Esc is a good guy band, the type of band you’ll spot in the audience of other local group’s gigs. With a self titled EP already clocked, an album in the works, and a newly reorganised line up they’re preparing for a life of lighting cigars with fur coats. We’re joking, they’re complaining about Centrelink and regretting their name. This month they’re playing our first Melbourne Noisey Presents show of the year, so we thought it was a good time to chat to guitarist and singer Max Sheldrake about being a good guy.NOISEY: What’s the shittest gig you’ve ever played?
Max Sheldrake: The shittest gig I ever played was at this bar in St Kilda called Bar 303. It was shit because no one was there at all because we played like three shows that week. The first two were great and that one was shit and no one came, because it was in St Kilda. But you know we got paid $300, so it was good in that sense but it was definitely the shittest gig we’ve ever played.That’s not such a bad story.
Yeah, it was funny though because they have this stage with lights underneath it, and it like shoots all these fucking lasers and crazy strobes and stuff. It looks amazing.Like 80s stadium rock by the beach?
Yeah a disco stage! It looked amazing when we were playing but there was no one there.What’s your name about?
To be honest we all hate the name Esc. I don’t know, we’ve always had a problem with naming ourselves because it’s been the last of our priorities really the music is what we’re focusing on. Coming up with a name just made us feel like wankers.Naming a band would have to be one of the hardest things you ever have to do, at least a kid can have a nickname.
I think if you name the band before you start it, that’s a better thing to do because you don’t have a preconceived idea of the sound. We already had a sound for a while before we named ourselves. We’d change names at every gig; just make shit up for ourselves and it was rubbish. Once we stuck with Esc it was because we were sick of changing our name. A friend that said, “why don’t you just call yourselves Esc? Because it’s just such a great button, it escapes you from everything but at the same time it’s completely useless”. We kind of just liked that idea other than anything else we had and we called it that and stuck with it.You know you could change it?
I’m very, very tempted to change it. But I wouldn’t unless the right name came along. Everyone else is kind of like, “fuck it, let’s just stick with it”.How many people are in your band now?
We’re actually a five-piece, as of like September I think. We added another drummer (Kate), one who uses like a normal kit and then another who uses an e-kit. So we just load samples into that and she plays. Yeah she’s really cool, she’s Somali and she’s got a lot of soul.I saw on your Facebook page: “Come to our show Max owes Centrelink money”.
Yeah that was a bit of a joke.Do you really owe Centrelink money?
Yeah. I was on the phone to Centrelink and a friend of mine Eva was there, sort of listening as I was having a painful conversation with them. And she was drawing a picture at the time so started to write what came to, what was inspiring her in the moment. And that was what was inspiring her. It was too good for me not to post. I had to put it up.Let’s get deep. How do you find the support of the local music scene these days? Is it still as good as it used to be?
It’s definitely changed, I mean my parents played the scene back in the day with the whole Birthday Party crowd in St Kilda. They’ve told me a lot about how it’s changed. It certainly has I the sense that, you know, in one way you’ve got an advantage with the Internet generation, a lot more opportunity to share your music and that’s definitely influenced the scene. At the same time it’s kind of made it harder in the sense that people aren’t actively going out of their way to find out what’s going on. You do have to band together with the other bands really heavily and make a name for each other rather than a name for yourself.Do your parents come to all of your gigs?
My mum still comes to quite a few. She’s still active and she’s very in to it. Her and my dad have been my inspiration from a young age for music. They never pushed me to play music, but they were always blasting loud punk rock in my ears from the age of whatever. I mean the first gig I technically played I was in my mum’s womb and she supported The Cramps at The Palace and I was in her belly. So I’m pretty proud of that.So you’re a second-generation cool kid, makes sense. I really liked your EP. I probably should have mentioned that. Are you continuing with that vibe on the album?
I think there’s a pretty big change from the EP to the album coming our way. That EP did take a long time to create because we were still kind of finding our feet with who we wanted to produce it. For the album we’re actually bringing in a whole bunch of new people for work with us. Including Josh Delaney from Chet Faker and Rat & Co. he’s going to be on the engineering side with Nick and I think we’re going to be going for a more in-between high produced and that low-fi kind of garage sound at the same time. Sort of capture, I don’t know maybe a bit of Cocteau Twins kind of vibe, where you’ve got these really beautiful clean sounds with this really raw, washed out, underground sound at the same time. It’s going to be a different album. There’s going to be hip-hop influences, Middle Eastern influences and African influences, as well as our typical post-punk roots.Esc are playing our Melbourne Noisey Presents show on 27 February. RSVP here.
