As is customary each year, Splendour in the Grass teams up with Triple J to select one lucky band a chance to play the festival, hopefully kickstarting their career in the process.
This year it’s local act PLTS, and we’re proud as can be about it. They’ll be opening Amphitheatre stage on Saturday at midday, if you’re floating about the place it’s your chance to be part of PLTS history so head on over.
Naturally, we wanted to have a bit of a chat to the guys pre-splendour and Byron (guitar/vocals/classically appropriate name) was kind enough to take twenty minutes out of his skating day to do so. Here’s how it went.
CG – G’day Byron! How are you going?
PLTS – Hey mate, well!
CG – What have you guys been up to?
PLTS – Just having a little skate today. But we, have been rehearsing, just rehearsing like crazy trying to get ready for the Splendour show
CG – That’s huge, are you nervous?
PLTS – You know what, I feel nervous for the first time in quite a while to be on a stage like that. I feel like we’re well prepared and have been rehearsing a lot, so I think we’ll be ok.
CG – What was the band’s reaction when you found out about Splendour?
PLTS – It’s interesting cause we had a lot of things we were concentrating on at the time, thinking about plans and the rest of the year. I got the call from Kit who is the contact for the band, they called him and I was just at home watching TV and I was just stoked. We totally didn’t expect it, we hadn’t put thought or expectations into it so it just came out of the blue.
CG – Congratulations! Such an iconic thing that a Byron band gets to play Splendour.
PLTS – Yeah! It’s cool, we’re just so excited and it’s been such a good thing to look forward to.
CG – So you’re not shitting your pants?
< laughter >
PLTS – Nah we’re not shitting our pants. I feel like we’re capable and prepared, so we’re going to get up there and try and enjoy ourselves. We’re doing what we love to do but we get to do it on a much bigger scale which is exciting.
CG – Cool. So you’re a Byron band and a lot of our readers are familiar with you already, but let’s take it back to the start to have a quick re-cap on how PLTS came about. Is aviation the connection point between you all?
PLTS – There is a little bit. Not so much myself, but Harry our drummer and Kit our vocalist/guitarist are huge aviation fans and always have been. When we’re somewhere and something flys by either one of them can name what type of aviation aircraft, they’re total plane nerds.
CG – Are either of them actually pilots?
PLTS – No, but I think it’s a bit of a goal for Kit one day. When we were tossing around names and that one came up it just kind of made sense.
CG – Your first EP went pretty well, tell us about it
PLTS – Yeah, we saved up our pennies from doing pub shows here and there and playing around the traps. We were fortunate enough to record with Nick Didia who is a very accomplished producer and the fact he said yes and took the project on was awesome, so we were stoked. He was a great guy and really opened up our eyes to what we could do with writing and producing music.
CG – And this time around with On and On, you opted for a different producer?
PLTS – Yeah we used a guy named JP Fung, he’s from Sydney and we were a big fan of his previous work – he’s done some great Australian artists like Josh Pyke, Last Dinosaurs and even Cold Chisel – so he’s truly a very accomplished young man. When we first approached him and sent him some demos he loved the songs and said he’d love to work with us which was really exciting.
So we flew him up, did some writing and pre production with him and just became good friends. We grew up on the same type of music – three out of four of us love our punk rock music – so we really just gelled as a whole. Working with him was not only really exciting but super cool, he’s a rad guy and we’re stoked with the final product.
CG – Well yeah, it’s a great song. There’s a bit of a change in sound compared to the EP, were you guys heading down that path already or was it influenced by JP?
PLTS – I think it was a combination. We just had Eli added to the band and he had played with myself and Harry growing up and were all into heavier sounds, and it just came through. We weren’t necessarily trying to be a bigger band, but just having Eli come in and then working with JP it just kind of went that way.
CG – It feels like you guys are a lot more comfortable in the new sound
PLTS – Yeah, I think so too. It’s something we always thought, when Kit can really belt his vocals out and push himself it always sounded really good. So maybe subliminally we started writing songs to get that sound out of him.
CG – Do you guys write as a group, or is someone the principle?
PLTS – The way we normally write is Kit will bring a skeleton to the table, whether it be a riff or a melody that he’s come up with, and the three of us just start vibing and jamming. Sometimes he’ll bring us a finished product and that’ll just be the song, then other times he’ll come with a little bit as I said. It’s a super group effort, which is cool, it’s a lot more fun when everyone is involved.
CG – Is there anything you have coming this year up you can share with everyone?
PLTS – There’s a few things happening, but nothing we can really share right now. We’ve just been heads down writing and trying to line a few things up, there’s some stuff happening for sure but post-splendour we’ll have some stuff to share.
CG – We’ll look out for that soon then!