Fierce Mild

The band’s name and imagery (the use of a swan) is a bit of an oxymoron, but we can’t help but love what they represent. Champions of the psych rock scene, Fierce Mild are heading our way for a few shows and you should give them some time. After all, they just gave you some pretty sound advice on potatoes in this interview.
Hey guys, thanks for taking the time to chat with Forte Magazine, how are you and what are you up to at the moment? 
Mental health issues aside, we’re pretty well. Touring, curating festivals and recording an album.
You guys are currently in the midst of touring, how has life been on the road so far? 
Perth was rad! We hit the Rosemount Hotel with Lanark, Antelope and Delay Delay and were completely flawed by the quality of every single one of them.
Any mishaps happen?
Smashed phone and a failed attempt at smoke-bombing from a restaurant. Not a bad way to kick off.
You guys hit stargazed this past weekend, which I think was a big one on many people’s calendars. How’d it go? 
We actually curated it! Along with visual artist Stephanie Peters. It was definitely one of our highest points so far as a band. We had the entire stage set up with about 10 TVs and four projection screens as well as a live VJ. We’re definitely going to do it again and make it a more permanent fixture of our sets.
We saw you shared the story about Kevin Parker (Tame Impala) not really feeling the psych rock scene in Australia, what are your thoughts on the matter?
Look, he was probably taken out of context, but the idea of there not being a psych scene here (or it only being a few people) is just not true, unless your definition of psych is very limited. Week in, week out, we meet new psych bands and there’s also a long history of psych here with acts like Gong for instance. Australia in general lacks a lot in the sort of mid-level industry. It’s hard to take the steps to get yourself to that next level. That’s basically why we decided to form Stargazed.
And what makes you connect so much with music in that genre?
The ability to explore new possibilities and ponder and reflect on everything. It’s a good genre for wandering around, mumbling to yourself and staring at the ground. This is necessary in a busy world.
Your music touches a bit on the prog rock sound as well, but let’s not get into too much pigeon-holing genre talk, what first got the band together?
Haha, we got labelled as ‘Pixies-Prog’ when we were in Perth. We thought that was pretty cool. We’re definitely ‘genre-wanderers’ but we’ll leave the labels to the librarians. We met through friends of friends, studying music and also through an ad on Melband. We said we wanted to bring experimental sounds and elements of avant garde musical approaches into an accessible format. That was sort of our pretext.
And was your sound something that came naturally or was there a little bit of deliberating between the group? 
We’re big on concepts. What we seem to do is take an element or experience of life and attempt to express it through the instrument or voice. This could be making drums sound like a typewriter ticking away at the back of a mind suffering an existential crisis, or a faint memory that slowly manifests itself into a sweaty schizophrenic nightmare, conveyed through a spacious delayed guitar. Each person’s layer forms part of a scene in that way. In this sense it’s deliberate, but it all came together very naturally. It takes time for this sort of approach to become cohesive.
Thanks again for having a chat with us, are there any last minute words of wisdom you’d like to share with our readers?
To keep potatoes from budding, place an apple in the bag with the potatoes.
When & Where: Music Man Megastore, Bendigo – August 15, Bridge Hotel, Castlemaine – August 21 & The Eastern Hotel, Ballarat – August 22