Ben Life interviewed the band in October 1995 in Sydney. The trio were playing the Annandale Hotel, shortly before the release of their now highly-acclaimed 'New' EP.

Martin, Ben and Quan talk simultaneously, and add to each other's sentences a lot. So bear with us.

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Martin: The band's about a year and a half old, was formed under duress - from the remnants of other bands. A lot of the bands we used to be in were influenced by strange . . . sequences and so forth, but this band is a more. . . four-on-the-floor groove-orientated band perhaps . . .

Ben: The thing I like about this band is we can do so many different styles whereas for so many bands the whole album sounds like one particular genre. With our band I think we try to do all sorts of different styles. We like hard-sounding music, we also like rap, we like a lot of different stuff. I get into Soundgarden and Prodigy . . . Each of us likes different styles of music so it's really hard to categorise ourselves.

Martin: The way that we play our instruments, each of us has their own sound from playing in bands, the way that Quan sings or Ben sings Quan's lyrics, is really different to what other people are doing, really individualistic.

Quan: . . . do whatever you want to do, musically. I like to think of the band doing whatever it feels like doing.

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Martin: I think we're all quite proud of our backgrounds. Actually we got a really odd review saying how Quan is an Australian Vietnamese trying to be an Afro-American in the style of music. And that just says it all in a racist term . . . it's like saying that white people can't groove, you know, or black people can't do that, or an Asiatic person can't do this . . . it's just ugly.

Quan: I know Martin & I particularly like the Bad Brains. That was something we could both agree with . . . I like a lot of world music. I listen to a lot at home.

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All together now: When we first started the band, places like this (Sydney) were unknown to us, but now we know Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth. I guess in that sense it'd be nice to go overseas to find some fresh environments to play in . . . In that sense it's very selfish; we're looking out for a bit of excitement for ourselves. We really want to go to Asia and so forth, obviously . . . We got a gig in Manila, we'd like to go to the Philippines . . . Bangkok . . . Thailand . . Malaysia . . . China . . . Taiwan. In all those regions, there's a lot of people who want to see music, see bands like ours, but no one wants to go there 'cos there's not enough money, or it's a bit daunting to them; I'm not quite sure . . . . but we want to try it out. There's heaps of people there that want bands to come to them, to let them feel they're all part of it, not just America, England and Australia. It's small now, it'll grow to a stage where bands can go there, people can buy records - it just becomes easier for people to enjoy the music that they like.

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Quan: There's a few producers in America that would be interested in producing our next record. But strangely enough, they're Sub Pop producers; we'd really like to work with someone with hip hop influences, someone from the Wu-tan Clan. Mario, someone like that, someone exciting. That whole scene is so fresh now: hip hop, acid jazz techno, ambient. To me it's more on the progressive edge than some of the retro-based rock that's happening . . . . Our first EP did better than we thought it would do . . . . it did pretty good for a band from nowhere . . .

Ben: (The new EP) is called 'New', and it's got a pop song on it, and it's got an industrial song; it's got lots of different sounds on it, so I don't know how it'll go 'cos it doesn't stick to a genre.

Martin: I think people will like it, it's worth the ten bucks.

Ben: There's what you'd call a lot of genre-jumping, but they stick to traditional formulae in a lot of ways.

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Quan: Our crowd changes a lot as well, depending on radio play and having an EP out; it's a really varied crowd. You lose an audience and you gain other people hopefully. You lose bits of the old audience and gain a new audience, they change with you . . .

Martin: I s'pose if you want a band that'll supply the same thing as before and just give you what you want over and over again, we're not that type of band you know . . . not a success-through-consistency band; there's quite a few of those about, but that's not what we're about . . . but we're not going to go way-out and just make noise for the sake of making noise. We will, as Ben said, jump a couple of genres-type thing, move into progressive types of music, different technology, keep it inside what we sort of do as a band. Hopefully people will like it.

Ben: We have complete freedom to do whatever we want . . . at the moment. So if we do clips, we have complete control. They'll give us assistance if we want it.

Martin: Hopefully it's a new era in music, the only time control will be lost is when we lose control. It's up to us to keep everything. Instead of all those bands relying on managers, and all this hocus pocus that goes along with the rock'n'roll business. It's up to us to have to think a little bit more about things, and keep control and so forth. And if that happens that'll be fine. If it burns out, at least it burns out in our hands. Not at the hands of the money-makers or the hangers-on.

Quan: At any one time we're one of thirty bands got a song on the radio. You can play a place like this (Sydney's Annandale Hotel) that's got 400 people. So if there's more support for local talent, say from you guys, or everyone, we don't need the Billy Joels to come in and rake in the millions and split, you know what I mean? We can do it ourselves and all grow.