Philadelphia Grand Jury
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Philadelphia Grand Jury

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“I thought it was actually pretty impossible to happen, because Berkfinger and I had no contact whatsoever,” says Beeson.

Rekindling a relationship was made tougher by the fact Berkfinger’s been based in Berlin for four years, while Beeson remains in Sydney. However, eventually they got back on good terms. “Over the course of a couple of years there’d be an email here and there that’d pop up saying, ‘How you doing?’ or ‘What’s going on?’” says Beeson. “And it slowly built from there.”

Now the original trio are back with a new album, Summer of Doom. In the years off, Berkfinger has established the rather impressive Golden Retriever Recording Studios in Berlin, keeping busy as a producer and mixer; Williams rode the wave of success Art vs Science enjoyed; and Beeson freely admits to lucking out with a 9-5 job at the Red Cross.

“For the past four years I’ve been working there supporting asylum seekers living in the community,” he says. “When the band broke up I was really devastated and worried about how I would cope going back to doing what I consider a real job. I fell in love with this position within a few weeks and I think that stopped me from spiralling into some sort of depression, because I was kind of on the edge of that. I was really lucky to find this amazing job to stop me wallowing in self pity.”

Bands get back together for many reasons. Often it’s an offer of financial reward, while other times it’s due to a serious event reminding members that life is short. For the band affectionately known as the Philly Jays, it was another sort of epiphany that led to their reformation.

“There was a realisation that most bands have after they’ve broken up, and that is that they’re more than the sum of all their parts,” Beeson says. “There’s a unique situation with Berkfinger, Dan and myself when we get in a room and create music; a specific energy. Although we had some really great drummers with creative ideas, there’s just this chemistry [with the three of us] that no one else seems to match.”

At BIGSOUND 2013, the three original members played together for the first time in almost four years. A national tour followed that December, where the trio played one set of Philly Jays material and one focused on Berkfinger’s side project, Feelings. Roughly 12 months later they regrouped in Berlin to record new material.

“When we went across to Berlin it wasn’t, ‘Hey let’s make an album that gets radio play and everyone’s going to love and we’ll do a big tour’,” Beeson says. “The plan was, ‘Let’s go for two weeks, have a great time and just enjoy making music that we would want to listen to’. We were just trying to impress ourselves and it was a very fruitful experience.”

Afterwards both Williams and Beeson returned to Sydney and the band continued working on music remotely. Beeson admits the lack of immediacy sapped the creative momentum somewhat. However, without the powers of technology Summer of Doom simply could not exist. Accordingly, Beeson doesn’t see the new record as picking up where they left off back in 2009.

“It sounds a bit more polished and full. It’s certainly a step forward, has some different sounds and more mature lyrics. Our first album was quite minimalistic. This time we got quite excited with Berkfinger’s fancy synths, cool guitars and effects pedals.”

BY ALEXANDER CROWDEN