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Max Sheldrake: The shittest gig I ever played was at this bar in St Kilda called Bar 303. It was shit because no one was there at all because we played like three shows that week. The first two were great and that one was shit and no one came, because it was in St Kilda. But you know we got paid $300, so it was good in that sense but it was definitely the shittest gig we’ve ever played.That’s not such a bad story.
Yeah, it was funny though because they have this stage with lights underneath it, and it like shoots all these fucking lasers and crazy strobes and stuff. It looks amazing.Like 80s stadium rock by the beach?
Yeah a disco stage! It looked amazing when we were playing but there was no one there.What’s your name about?
To be honest we all hate the name Esc. I don’t know, we’ve always had a problem with naming ourselves because it’s been the last of our priorities really the music is what we’re focusing on. Coming up with a name just made us feel like wankers.Naming a band would have to be one of the hardest things you ever have to do, at least a kid can have a nickname.
I think if you name the band before you start it, that’s a better thing to do because you don’t have a preconceived idea of the sound. We already had a sound for a while before we named ourselves. We’d change names at every gig; just make shit up for ourselves and it was rubbish. Once we stuck with Esc it was because we were sick of changing our name. A friend that said, “why don’t you just call yourselves Esc? Because it’s just such a great button, it escapes you from everything but at the same time it’s completely useless”. We kind of just liked that idea other than anything else we had and we called it that and stuck with it.
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I’m very, very tempted to change it. But I wouldn’t unless the right name came along. Everyone else is kind of like, “fuck it, let’s just stick with it”.How many people are in your band now?
We’re actually a five-piece, as of like September I think. We added another drummer (Kate), one who uses like a normal kit and then another who uses an e-kit. So we just load samples into that and she plays. Yeah she’s really cool, she’s Somali and she’s got a lot of soul.I saw on your Facebook page: “Come to our show Max owes Centrelink money”.
Yeah that was a bit of a joke.Do you really owe Centrelink money?
Yeah. I was on the phone to Centrelink and a friend of mine Eva was there, sort of listening as I was having a painful conversation with them. And she was drawing a picture at the time so started to write what came to, what was inspiring her in the moment. And that was what was inspiring her. It was too good for me not to post. I had to put it up.Let’s get deep. How do you find the support of the local music scene these days? Is it still as good as it used to be?
It’s definitely changed, I mean my parents played the scene back in the day with the whole Birthday Party crowd in St Kilda. They’ve told me a lot about how it’s changed. It certainly has I the sense that, you know, in one way you’ve got an advantage with the Internet generation, a lot more opportunity to share your music and that’s definitely influenced the scene. At the same time it’s kind of made it harder in the sense that people aren’t actively going out of their way to find out what’s going on. You do have to band together with the other bands really heavily and make a name for each other rather than a name for yourself.Do your parents come to all of your gigs?
My mum still comes to quite a few. She’s still active and she’s very in to it. Her and my dad have been my inspiration from a young age for music. They never pushed me to play music, but they were always blasting loud punk rock in my ears from the age of whatever. I mean the first gig I technically played I was in my mum’s womb and she supported The Cramps at The Palace and I was in her belly. So I’m pretty proud of that.So you’re a second-generation cool kid, makes sense. I really liked your EP. I probably should have mentioned that. Are you continuing with that vibe on the album?
I think there’s a pretty big change from the EP to the album coming our way. That EP did take a long time to create because we were still kind of finding our feet with who we wanted to produce it. For the album we’re actually bringing in a whole bunch of new people for work with us. Including Josh Delaney from Chet Faker and Rat & Co. he’s going to be on the engineering side with Nick and I think we’re going to be going for a more in-between high produced and that low-fi kind of garage sound at the same time. Sort of capture, I don’t know maybe a bit of Cocteau Twins kind of vibe, where you’ve got these really beautiful clean sounds with this really raw, washed out, underground sound at the same time. It’s going to be a different album. There’s going to be hip-hop influences, Middle Eastern influences and African influences, as well as our typical post-punk roots.Esc are playing our Melbourne Noisey Presents show on 27 February. RSVP here.