Moginie has a tiny studio in his suburban home, crammed into a twelve foot by twelve foot room, and earlier this year he began recording vocals, guitars and a swirlstorm of side effects with old friend producer Nick Launay (The Posies, Midnight Oil, silverchair). Moginie ended up playing most of the instruments himself (drummer Greg Wales helped out on one song) and the recordings were done purely in the spirit of fun, under Launay's encouragement. Recorded adhoc, heavily influenced by a spirit of inventiveness, Moginie savs it was the chance for himself and Launay to do something unpressured and unrestrained. The makeshift studio was so small, in fact, that Moginie had to put his 100 watt amp under the house, in the dirt, while he was recording. Clouds of dust rose across the neighbourhood and the volume eventually drove his family out of the house.
'It didn't come out of any particular reasons for making a career move or something, it was just a case ofputting something down on tape and see what happens."
As it was, the finished tapes sat in Moginie's studio for a month before he decided to pursue a release. The four song Fuzz Face EP is fully flavoured with a diverse slew of Moginie guitars, drifted with an almost psychedelic splurge of keyboards and sound effects, respectfully reminiscent of late '60s Beatles and Beach Boys studio rompings, but pumped with a refreshing originality and Moginie's unique vocals. "As a teenager I just stayed in my room," remembers Moginie, "and my dad had this old National tape recorder and I used to ... I anti-socially stayed upstairs and fiddled around with it. I found out that Nick did exactly the same thing when he was a teenager, to get away from the social mores of the time. So it vas good to almost rediscover that again. And I've always had a lot of fun making home tapes, It was very home-spun."
While Moginie won't entirely rule out the possibilities of a Fuzz Face live show, he says it is unlikely, for a number of reasons.
"There's no point in me trying to he a frontman, it's a hard thing, and we're real busy with the Oils right now, we just finished recording our new album. It felt really good to do it at the time, and to put it out, and just to let it rise to whatever level it rises too. I wasn't particularly worried about launching another career, or doing the video, that kind of stuff. All that other stuff can take up 90% of the time, making the music is the 10% that everyone really responds too. We may even do it again if the timing is right."
Last year Midnight Oil returned from a two year long world tour, and they just had to have a break, from the band and each other. Moginie said they had become caught in recording/ touring whirlwind and they had to get out.
"You get to the pointwhere you just want to make music again, and not worry aboui all the other stuff. Doing this was a very pure experience." While Moginie has Fuzz Face, 'Oils drummer Rob Hirst has Ghostwriters and now bass player Bones is pulling together his own project, Moginie says the side-projects are no threat to the future of Midnight Oil.
"The model I'm thinking of is a band like The Grateful Dead. The people in the band could do things on the side, that weren't actually career moves, or threatening to the band whatsoever. That is the spirit in which the side project of the 'Oils have been done, because we know when we get together in a room, there's a chemistry thing there that we really respect and enjoy. Our side projects don't interferewith what we do nlith the band.
Moginie also says the side projects for the 'Oils members have helped immensely in keeping their musical spirits alive in between 'Oils albums.
"You just want to play music," says Moginie,"and it's a hard thing to balance. We're like brothers in a way, like a family, we're pretty tight I think sometimes that you have to think that you can do other things, and try them, just do them, and put them out for other people to check out."
Darryl Mason
On The Street 19th August 1996
Reproduced with Permission