January 17, 2011

Gold Fields Top Four Bands from Ballarat, Melbourne

Epicure
Burning Flag
Neon Love
The Mavis’s

Gold Fields

Australian quintet Gold Fields make hop-skotch style jungle beats laced with optimism and inspired by love. To celebrate the success of their latest single ‘Treehouse’ ahead of their forthcoming debut E.P. this Spring, the Ballarat based boys have given i-D Online a run down of their top four bands from Ballarat, both well-known and underground, who have shaped the music they make today.

“We grew up in a small country town, about an hour and a half away from Melbourne, called Ballarat. It’s well known for the gold mines and attracts a lot of tourists because of it. I guess you could say that was the inspiration behind the band name! The population is now close to 95,000 and a lot of great Australian music has come from this town. The local venue is The Karova Lounge which is really supportive of local music and provides the stage for young bands to play on.”

myspace.com/gold_fields

Text Gold Fields

Epicure

For a band that writes such sad songs, Epicure make a lot of people very happy. Forming in high school in the late 90s, they cut their teeth on the local pub circuit and released a clutch of well-received EPs. Many of these contained songs revisited in different forms in later albums, Fold(2000), Airmail (2001), and most recently, the critically acclaimed The Goodbye Girl (2003) and Main Street (2005). The latter two albums enjoyed considerable triple j rotation on the basis of strong singles including ‘Armies Against Me’, ‘Self Destruct In 5′, ‘Life Sentence’ and ‘Tightrope Walker’. Epicure enjoy a cult following well beyond their regional hometown.

epicuretheband.com

Burning Flag

Burning Flag are a five-piece band that play heavy, rhythmically driven, blues tinged, waves of rock. Drawing influences from Ry Cooder, Tool, Still Water, The Dead Salesmen and The Def Tones the band formed in 2004 and have impressed audiences at Pony, Melbourne and around Victoria with their live shows. Their growing reputation has seen the band support Regurgitator, Dallas Crane, The Exploders and The Vasco Era. Most young bands are popular with their mates; but Burning Flag are actually good too. Joel Snowden and Josh Haire, on guitars bring riffs and ideas to the jam room and manic lead singer, Nick Murnane, likes to improvise his words on stage, but keeps the choruses and hooks set – ’cause the people love to sing along.

myspace.com

Neon Love

Neon Love formed just two and a half years ago. Initially brought togther by a shared love of music from different genres, representative of clichéd teenage life experiences like girls, parties, love and lust. With recent stints supporting Girl Talk, Dukes Of Windsor and Yacht Club Djs, Neon Love are yet to reach their full potential. Now with an EP under their belt, they are quietly preparing to take over the world. Sshh!

myspace.com/theneonlove

The Mavis’s

From 1987 to 2001, The Mavis’s were an Australian alternative rock band from Ballarat, Victoria. The band was composed of Matt Thomas (guitar, vocals), Becky Thomas (vocals), Nick Gill (guitar), Andrea Vendy (drums), and Josh Alexander (guitar). The colourful quartet secured themselves a piece of pop history with their first single ‘Cry’, which appeared on the Triple J Hottest 100, 1998. Although no longer together the band still continue to influence many artsits today with their catchy lyrics and outlandish style.

myspace.com/themaviss

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