Live N Local Festival invites you to head southside and say goodbye to winter with an eight-day celebration of music throughout the City of Port Phillip. Running eight days from 24 to 31 August, the Festival boasts a diverse range of free events spanning nearly every musical genre across southside suburbs.
On the first Sunday (August 25), all ages can join Live N Local x FreeZA for a free concert featuring Approachable Members of Your Local Community, yergurl and Tamara and the Dreams. We chat to the good humans from Approachable Members of Your Local Community ahead of the show.
What drew you to the music industry?
We’ve been playing together on and off for a few years now, having all met in school. We love music, we love each other, and we love playing music with each other. Nearly a couple years ago now we put out our first single, which we had a whole heap of fun putting together. Others seemed to connect with it, which was cool, and after playing a few shows we became hooked – ever since then we’ve been doing our best to push ourselves and our sound.
Who are your main musical influences?
Steely Dan. Stevie Wonder. Janet Jackson. Kylie Minogue. Coldplay. Guy Berryman. Chris Martin. Jamiroquai. D’Angelo. ABBA. Vanessa Amarosi. This is a long diverse list and that’s the way we like it.
What does the typical process of creating a song look like?
For our first EP, we set up a studio in the Korman home and quite organically worked on a few different ideas, fleshing them out and building up sections until they started to form a shape. We pulled out a whole range of live instrumentation, including a horns section. It was a moment in time.
For the coming EP, we’ve been trying to push a more ambitious pop sound, and have nurtured an intimate relationship with our now good friend, ‘The Synth.’ Each of us worked on a stack of ideas until we were sitting on something like 50 or 60. After a few sessions of taking each one in, we started pulling out the good parts, and some of them naturally started mashing together. After fleshing them out in to more defined ideas, we took them to Gab Strum (Japanese Wallpaper) who deploys his genius and the transformative power of the sin wave to make our ideas in to songs for your ears.
Do you collaborate with others? How do you find the collaborative process?
We’ve had awesome opportunities to work with some really cool artists over the past couple of years whose music we froth. Late last year, we put out ‘Only Friend’ with Tamara and the Dreams, and earlier this year with Heaps Good Friends we put out ‘One I Need.’ Reflecting on the writing process with Heaps Good Friends, they took our ideas and added a perspective on songwriting which was completely fresh to us.
We might even have a couple more writing and production collaborations coming in the next couple months!
What advice would you have for someone starting out in music?
Follow your passions, but don’t stop the other passions, and maintain the three key ingredients – hydration, exercise and guilt.
What is on the Horizon for Approachable Members of your Local Community?
We’ve got a horizon which is starting to look like a beautiful 6:30am St Kilda Sunrise – and no, we don’t mean the alcoholic drink. We’re about to start releasing singles from our upcoming EP, ‘Love Thy Neighbour,’ including some really exciting collaborations with new and old friends.
For the full 2019 lineup and event details, visit livenlocal.com.au
