“We haven’t had much time to jam between the last album and now, so I think everything we are playing is off No Enter, maybe one or two new songs. We would like to be playing a new set ideally, but because of the distance it’s hard to make that happen because of the distance,” Nisa states. “You have to jam the old songs for the show, then jam new stuff. It’s hard to get a good balance I think.”
The material found on First Time had its beginnings as solo-based works penned by Ela. This time around, the record stemmed from a more collaborative process. “The first record was a case of the bones of the songs being brought into jamming. Some of the new album was like that, but a lot of it was developed all together.”
Having band members based in both Melbourne and Sydney, the opportunity to work on new material is often fleeting. “There’s a lot of time pressure with everything. In a perfect world, we’d like to jam forever. You’re always changing things, bits and pieces here and there even when they’re complete and recorded. Especially Karl, he always strives to be progressive. There are those time pressures in living in different cities. I think it’s kind of natural. But everything is challenging, nothing is easy. When we are together, the time pressure is a huge challenge to us. I often wonder what the band would be like if we jammed on a weekly basis, I think we would be quite different. That time constraint and that pressure kind of comes through in our music. It’s panic, or something.”
The three members of Bushwalking all fulfil duties in other musical projects – Nisa with Fabulous Diamonds, Ela with Songs, Karl with Kes and its associated guises – imbuing the band with a sense of casualness in their approach. “It was more difficult in the beginning, but Bushwalking is kind of a side project for all of us. Fabulous Diamonds has always been my thing. We always try to fit it in our schedules without pissing anyone else off in the other bands. But at the same time, because we’re all used to being in bands, we’re not too eager to tour and do all that other stuff because we’re all a bit over it. Especially Karl, he’d rather record and work on other songs than go to America or something. We’ve all done that, and after a while it’s a lot of effort for little reward. I don’t think we have that pressure to tour, we just make the most of what time we do have.”
Nisa’s drumming style, as pronounced in both her musical outlets, makes for one of the most distinct percussive voices in Australia. “People tell me that. I taught myself to drum, so I can only drum in a really specific way. It has its good and bad points. It’s good because it’s distinctive, it’s my own thing or whatever. But if I want to copy a beat I hear on an album, I can’t really replicate anything. It can be frustrating.”
In terms of future plans for Bushwalking beyond No Enter’s launch, the band is happy to take things as they come. “We’ve got Sound Summit in Sydney, then Melbourne Music Week, after that we’re just going to see what happens. We have no idea right now. We’ve got lots of songs ready for something else, we just need to see what happens,” Nisa reasons.
As for Nisa’s work in minimalist duo Fabulous Diamonds, we can expect work on a follow-up to last year’s Commercial Music to begin sometime next year. “We went to Europe in March, and since then we’ve been really lazy and chillin’. We’ve got a show in Melbourne and in Perth. Just a few shows at the end of the year, then we’ll record next year,” she reveals.
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
