By Nicole Fitzgerald
Who: Pablo Discobar
When: Sunday, June 24
Where: Moe Joe’s
Scungy dancehalls, brown suits and reel-to-reel tape machines: what is not to love?
“What I love about that era was that there was no over thinking,” said guitarist Arik Blum of the Australian band Pablo Discobar. “Music was an expression of a moment in time rather than a process of over analysis. Once something is commited to tape, it’s done — no tweaking, no editing. Everything exists in the moment.”
Pablo Discobar’s in-the-moment experience comes to Whistler on Sunday, June 24 at Moe Joe’s.
The band takes the theory so to heart that their first EP, The Only Thing, was recorded in five hours on six old TV microphones to produce its signature hard, tight soul shaking funk that has won over Australian audiences for the past four years.
“We have a strong emphasis on deep groove that allows melody to soar over the top,” he said. “When you hear the recording, you will hear a lot of different ideas being expressed by all the individuals; however, each idea is set in a common vision to keep things simple and easy to understand.”
This will be Pablo Discobar’s first venture off Australian soil. The country’s hardest working band has worked the Australia festival circuit non-stop with shows at the Woodford Folk Festival, Queenscliffe Music Festival, Apollo Bay Music Festival and Brisbane International Arts Festival. The eight-piece super heavy soul/funk band has won over an astute local following with their simple loops and melodies that lock in to shake a room. The Melbourne boys were heralded by Triple J as “the most exciting live funk band in Australia.” Beat Magazine raved, “These boys are all shit hot musicians. A must have for all fans of funk.”
“It’s easy to live in a bubble and take your local reputation as the definition of where you are at,” Blum said. “Coming to Canada is a chance to play to fresh ears and share the Melbourne music scene with the world.”
After the tour, it is back into the recording studio with their debut album planned for late next year.
“We’ve got a couple things in the works,” he said. “We are going to sit down and record our debut album, a cross Australia tour and then come back to Canada in time for the 2008 festival season,” he said. “Oh yeah, and win a gold at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.”
Rumour has it music is really just a decoy for their real jobs as accomplished figure skaters.
“We’re the first eight person group to pull off the inverse human pyramid on ice while singing Ricky Martin’s Living La Vida Loca in Russian.”
