With the release of their collaboration Make Me Feel and joint tour, Mark Fuller of Gold Fields and KLP chat chat new tunes, gender differences in the industry, future ambitions and guilty pleasures.
MARK: Can you just real quick explain your past as a member of a girl-group when you were younger? How did that even happen and have you been making music ever since then?
KLP: In a nutshell I was 13, went to a performing arts school, read about an audition, went for it, joined a three-piece girl group, signed to Sony, toured and pretended I was a Spice Girl till I was 16 (which is pretty much a school girls dream). There’s never been any other option for me besides music/performing. Since I was as young as I can remember, I have only ever wanted to be an entertainer. So that’s never stopped and I don’t see it stopping any time soon now.
KLP: What are you up to right now?
MARK: We’re putting some finishing touches on some new music to hopefully have out and about in the next few weeks. We’ve been taking our time writing for the past year or so and it’s all starting to bottleneck a bit now so it’s getting exciting.
MARK: We know you sing like an angel, do you play any instruments?
KLP: I can play guitar and piano really badly, but I can play the computer really well… and as a result can make it seem like I play the piano and guitar like a pro.
KLP: Have you ever done a joint tour before? If yes, what did you learn from it?
MARK: Yeah, we definitely have. We’ve done a few I think. They’re always a bit more fun than going at it alone. After a while you learn that no matter how many people you’re touring with, there’s always one…
MARK: What music have you been working on?
KLP: Solo KLP music
KLP: What’s the funniest thing you’ve seen at a show?
MARK: Ummm all the funny stuff always happens when we play late in the night. I’m trying to think of something….
MARK: Who would your dream collab be?
KLP: Pharrell Williams!!! If I could be a man I would be him.
KLP: Who would your dream collaborator be (male and female)?
MARK: Female – it would undoubtedly be KLP. I couldn’t even imagine how great it would be to collaborate on a song together!! Male, for me, it would maybe be Nick Littlemore, I really like the album he worked on with Groove Armada and pretty much everything he does strikes a really nice chord with me. Or someone ridiculous like Pharrell. We’re going to start doing more collaborative work I think. It’s crazy to think we would just limit ourselves to ideas that only we come up with… Why not get more people involved with making music? That’s kind of where we’re at at the moment.
KLP: What do you like most about making music?
MARK:Without getting too deep on it, it’s mainly just that exciting feeling you get when you are making something good. When you’ve just made something that you really like, from nothing. And it’s also a bit therapeutic.. writing lyrics especially, because it’s a way of “actualising” your emotions.. If something is caught up in your head and you try to write a song about it, sometimes it can be the worst thing you’ve ever written. But when it just “pours out” of you without you needing to think about it, that’s usually a good sign… And that feeling is cool to, when a song just seems to come out of you and all of a sudden you’ve got this thing that you really like.
KLP: What do you like least?
MARK: Often the tediousness and the process of then trying to hone that song into a “proper” piece of music that other people can listen to… The moment making music becomes an effort, is the least best part. But the reality is all that stuff has to be done so that other people can enjoy it too, and we don’t just make music to sit alone in our room and listen to it ourselves. Showing other people the final piece is one of the best parts as well.
MARK: When will you have some new music out?
KLP: So sooooooon!!
MARK: What is your guilty pleasure on tour?
KLP: SLEEP! I always seem to have so many things going on around touring, including triple j House Party, so it became really clear about 8 months ago that sleep was crucial.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/210705145″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]
MARK: Do you think the music industry in Australia has any prejudices? I saw you post on facey about the lack of opportunities being given to girl musicians and I agree. There seems like there is an influx of great musicians in Australia who happen to be girls, especially around electronic music. But everything is still very “male-dominated”.
KLP: Yeah I do think there can be an imbalance – cool you can recognise that too. You’ve hit the nail on the head, there ARE so many great female musicians, especially in Australia. I would love to see both females AND males, take any negativity towards the subject, and channel it into positive ones. As Bjork once said “You’re a coward if you don’t speak up. Not for you, but for women. Say something.” We can all make tiny steps towards change, lead by example and be kind and fair to one another.
KLP: If you had to choose between having one massive hit, and then no success after that – or average success for your entire career what would you prefer?
MARK: For me it would be write the massive hit and no success after that. I know the other guys will probably disagree with that choice. But to me the idea of making something that
MARK: Do you do anything else creative apart from music stuff?
KLP: Ohhh I’ve never been asked that! Well I have so many sides to my music. I write pop music for people through universal Music, I have the radio show on triple j. I’m working on another project close to my heart right now that can hopefully take off in the next few months (on the down low for now though!).
KLP: Guilty tour pleasure? (food/drink/sleep/ladies/pokies/etc)
MARK: (laughs) Pokies. Mine is sleep. I sleep as much as I can because I really am a sook and I feel like shit if I haven’t slept properly. So yeah I do feel guilty about that because I’ll often opt for sleep over having fun or seeing stuff on tour.
MARK: If there was no music, how would you spend most of your days?
KLP: Shock horror! Ahhhhh! I don’t even want to imagine that.
KLP: Guilty musical pleasure?
MARK: I don’t know if I feel guilty about it or not but I enjoy top 40 music. And I think that world of music is really good at the moment. There is a lot of soul and realness in top 40 these days.. probably thanks to the likes of people like pharrell or adelle now there’s people like sam smith. I’m not saying I love those artists but a few years ago top 40 was all really yuck big room brostep bangers that were awful. But at the moment it sounds like a lot of good music and good artists that are really popular with the kids, which can only be a good thing.
MARK: What are you looking forward to most on this tour?
KLP: Mass pizza parties!
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/210705145″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
