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Music

Check Out Eastlink's Four Guitar Garage Attack in the Video for "Overtime"

Plus an interview with the members of Total Control, UV Race, and more.

EastLink is a stretch of tolled freeway that runs through the outer suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. Twenty-five miles of soulless grey concrete and bitumen loaded with semis, delivery vans and station wagons. Even the occasional public art sculpture fails to liven up a drab and dour landscape.

Yet Eastlink, the band, are far from dull. The Melbourne five piece features members of Total Control (who have a new record coming too), Home Travel, Repairs, and Lakes on four guitars and a drum kit against a bassless backdrop. An unholy and scorched punk squall. Loud, yes. Drab, no.

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Named after the Mullum Mullum valley that was partially destroyed by construction of the EastLink freeway, their debut LP will see release on In the Red on May 13. Check out the new video for "Overtime", and our chat with Eastlink’s Zephyr Pavey below.

Noisey: Al Monfort (UV Race, Total Control) told me that he started Eastlink because he wanted to play in a band with you and Johann Rashid. How did it grow to include five members? Four on guitar!
Zephyr: We were rockin' as a trio, which was swell, but Al knew these other two boys, Ben Hepworth and Lee Parker. I suppose Al thought all of us should spend time together. He was right. It’s been a real cool time.

Al wanted to play drums in a band as he had been strictly strings for too long and desperately needed to get back to the origins of sound: the heartbeat of the drum. His sign is the snake so in order to remain whole he must complete ouroboros like cycles of rebirth through carnivorous mutilation of his creative being. I either wanted to play guitar or Al thought I should, if it was the latter I thank him because the guitar allows me to connect and experience many things in a super-natural way, no fucking crystals, just all knobs to the right then bang crash! and a weird feeling in my head. Johann, Lee, Ben and I spend a lot of time with other instruments so all of us sharing guitar together is very important. Obviously the guitar is phallus and so on.

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So there has always been a focus to write songs without a bass?
Disregarding bass was another idea of Al’s from the beginning and it’s also another one of those things I’ve never asked him about. I’ve just gone along figuring he knows best and sure enough as time went by I caught on. Without bass you are left with all the high frequency stuff that takes on a different vibe without the grounding bass provides. Kind of like lightning not hitting a golfer or a tree snapping from strong winds but never hitting the earth.

Also the old idea that someone has to stick to the riff like a bass player generally does seems a bit fascist for Eastlink. Did Jimi Hendrix teach us nothing about freedom? We've had bass moments live, mostly as a more the merrier experiment but never on studio recordings. I think sticking with an initial idea is pretty important in the world of a silly band even if it’s detrimental. The recent Cramps records are fine with me but the Unity Blood Days LP is shocking.

I grew up in Doncaster so I’m familiar with EastLink’s beautiful outer suburban mundanity, but for those not from Melbourne explain what it is.
For those not familiar with the road or with Melbourne’s suburbs it is probably even more potent as an extreme example of the city of Melbourne and for those further away as a symbol of Australia. It is a $2.5 billion stretch of road. Its construction disrupted or destroyed plenty of important natural systems including the relocation of a creek. The Mullum Mullum valley that the EastLink cuts through was an important part of the Wurundjeri and Kulin people’s lives before genocidal maniacs like Batman and LaTrobe came to town. It is a public/private partnership so of course it is littered with outrageous artwork. I really like the work and find them all the more humorous and loaded with heavy shit in their current roles.

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East Link is made up of dudes who are in other bands. Total Control is well known but your other band Strength Within not so much. I’m thinking varsity font hardcore.
I would like to proudly say that Strength Within were a band from Penrith NSW so there was no delusion of varsity life for us. Graffiti script stubby holders were our product. Westie reality pre Adlay.You had to be there at places like the plaza food court or the tax office steps to really understand why Madball made so much sense so far from NYC. I wasn’t in the band for long. I was 16 or 17 and the others were a good ten years older than me so it was a real pain in the arse for them. They had to sneak me into shows and drive me everywhere. I was sad when they kicked me out but now that I'm a 27-year-old mature age student with a full drivers license I would kick a 17-year-old out of my band too.

You guys were impressive at the Aarght Records showcase at Melbourne Music week last year. On a lineup that included NUN, Tyvek and Ooga Boogas you were possibly the highlight. This could have been the volume. How important is volume for you?
Electric guitar and volume is like waves and surfing. Huge is thrilling and dangerous but small has just as much to offer. Sometimes when we jam it’s tiny amps and sitting on chairs. There are two songs on the LP that are almost entirely acoustic that have been my favourites lately. Working with less gives you a lot more to lose. We were stuck on the latter half of that statement once at a show where the sound guy, let’s call him Stalin, told us to keep our amplifiers very low which resulted in a very quiet stage sound that made me question the integrity of a few of our songs (phallus was restored later when I killed him). Generally when we play outside of our safe spaces being loud is pretty unavoidable, thanks to all of us emitting almost the exact same sound we have a hard time differentiating between ourselves and I tend to just keep turning my amplifier up to be able to hear myself.

What kind of input did Tom Hardisty (Nun, Woollen Kits) have in the recording?
We were listening to ourselves the other day and noted how little effort we put into this band and how happy we are with it. Obviously this is some kind of magic we need not examine and needless to say Tom is integral. He sets up microphones and computer and we play then we get together with his mixing desk and we mix and it turns out just as Satan intended. He plays grand piano and sings on ‘Mullum Mullum’ too.

You have lost your most animated member of the band with Joey moving to NYC. Are you able to do shows when he is away?
Maybe it was my conflicted feelings towards NYC and people re-locating in general (I bare a huge self inflicted burden from leaving beautiful NSW) but I thought we would keep playing shows. I was even looking forward to no longer having to bring spare leads and ask people if Joey can borrow their amp every-single-time we had a show. But then I realised that he is not only essential to the group but playing shows without him would be an unforgivable betrayal of our love and friendship. Eastlink will continue activity in non-gig modes, we recorded some music before he left and it’s pretty easy to do an E-band these days.

Follow Tim on Twitter: @dettolforever