The Herd Interview
Circa 2006
In 2001 the core members of Elefant Traks decided that they would do something different for the labels compilation release. Instead of getting everyone to submit individual tracks of their own, they decided to collaborate and write an album together. The result was Australia’s most potent musical party of social pundits. Bassist Rok Poshtya recalls the conception of this brainchild, today known as The Herd.
“There were a few people, some of which aren’t a part of the label anymore, who all went to school together and early uni, including Traksewt (producer) and Bezerkatron (vox), who decided to start this label and put out a compilation called Cursive Writing, after about a year of talking about it all. That had one of the first Ozi Batla (vox) tracks and one of the first tracks that Urthboy (vox) did as well. If you listen to it now it’s kind of funny. It was home studio recording stuff. All of the levels were strange, abstract I suppose” he shares joyfully. Unkle Ho (producer) and Sulo (producer/guitar) were doing Drum n Bass stuff, it kind of goes all over the place”.
“Green, naïve and burn it,” are the first thoughts that pop into Urthboy’s head when probed on the Cursive Writing compilation. After the giggles subside the deeper answer gives way. “I think these things are always the result of a bunch of people coming together and trying to do something, cause you know it’s fun working as a solo artist or working in your own capacity, but when you are able to bounce of people that actually have a vested interest in creating something, shit happens that you never would have expected, and generally the unexpected results are the most satisfying,” he assures me.
“This last album was the first album that we did not as just a bunch of tracks,” Poshtya informs me. “Some of the tracks on the previous album were collaborations between, if you look at the album, some of the tracks have eight or nine symbols on it. But The Sun Never Sets was an album we wrote from start to finish as a band. That’s why there is a lot of singing on it,” he explains, continuing that, “rather than a producer go off to just make a beat, they’d make the bones of a beat, then we would add bass lines and guitar lines, and so forth, everyone added their layers, as we moved towards a more cohesive song writing formula.
“Each song has a particular theme to it, it’s ‘proper song writing’, which is kind of funny because this was never a proper band, the first album just got to a point from, a bunch of guys mucking around at a holiday house on the Central Coast, to when Scallops got on the radio and all of a sudden we were like ‘oh wow there is this thing called The Herd that people know about, lets go play in Melbourne’. We all of a sudden had to make a band out of the people that wanted to play”.
Not the conventional way to start a band but an interesting construction none the less I remark to Postya.
“That’s why it has been such an interesting ride, it’s just been a matter of slowly, slowly. It’s almost like you’ve taken a step in a direction and then you realise what direction you’re going in, rather than it being directed. But offcourse as we go along there’s things like your music-craft, the way you do things and how you do them gets better, you don’t always realise how much your music craft improves. You don’t necessarily become a better musician, it’s like the difference between lyrics, mic control, and projection. Your lyrics can always be amazing but the better you get on stage the more your message shines through”.
The story telling aspect of their music is what sets The Herd apart from mere posers. All three MCs do a fantastic job of creating a perspective for the listener of their subject matter’s existence. I asked Urthboy how he puts himself in other people’s shoes and what he actually envisages in his third eye when he writes and performs.
“I think it’s a bit dangerous when you try and assume another character,” he poses before continuing, “I think there is a great amount of exploration there, and you can kind of come up with a unique take on things, but you also really skirt that fine line of pretentiousness, because it is very hard to understand what it is like in somebody else’s shoes unless you’ve lived it. I guess we try and draw from our own personal experiences as much as we can. I think that everybody’s take on a given issue is pretty unique, and it kind of validates everyone being able to speak on things they care about, because their take on it is different to everyone else. So it’s a combination of trying to be as honest and genuine as you can on a given issue, and that’s why I guess as an artist you don’t always present answers, you more often throw up questions, because it is not the role of the artist to be the therapist for people and to give people resolution, it’s the role of the artist to stimulate thought and hopefully make people either enjoy themselves or start thinking about something”.
That was a statement that has been rolling around in my head ever since Urthboy presented it to me, and I think it is a great philosophy for all artists to aspire to, as these ideals go a long way into attracting groups of likeminded individuals. Having faith in oneself and ones ideals, attracts the faith of others that can see your true worth. In a way this is a form of marketing, as it can gain peoples attention and hold it.
It all comes down to whom has the best marketing, in order for a society and or individual to choose a prevailing ideology. Music, by definition, is an ideological tool. Why else would it be used in advertising jingles? Anyone remember Joe Cocker’s Unchain My Heart being used to flog government reforms last election?
Most of these songs were not created to hit the top of the charts; they were created to sell something (the aforementioned excluded offcourse). In The Herd’s case, no flashy gimmick was needed to sell the band. Their music alone was all the marketing they needed.
“It’s kind of funny to be in this position we’re doing what we always did,” reflects Poshtya. “Over the last five years there has been this gradual increase. I don’t know what would have happened if we just had been signed to a major music label after a playing a handful of gigs, or maybe a hundred gigs around the traps, and then get signed and all of a sudden have an album on a major label, and then have sold maybe five or ten thousand records or whatever. I don’t know how that would have sat with us, and I don’t know if we would have been the same band if that had ever happened, not that it has ever been close to happening. And that is the thing, I guess that’s why it feels like it hasn’t been marketed even though it has, I mean we advertise and put up posters letting people know about shows and new releases, which is one of the reasons that we have had good shows and fairly good sales on our releases. The way that it has organically happened everything has grown slowly, slowly… every release we put out just sells that little bit more and every tour attracts just a few more people and I don’t know, I wish it could have had a plan from the start, because that way we could sit people down and teach them that, but it has just been a matter of us learning on the way. Sometimes folks send us a demo and say “sign us up”, but our approach has always been, ‘put it out yourselves, that’s what we did!’
