The Cactus Channel 10-piece “cinematic soul” band
Only in a few rare cases do teen angst-ridden high school bands make it out with any success (sorry the ‘Liquid Coma’ of my past). The Cactus Channel is one such rarity.
Starting out when they were 16, this ten-piece “cinematic soul” band has risen to heights in Melbourne’s underground music scene with two albums, Haptics and Wooden Boy, and several soul-sweetening singles. Their latest single is a ‘spooky’ remix of Animaux’s (an-ee-mo) “Alaska”. They stripped the song back to its core, recording their own tunes beneath the original acappella and turned it into an entirely new sound. I chatted to The Cactus Channel’s guitarist, Darvid Thor to discuss their new single.
Q. What was it like working from the base of someone else’s music and not your own?
We had done some remixes unofficially with other side projects – for example we took the acappella of paper planes by MIA and completely rejigged it with four of us, just for fun. It’s really enjoyable because you go in without any expectations, which gives you a completely fresh palette to work from. We like to not listen to the original before so that our version is as original as it can be. We didn’t really spend a whole lot of time with this one, which was great. We recorded it over one weekend. We just got it out quick so it was fresh.
Q. So you were happy with how it came out?
Yeah, really happy
Q. Why this particular song?
We did a gig with Animaux a few weeks ago at the John Curtain and thought, ‘why not release something?’. “Alaska” was released as a single by them a while back and we all dig it so thought why not remix it? Ours is really quite different to their version. Theirs is more of an electronic pop banger.
Q. Why did you decide that the remix should have a spooky undertone? Did you do that on purpose?
There is this one section in the remix that sounds a little bit spooky… Then we all started to say ‘spooky’ and called it the ‘spooky’ section. So we thought it would be funny to call it the ‘spooky remix’. It’s a good sounding word.
Q. Do you see the single becoming a part of your live repertoire?
The plan was to only play it once, and we already have with Animaux. Maybe we’ll use it again instrumentally and try and write a more melodic line on top. But we kind of wanted to just do it once and have it as this special case. We’ll see what happens.
Q. Are there any shows or projects in the near future?
Most of us are finishing uni this year so at the moment we’re concentrating on that. When we finish in November we’re going to write a lot and try and have a third album cooking. At the moment we’re working on a collaboration with a singer, who we can’t name… That will be released early next year hopefully. We’re very excited about that.
Q. How do you think your sound has evolved from Haptics to where you are now?
Haptics was just a bunch of songs thrown in a pot. We weren’t necessarily thinking they’d be in an album situation. I feel like the sound was a little inconsistent and we were also a lot younger– a little more immature with our sound. I think we were….17? I’d like to think we’ve matured.
With Wooden Boy we actually wrote the songs specifically for an album, which made it a lot more cohesive. Between songs there is a lot more of a connection and vibe. Now we’re still writing in the vein of Wooden Boy, but obviously it’ll be a little different. We’re excited about this new stuff.
Q. For the fans, who is Walt Druce?
Walt Druce… That’s a funny story, Walt Druce was this guy that added us all on Facebook, and we were like, ‘who is this man?’ It was really weird, we just had no idea. And then we did a bit of stalking ourselves and found out that he was going to our uni. G’day Walt.
