Diandra Interviews Gold Fields: Music Existentialism
What I liked most about Gold Fields interview was their lightheartedness, which might stand in stark contrast to the existential crises of their songs. Yet, music, in many ways, strengthens us to release what we believe should be buried: from how deeply we love and define ourselves according to our lovers or by terrified we are that their might not be a grand purpose or path for out life. In our interview, Gold Fields describe how they fell in love with music, and how transferring that love into a career pushed them as people.
Diandra: How do you feel you newest album reflects where you are and where you have been as person/ artists?
Gold Fields: Well to be honest, Dalawa feels like exactly where I was and where I’d been. It was written and recorded over the space of a few years and honestly – it is the most real and most genuine work we ever could have done. We had no outside pressure or timeframes or other requirements… everything on there is there because we wanted it to be. We did it because we felt like it and we did it when we wanted and it took time because making it was a part of our lives for like, years.
Gold Fields – Cocoon (Maya Jane Coles Remix)
We’ll never have that kind of time and patience and freedom to be able to make a record like that again and I don’t think I’d want to, it kind of feels like that part of me is fulfilled at the moment and it’s because that album is literally like a painting of me trying to adjust to adulthood.
Diandra: Having been together for nearly a decade, what is the one growth/ change you have seen in each other versus the one quality that has remained the same?
Gold Fields: Vin and Ry’s production is the thing that’s changed the most. It’s been an absolute thrill sitting in the cockpit over the years and just watch those two become production extraudinaires. The stuff they do is amazing and I’m like a proud brother, it’s been awesome. The thing that stays the same is just “us” I guess, our personalities and the way we all work together. It feels like a bit of a well oiled machine these days.
Diandra: What is your favorite love song you have written and why?
Gold Fields: Actually, I think love song, it would probably be The Closest I Could Get, which is a little dated now and it was a bit of a sad, morbid song that danced around love and death. But that’s a song that I’m proud and surprised that I actually wrote when I was younger. Maybe Cocoon, but even that is like a post apocalyptic love thing.. Haven’t really written many love songs. I’m all about the euphorias of existential dread man.
Your newest music, particularly Cocoon, speaks to being protective and taking refuge in love. Describe a moment when love made you feel safe?
Gold Fields: I’ve got a pretty gnarly partner who makes me feel pretty safe. But yeah, you’re right, Cocoon is written to that person who’s there along for the ride with you and helps get you up. Without them we’d be pretty screwed.
Describe the moment when you fell in love with the idea of being an artist?
Gold Fields – Waterfall (Com Truise Remix)
Gold Fields: Well, I never have fallen in love with that. I’ve never thought about it that way. I just do what I do and some of what I do is make music. When I was a kid, I was embarrassed that I was creative. I thought there was something wrong with me. In the circles I grew up in, kids didn’t really draw or make music, they played footy. I’m not embarrassed about it now. Thank Goodness! But being an artist doesn’t come with a special crown or fancy pen or feeling of accomplishment or love. If anything, at times, it just forces you into being self obsessed and destructive because your own thoughts and emotions are the fuel for your work… So it can get dangerous or turn gross, pretty quickly, if your heads not screwed on. There’s so many artists that just believe their own stories and drink their own bathwater and it’s probably because they’ve just fallen in love with the idea of being an artist and have nothing of substance to actually offer.
Diandra: Your newest work is more electronic based. How do you feel adding more electro has changed the vibes and moods your songs set? Do you feel the difference, especially in terms of performance?
Gold Fields: Yeah, well the five of us have always been far more into electronic music, on the first record, Black Sun it was probably, just the fact, that we didn’t know how to create the sounds we wanted. We played in punk bands growing up, but got into electronic music towards the end of highschool. When Gold Fields started, we were all fully into electronic music but our live show was like a punk show and the first album was fully self-produced, as well. We just didn’t know our way around synths properly or how to pull the right sounds. It’s interesting actually – Black Sun and Dalawa were produced by the same people, just at different stages of life. Like I said earlier, it’s been so awesome to be a witness to Vin and Ry honing their craft as producers.
How was it working with Maya Jane Coles, and what is your favorite memory about the experience?
Gold Fields: We’re big fans and to have Maya Jane Coles work on our music is just an honour. We were so stoked when we found out she was keen to work on the song, and what she’s done is so awesome. We’ve got a big line up of some really awesome remixes on the way and to have Maya among them is really a bloody honour.
Diandra: What has been the best and hardest part about transferring your artistry/ creativity into a career?
Gold Fields: The hardest part, and I’ll sound cliche here, but the hardest part was when we were signed to a major label in America and being based there and touring around nonstop, trying to be honest and real with our work, but, at the same time, being required to do what they needed from us to fulfill their commercial side of things. We were too young to trust our own gut and we didn’t have that cut throat integrity that it takes to put things in their place and make something real. Probably more so for me than any of the other guys I think, I just felt like I had completely lost control of the thing I was trying to make. It all tasted so wrong to me and I was stuck on the other side of the world, performing every night, and watching it just drift away from what I wanted it to be. I think I had a clear picture of what gold fields was, and I didn’t have the balls or the life experience, at the time, to be able to grab it and steer it. We did some amazing and mind-blowing stuff. Some of it was, actually, on point and when we played, it was real…. but I was shattered creatively with the direction we were headed in and I just gave up on what I thought Gold Fields was.
The best part however was the complete and full reversal of that whole situation, which landed us back in Australia without any of that whatsoever. We grew up. We all got lives. And with time, we were able to slowly start putting things back together into something we absolutely love and are absolutely proud of that’s real and genuine and honest without a skerrick of any other bullshit. And that’s Gold Fields as it is today, and that’s Dalawa.
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