Operator Please: return of the Ozzie Artrockers

Welcome back! Does it feel like you’ve been gone for a while?

A little bit. In retrospect it's not really an insane amount of time considering during that off time you are working/touring, but I guess to everyone else it feels like ages - it IS good to finally be able to release new material though. 

While we’ve got you here, what’s been happening in the Oz music scene?

There has been quite a bit going on. Lots of new bands, I feel like everything is getting a bit poppier which makes me happy! It is a bit of a change.

So what song on your new album are you most excited about?

I'm quite excited just to release the whole album. Obviously I am a bit excited by all the songs… ha ha! If I had to narrow it down to one it would probably be a track called ‘Loops’ - I think mainly because I sing in a smaller kind of voice, which wasn't predominant on the last record.

Rumour has it you’ve gone a bit electro on this record – what kind of gear have you been playing with?

We haven't really gone electro! We've used the same instrumentation as the last record but just tweaked it… used it in a slightly different way. On this record the synth is more predominant and holds a lot of the counter melodies and I think the violin rather than being quite stabby, enriches and is very thick.

In terms of gear - in the studio we used heaps of small 80's synths and just messed them up through distortion, space echos, putting reverb and just messing with them so they weren't as clean. There wasn't a lot of programming but where there was, Tim took care of it, mainly with extra drum samples. I think all of our pedal boards have grown a bit but nothing too drastic. 

’Logic’ is quite a funky tune – have Operator Please found their funk bone?

Ha ha. I don't know, I guess the song just felt good so we went with it. I'd been listening to a lot of Lisa Lisa & The Cult Jam thanks to a close friend - so maybe that was playing on my mind when it was written - we all love a bit of a dance so maybe. 

Are there any songs about indoor sporting activities this time round?

Amazing. No, not on this record. But then again ping pong wasn't really about indoor sports was it? Apparently it was about blow jobs and everything else but what the title said. Having said that we'll leave the songs up to interpretation, if someone wants to think that there is a song on this record about indoor sports then that's cool, we have no problem with that… ha ha!

Last time we spoke you were telling us about experiencing a UFO in the Australian outback. Have you had any more supernatural experiences lately?

Well we haven't been driving in the outback for quite some time. That was a phenomenal experience though! Lately all it's been is hallucinations brought on by lack of sleep, lots of delusional talk once again brought on by lack of sleep, refining tones. Dancing ourselves into pain and suffering from the effects of a touring festival.  

Can you offer us three reasons why 2010 is going to be the bestest year ever?
 
Ok – (1) We are hopefully not going to be stuck in the same country for months on end.
(2) "Free Willy 3" starring Bindi Irwin is coming out. 
And (3) we finally get to have new music to share.