The Lockout Laws "Suck"

Art vs Science have made themselves somewhat of a household name in the musically-aware parts of Australia, and it is not hard to figure out why following the very loud noise they make on their recently released sophomore LP, Off The Edge Of Earth And Into Forever, Forever.

Frontman and certified good guy, Dan McNamee, explains the exciting process of translating fresh music into a live setting. “We’ve got these keyboards, the Korg Kronos. They’ve basically got all these effects and patching built into them, so I’ve spent the last week rebuilding my whole set. I push one button on the foot controller and it brings up all the effects and sounds I want, it’s awesome.”

But he also recognises the struggles of said translation.

“When we were recording the new stuff we found it a little bit tricky at times playing the new songs live, which have a bit of a different feel to the old ones, and finding the pulse of them live. It’s almost like the songs are in their infancy. They can’t really blossom live until after a year or so of playing them. And you have those little moments where you do something off the cuff and you're like, ‘I want to do that every night’ and it kind of makes me want to record them all again.”

Arts vs Science played a rally in protest of the lockout laws last Sunday including a rendition of the very appropriate You Have to Fight for Your Right, To Party by The Beastie Boys. Speaking of the very contentious subject of the Sydney lockout laws, McNamee offered his passionate opinion.

“I think they suck. Our first gig was at Phoenix which got shut down in result of the lockout laws. Since 2000 the laws have been creeping up slowly. Then the lockouts came and everyone was like ‘fuck this’. I think the biggest problem is the licensing police. It's like this secret branch of the police force that go around slapping these venues with massive fines for trivial offences that so easy to make yet so trivial that it gives them this enormous discretionary power.

"They say, ‘we just saw two drunk people you better shut the venue down or we're going give you a $10,000 dollar fine’. It’s just not necessary."

Originally published in X-Press Magazine