Sideboards
Some members have come and gone since the groups inception, but this nine piece posse who aren’t backward in coming forward, have managed to not only get people to put their hands in the air, but also care about putting their hands up for a greater cause, which is essentially telling the truth, something that Poshtya touched on during a bit of word association.
Truth
“Justice, it is similar to what I said about music. You have to passion about music. I think it’s a matter of living an ethical life. A living right, I don’t think that anyone is perfect,” he says honestly. “That’s why I have always had a problem with morality based systems of thought because there is no, I mean there is rules, but there are rules that are so strict that they become constricting. Whereas an ethical system is one where you’re always doing the right thing, and you know what right and wrong is. So that’s where I think truth comes in”.
Australian Hip Hop’s Evolution
“Hiphop is a bunch of tools that you use that is why its an entire culture. I prefer to think of it as different elements other than the four elements that usually get talked about. Elements such as a sense of community, and a sense of where you’re from, and representing that place, and a sense of doing it yourself as well. So I think we have this thing where hip-hop is within Australian culture and that’s why I think it is so powerful and so many people are getting into it at the moment is because it is like a breath of fresh air. Most of the people who are doing hip hop in Australia, at the moment are telling Australian stories and are telling them in such a way that Australians can understand and I think that’s why there has been a real shift. You know five years ago I remember, Battla and I used to work together, and there would be a lot of people that used to say, “hey I really like hip hop, but I hate just don’t like Australian stuff because it has that really stupid accent. And now we have this situation of kids growing up saying that they really dig Australian stuff but don’t really like anything else. And that’s a real shift and that’s the really exciting thing for me.
“And I think that there is a great tradition, a great Australian bush tradition of telling, tall stories particularly, and story telling around a campfire and on the other hand of passing down of knowledge, which is more the indigenous peoples influence. I don’t think that your average kid is sitting there going, “yeah man, that’s what I am doing, we’re passing down oral traditions but there is still that kind of element to it”.
-Rok Poshtya
“I think that hip-hop is like most cultural pursuits in society, you have physical traits of the hip hop scene here, there is heaps of white people involved in it, and I don’t feel for one second that the hip hop industry should not be as proud of itself because of things like that. You have so many refugee communities who are springing up and getting involved and a lot of indigenous youths are really getting into hiphop, so all the time hip hop is changing as well. But at the same time hip hop here is the same as anything. It is going to reflect the good and bad parts of society and things that you will be disgusted at, that other people find as a reason to relate, and sometimes that’s a good thing too. Sometimes it’s racist, sometimes it’s political and righteous. I think that people look into hip hop to much sometimes. It’s just another expression of Australian people”.
- Urthboy
War
Urthboy’s great grandfather and Ozi batla’s grandfather served in the World Wars, whilst Rok Poshtya’s father served in the Malayan emergency, a history that helps stand them in good stead, when discussing such ethical issues.
“From a moralistic standpoint you’re either for or against war,” starts Poshtya, “That said there are times when war is justifiable, it’s just not now”.
“I have some great conversations with my grandmother about the World Wars,” offers Urthboy, one of the groups three MCs. “She told me that in WWI my great grandfather bobbed his head over the trenches one day and he got shot between his ear and his head, so he didn’t have any hair growing in that spot, he just had it graze his head. I find it really interesting just thinking about it. I mean there were just thousands, upon thousands upon thousands of senseless deaths in that war, but the fact that my grandfather, by the skin of his teeth, got through, it made me really interested, and Grandma told me a little bit more about what life was like back then with the white feathers, which woman used to mail to those who avoided serving, the shirkers. And that was as much of a dis as you dish out, during that time of war”.
Politics
“A lot of the time folks ask me about politics and what The Herd’s political persuasions are. I see the way that we do things is just as much as the politics that we talk about. For instance we are sourcing some non-sweatshop t-shirts at the moment. You know just stuff like that. As we are able to make those decisions we’re making them. The way the label is run is completely collective. It is an informal structure even though it is a company structure but it’s informally a collective. For example if we ever decided to hate each other tomorrow, which is never going to happen, then it would all be dissolved equitably. We all own a bit of the label but it is not actually written down anywhere who owns what bit, and that’s the way the decisions are made, they’re all made on a collective basis, that means that it is as political as anything else we do. We try to be nice guys, but that is a political decision as well. You can’t be standing on stage going this is what you should be doing and thinking, and then come off stage and be a complete arsehole”.
1 Rok Postya
Trampled - Elefant Traks remix compilation
Ahh the remix album, a metaphor for our spiritual life cycle. Feelings of De Jé vu, absorb your body as you hear and feel the familiar high and low dynamics and personal stories of triumph and tragedy, as the song evolves from one generation to the next, as new bodies do their thing with the old souls, essentially making this new life their own, as they open their own world of possibilities. Here is Urthboy’s take on the New Elefant Traks compilation, Trampled, which sees The Herd and a bunch of their mates getting the remix treatment.
“This is a project that we had been looking at for a little while, and it’s one of those things where you sow the seed of enthusiasm into the project, and just hope that it sprouts around. You talk to certain artists that you’ve been hanging with or have wanted to deal with for quite a while, and ask them if they’re up for it and sometimes those things happen really quickly and other times it takes longer but the results are just amazing. You find that a lot of people who are, maybe even intimidating artists that you wouldn’t necessarily want to get in touch with, are really open and happy to get involved in the project.
“There were some songs that people just brought a whole other element to, but at the same time it was a really true remix where they have managed to match the vibe of the track, or the idea of the track, or the mood, with a whole new set of instruments, or the backdrop is a real reinterpretation of the song. That’s awesome because you have a tendency to just have a track finished, you just leave it and move on and sometimes the revisiting of it breathes a whole new lung of life into the project, which I found was a lot of fun”.
- Urthboy
