First off, who came up with the awesome name – “The Golden Awesome?”
Our name just came out of somewhere. We wanted to have
a name that also doubled as advertising; to give people who haven't heard us
some idea of what kind of music we are trying to make.
Your music is very
unique and different, who has had a big influence on your sound?
The biggest influences on our music have been all of
the fantastic bands we have played with and that our friends are in. Groups
like The Orchestra of Spheres, Beastwars, Detrytus, Grass Widow, Coasting, T54,
Terror of the Deep, Heka, Autumn Splendor. It is a long long list. Also the
great local bands we would go and see when we were youngsters.
You were gigging
around New Zealand for a while and then notice started to happen, how
supportive is the music community in your home country to new bands?
The NZ music community that we are involved with in
NZ/USA is real good. We wouldn't exist without the support of our friends. And
especially the support of those people who really know how to get things done,
like Brett & Fiona at M'Lady's Records, Blink and Matt Scobie
Does New Zealand
have any type of influence on your work?
As New Zealanders it would be impossible for it not to.
CMJ was a big event
for you last fall, what was that experience like?
CMJ was a great opportunity for us. The NZ music
showcase organised by Gary Fortune and the New Zealand Music Commission was a
really well organised and promoted event. Many thanks to them for putting that
on. It was also a good opportunity for us to meet some of the other cool NZ
bands playing at the moment, like Princess Chelsea, Popstrangers and Street
Chant.
One of the showcases
that you played was with a group of New Zealand artists; do you look at that as
country camaraderie or competition?
If it was a competition there would have been prizes.
You just released
your debut album, what was that experience like making that?
Really good. Our guitarist Jo Contag did all of the
recording and mixing, so he may have a different answer...The album was then mastered by Warn Defever at UFO and
pressed by M'Lady's Records.
Was making your
debut harder than you thought?
We have all played (and play) in other bands who have
recorded before, so the actual process of recording was something we were all
very familiar with. If anything it was probably easier that we thought as it
was all done 'in house.'