Five Things You Didn’t Know About APES

Ballarat quartet APES have their eyes set on big things, having played at Big Day Out, Groovin The Moo and just coming off the back of a tour with glam metal gods The Darkness. Check out their list of five things you probably didn't know about APES.

1. Last year we got ‘track of the day’ on Zane Lowe’s show with our song Pull The Trigger, which was crazy because we didn’t actively push it or anything it was just something that happened naturally. It was really awesome. Once we got our head around it, waking up at four in the morning to do interviews on BBC1, it was so crazy to think that people actually liked our music all the way on the other side of the planet.

2. Before APES, our guitarist Toohey had never played with other people. He was a self-taught bedroom guitarist and picked up an instrument just because of his love of music and it’s really been a big part of our sound, especially with our album that we’re writing at the moment. He’s got no boundaries really. There’re no formulas he’s been taught at a young age or anything like that. It was hard at first because when you’ve never played with people you’ve got to build chemistry and learn timings and stuff like that, but it’s been great to see what he’s turned into. I can’t write anything the way he does because I had guitar lessons all the way through high school and so I always have these little trinkets and go-to’s, whereas you see him and he’s completely untouched.

3. Myself and Rowan the drummer are vegetarians. Me, only this year really. Love the planet, love food. I love meat and I dream of Zinger burgers sometimes, but the way things are going with farming and the way it’s done is just really not looking good for the future at the moment, so you just gotta get your morals in place.

4. We always have our mate Warren in our film clips. It’s kind of like a little cameo. We really like doing stuff with people we know and Tandy who directs all our film clips so far, is a local filmmaker and is one of our really good mates, so we really thrive on working with people we’re friends with and we all try to help each other out, which is really cool. Our first two film clips we made on budgets of like $50 each.

5. We toured Europe, without having released an album. We felt like this music really translates over there and everything just kind of seems to happen a bit more naturally over there. So we’re excited to spend as much time in Europe as we can. We consciously took 2015 off to put ourselves in a position where we can just tour the next 18 months or so without having to worry about writing a record on the road. Some bands can do it, tour and write at the same time, but it’s just been a bit difficult for us to write stuff that we’re happy with whilst we’re on the road.

APES have just wrapped up their tour supporting The Darkness, but the band will be out on the road again from 26 November until 24 December, around NSW and VIC. Head to theGuide for full details of their tour.