Alex Cameron's Secret Material

I was supposed to see Seekae last year but then I said something dumb to my girlfriend and pissed her off, and like band member Alex Cameron puts it, “That can feel like the world is ending.” And that’s how I feel when I listen to their stuff anyway, so it was kind of a win-win.

Cameron has secretly been working on solo stuff for the last year and is ready to unwrap a set of tunes at the upcoming Vice Spring Breakers Issue launch. It’s a bunch of firsts for him: first solo music, first vocal tracks and first rendition of the stuff live, so I called him up at his Surrey Hills apartment and talked to him about life.

You can check him out and feel bad about dumb things you say too at Goodgod this Wendesday. RSVP here. If you can’t wait that long, grab a first look at the new video for Gone South.

VICE: You just got back, right? You guys were overseas?

Alex: Yeah, I was overseas. I was traveling through Europe for about 2 months. Just doing a bunch of different stuff and traveling. I traveled through Europe and picked up a bunch of old gear in secondhand stores. We got a bunch of drum machines.

What’s it like to come back to Sydney?

I really like Sydney. I really like what I’ve got going on here. I work out of my apartment and do odd jobs for this fella. I get a bit of extra cash that way and I work a couple of different jobs and I work day times to make music, you know? So I mean I love London I’ve got so many good pals there I always have a really good time there and I was with my lady over in Paris for about three weeks as well and just before Christmas time. I love that town. I like traveling. I love being in Australia. It’s a good life style.

Do you guys get to do a lot when you’re on tour? Is it actually traveling for you?

Yeah I got to see, well I mean I spent a bunch of time in Paris. I got to see some great stuff there. I’ve got a friend who’s a musician in London and he had me down to Cornwall for Christmas time and I spent Christmas in a cottage down in Cornwall.

So like super chill things?

You know what, in London I had a lot of good nights. I spent New Year’s Eve in a Jamaican Pool Hall in South London, that was a lot of fun. It’s just like that over there. I find London can be so oppressive but at the same time if you just give in you just get taken on these crazy, I don’t know… there’s mornings when you wake up and you’re thinking you got home at midnight and someone tells you that you got there at daylight and you have no recollection of what happened. Sitting in a puddle on a couch sort of thing, not knowing what the fuck happened. Those were the most – I kind of ended up having…it was more that I sort of had a journey through Europe and then ended up in London, you know? I’ve got a bunch of friends and everything we were dealing with was pretty out there and ludicrous I guess. To some extent. A lot of time I spent working as well, my head was down for a lot of time.

It’s funny to read old interviews with you guys because a lot of times it seems like they’re asking you a lot about partying. I think you guys were in Perth and they were asking if you were getting up to anything and there’s just a photo with the article of you guys with a LAN hookup backstage playing Starcraft.

Yeah. That ain’t me, man! That’s George and John.

Is that something you want to make clear?

Yeah, let me clarify that. I don’t play a lot of video games. The thing about it, we’re very, people kind of forget how young we are. We started this stuff when we were 18, you know? It’s a little bit funny – I look back at those interviews that one of us did and it’s like wow! Surely people know how young we were. Not that I feel older in retrospect –

You’re 25-26 now?

I’m 24. And it’s just funny to read back those old interviews. It’s crazy now they’re not going in magazines, they’re going on the internet. Which is hard for life. You can find it any day of the week.

Is it weird that I can call you up and be like, ‘Hey Alex. I know you met your band mates when you were young and you went to school with them’ and I’ve read all this background knowledge about you?

Exactly. In that way it’s kind of refreshing because you don’t have to ask me all those introductionary questions. It’s no longer – a person’s identity is no longer based on what they’re, sort of, their audience. It’s more to do with online and what information is there.

You said you were doing a couple of day jobs.

Yeah, just odd jobs here and there.

I was reading about George saying there’s a bit of a discrepancy in between what people think about that, because you guys have quite a following, that doesn’t always necessarily translate to funds. Have your thoughts on how to make money changed?

You go through periods where money comes in and when you can’t, and you can’t be touring in the same areas forever. It’s not exactly cheap to go overseas. We get by and the band’s doing well but we gotta – I gotta stay float for myself. It’s all well and good for myself to be doing really well but we’ve all got our own goals. I’ve got things I want to achieve and I’m trying to fund and I’m trying to make my own record too, you know, we all stay pretty honest. We don’t just necessarily live off the band although we probably could, but I prefer to live a life where I’m doing things outside you know and if that means having to work odd jobs in the evening doing things for some producer I don’t really know.

Do you imagine a world where you’re David Guetta?

(laughs) No, never. I’d much rather be rolling pizza dough at a pizza shop and writing a song about that then making some soul less junk like that.

I just read that Akon is the number 1 ring tone artist in the world.

Yeah, Jesus.

These guys get money from these places you wouldn’t think of.

It’s just a business, you know. It’s just a business for those guys. It’s pretty uninspiring. It’s where a lot of that stuff is going. It’s crazy even alternative music – I mean I say alternative - even music that’s played on alternative radio is starting to sound like, you know, sound like a fucking sports highlight video. That’s a radio station playing that to kids who want to find alternative music. That ain’t alternative to me, not one bit.

What did you say you were doing in Paris?

I was in Paris, I was there to see my girlfriend and we stayed in Paris for a couple of weeks and I was actually there – while I was there I wanted to look into, when I’m in Europe, I like to find out about the – there’s a lot of old instruments over there. Originally I was there to find some sort of traditional instruments but I ended up finding this old electronics store that had a bunch of different – sorry, I’m just looking into my neighbor, I can see into the apartment over the road.

Are they doing something weird?

I’m keeping tabs on a couple of people over there.

What are they doing?

I spot movement. I can see it out of the corner of my eye. It’s like I can see them getting changed and stuff like that.

You can?

Sometimes you can see them getting changed. Not that I – you know  -

No, no, that’s interesting.

It ain’t illegal.

It’s not. There was this kid in America who was masturbating in front of his window and this old lady walked by and she got really mad at him and the judge was like ‘well, he’s in house, you know, you’re looking in, he can do whatever he wants, it’s your fault.’

I’m gonna be able to cite that case in court. Yeah – I was in Paris and I kind of found this old electronics store and this guy didn’t speak much English but I noticed he had a rack of old drum machines and, which you know, it’s pretty common, you find second hand gear and it’s an old Italian rhythm maker made by these guys called EKO which is I don’t know if that exists anymore that brand. They make a bunch of different stuff, drum machines and things like that. So that’s kind of what I use live. I use that to get the rhythms going and I use a pair of synthesizers.

The one from the little Paris shop?

Yeah. I’ve been rehearsing and it’s a bit dodgy. I got a Korg synthesizer in Poland which is really good. It’s just old gear which is cheap you know, over there, over here someone would charge me $1500, $600-$700 for the drum machine, but $200 in Paris. I was able to haggle some guy down a little bit because he wanted the money.

Are you still getting in a lot of trouble at security checks?

Every time I travel I think I’m not checking anything in, I’m packing it all in a bag and I end up you know, taking out effects pedals and cables and just because they want to get to a mic adapter at the bottom that looks like it’s a head of a taser. It’s ongoing. I keep making the wrong calls. I keep thinking – surely security will lax off, but it’s getting worse and worse. It’s a bovine experience now. Especially when you’re in the states, that was next level.

All that small talk