudson: Well, it's the debut thing; that's how it's gonna work. We've also kept that DIY attitude; we're getting more skills at recording ourselves. So we're getting better at doing it. We can do it quicker. We don't have to fuck around in a studio for a day before we can record a track like that. Plus, we have more mates here with good knowledge, good gear, and space. So it's been a help.

Tom: Shout out [to] Glauber from Dollhouse Studios. He's helping us record the next album after Severed Heads.

Carlo: He's been so lovely about it, very helpful, and patient. [He let] us use all this equipment. We can't thank him enough because he's letting us learn, which is great.

Check out Baz Ravish on Instragram: https://www.instagram.com/baz.ravish/#

Billie Estrine

Naarm/Melbourne, Australia

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