Musicadium Blog

This week, we are featuring one of Brisbane’s newest and exciting acts - Felinedown.  They were one of the highlights of one of Musicadium’s live music showcases in 2009.

They are a fantastic, electro-and-rock outfit - check them out at http://www.myspace.com/felinedown.

To start with a typical question, what’s the story behind the name ‘Felinedown’?
In all honesty a computer offered this name suggestion during a temporary lapse in my ability to tackle the English language (thank you Spellcheck!;) – My lyrics are often inspired by turns of phrase so the play on words is relevant in many aspects. Also it hints I guess at the dark streak our songs tend to have while at the same time poking fun at those same assumptions…half our songs and half our personalities are definitely NOT depressed..more manic pop and sexy rock than shoegaze!

Your debut album mixes rock and electronica. What influenced you to tackle this intriguing sound?
Electronic music is I think for us the key to being endlessly creative; there are no limits to the sounds you can create and beats you can produce.  The Rock and Roll? – well that’s a given; it’s the reason we all found ourselves drawn to play music in the first place, Ashley has firm roots in punk rock but loves the challenge of blending that style with genres like drum & bass.  Glen, well he loves his industrial rock guitars but he also shares his B’day with Jimi Hendrix… need we say more?  Zac’s Indie Rock prowess allows him to fuse the rock and electronic pop elements of our music perfectly. Beau enjoys creating electronic soundscapes in real time which is helping with a more live jam type vibe. And I have been heavily influenced by artists from both Rock and Electronica; from Led Zeppelin to Bjork to the Sneakerpimps.

Is songwriting something that you have to sit down and work at or is it something that just spontaneously pops into your head?
Right now we are writing with our new line up and its changed the process a lot but its also made it much more exciting and reactive. We have more colours to paint with now. Sometimes a melody chases you around all day and at other times you have to really hunt for it with the other members of your band.

You guys are constantly credited for your live performances. What aspects of a gig make you guys pack up at the end of a night and think ‘yep, that was a great show’?
Live shows are such a funny beast. Nights your expecting to be amazing end up being hard work you have to push so hard the whole way through to pull the energy up and bring people in. But other nights when you least expect it the show becomes effortlessly electric and you find yourself beaming at each other like Cheshire Cats halfway through songs.. those are the nights that remind you why you wouldn’t want to do anything else with your life but create music together and connect with your audience. We love making people move so anytime we’ve had the crowd dancing is a great night by us and overrides any worries we might have had.  It makes for a sleepness night when you get home because your still buzzing from the show.

Your striking costumes, Brodie-Ann, definitely grab attention. Do you do any of the design or creation yourself?
Why thank you! As someone with a background in art, theatre and dance the visual aspect of our shows is really important to me. I want the ‘costumes’ to be an extension of the music and for the show to an experience not just another gig.  I do sketch a lot of the designs and concepts out myself and have made pieces for both myself and the guys. I have also been lucky enough to collaborate with local designers and artists such as Lindsay Rose Wilkins and Shilo Englebrecht on pieces for Felinedown. I hope the freedom we feel in the way we dress extends to our fans and that people will come to  know that anything goes at a Felinedown show…One can never have enough leather, feathers  or glitter can one?…

Finally what can we expect from the album coming up next year?
As I mentioned before we are now writing with the new line up and with a year of gigging really hard we have a better idea of what we want to bring to our shows and our sound. The songs are looking faster, more intense and well …fun! Our plan is to combine all the very best things about Felinedown with a stronger more driving beat; then add sexy Moog keys, new Slinky bass lines and hopefully we will be in the business of creating some of the most decadent lush rock electro tunes of 2010!

Felinedown’s Digital EP “FelineDOWNLOAD” (Geddit?) is available on and you can check out their tunes at MySpace.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 11:33 am and is filed under Featured Artist, Useful Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.