We sat down with Drew Goddard and Mark "Hoss" Hosking of the band Karnivool atop a large set of stairs outside of the House of Blues in Orlando, FL. Little did we know at the time that the stairs belonged to the Cirque du Soleil and towards the end of the interview several hundred people would come streaming out around us as we sat on the stairs attempting to finish our interview.

Interview written by Luzviminda DelaPaz, Poizon Apple and Tyler Davidson
Transcribed by j. ward.
Conducted by Luzviminda DelaPaz
Photos captured from video shot by j. ward

[COMA] Hailing from Perth, Australia how was your first U.S. cross country tour from LA to Florida?

[Hoss] It was a long drive. It was a 60 hour flight so by the time we got off the flight we were very keen to hang out and see some of America. This is actually our first trip to the United States as a band and to actually get to drive across was good for us to get to check it out and see a bunch of sights.

[Drew] A really good introduction.

[Hoss] Yeah, a good way to get warmed into it. But yeah, it was good. It was a good way to cross the country, see the whole thing right across from left to right.

[COMA] I saw the video from when you played Guavaween in Ybor (FL), How did you enjoy your first American Halloween experience?

[Drew] That was crazy, we've never seen a street party like that. Ever.

[Hoss] We have some pretty cool street festivals in Australia but I think that took the cake as far as dress up, madness and people going nuts.

[COMA] You are incorporating travel with touring by selecting shows at places you've never been. Where in particular are you looking forward to play and would like more exposure?

[Drew] This tour has been predominately around the east coast and we've been to some amazing places and we'd love to go back to some places. We didn't get to play Chicago or New York or Boston or Philadelphia and we love all those places and we'd really like to get back there next time plus we'd love to get on the west coast next time. I think we're doing one LA show but we'd like to get up to Seattle and Portland and Utah. We'd love to get everywhere eventually.

[Hoss] It's a big country. We're definitely going to come back; hopefully sooner than later.

[Drew] Vegas, I'd love to get to Vegas.

[COMA] Themata has been in the Australian independent Air Charts for an incredible two years since your debut album. How does it feel to have such an immense staying power?

[Hoss] I guess it feels good. It's not really something we think about on a day to day basis. We just love music, we love playing music and writing music and we've all got really different backgrounds in music and different likes and dislikes in music and throwing all that together I guess creates what we create and to think it's got such longevity as a piece of music is, I don't know, you never know whether that is going to happen or not and I don't know how that happened but...

[Drew] It's something we didn't expect (for it) to have that sort of longevity. We don't purposefully do it but I think we've written some music that, it takes a few listens to really get your head around it for some people and that's kind of my favorite music to listen to is something you like at first but it takes a few listens to really get into it and that to me is music that has staying power. All my favorite bands have been like that.

[COMA] Karnivool is set to play Big Day Out 2008; are there any specific bands you're excited to be on the bill with?

[Hoss] There's a band called Rage Against the Dishwasher or something? Everybody's been telling us to check 'em out so we're gonna check 'em out. We're actually ridiculously excited about seeing Rage Against the Machine so we're gonna lap up every second of it.

[Drew] There's also a band called Battles which I'm really looking forward to seeing. It's John Stanier from Helmet and that's something very different for him and we're looking forward to seeing it. Bjork, unfortunately we're playing the same time as Bjork every night so we don't get to see her but we can't really complain as we're doing a festival we're dreamt of doing since we were very young whippersnappers so we're very stoked to be doing that.

[COMA] You were approached to be included in Gotye's Mixed Blood album making your own interpretation of Wally DeBacker's music. How was that project? Do you wish to tackle other such musical ventures?

[Hoss] We do, we're open to everything but Wally was an old friend of ours, we met on musical ground and appreciated each others music and that project just came up as something that really appealed to us cause we love the music and really wanted to a version of the song.

[Drew] We like throwing as many things into the mixing pot as possible, we like collaborating with unlikely bands. Gotye was one of those, it was a very cool collaboration, it just makes for an interestingness I think and we also hooked up with a band called The Cannon Fire(?), they're kind of a funk/jazz/world/salsa/hip-hop/everything kinda band so we like to try to do as much of that sort of stuff as possible.

[COMA] Would you qualify your creative process as intuitive? How is your struggle with the concept of infinite possibilities in the process of creating music? You seem terribly frustrated with it.

[Drew] The writing process for us is not a normal process and I think we take a long time to write. Sometimes it's dysfunctional, sometimes it's functional but in the end it all works out somehow. At the moment, writing for the new album that we're doing is really the only time that we've written as a unit, we're all putting ideas in and I think it deffinetly shows. It's a lot more cohesive than the stuff we've done before. It's still the early days but it's really feeling good.
Writing music is always fun, it keeps you guessing cause there's no right or wrong way to do it, you gotta make your own rights and wrongs, just keep an open mind and an open palate and at the same time trying to make your boundaries and say "that's good enough" because there is infinite possibilities, you could keep going forever.

[COMA] Your sound evokes a sense of emotionality. Do you have a particular response you are looking to get out of your listeners?

[Drew] I think the response we're trying to get from our listeners is, "huh?" and then, "ahhh".

[Hoss] We want everyone to get their own thing out of it, with music everyone hears it differently same as when you look at something that's red does everyone see it as red, music's the same, everyone gets a different interpretation because of the past that they have had with music up until that point so we can't expect anybody to hear our music the way we want them to hear it, everyones going to hear it differently. I think that's a really cool thing about music; some like it, some don't, we've never tried to cater to any kind of audience, we just write what we write. If people like it, fantastic, if they don't, come and tell us what you don't like.

[COMA] Have you been writing on the road, and if so has it effected your writing style?

[Hoss] We've been trying to write on the road, this tour has been pretty hectic.

[Drew] We did have big plans before we left to be creative on the road but we suffered a minor setback in that our laptop died which is our main... We haven't lost all the stuff, we've got it backed up. This last couple weeks of the tour we're really trying to get a bit more creative and get our brains back in the creative flow so when we hit Perth we can just get straight back into writing.

[COMA] I've read that Karnivool didn't play the songs off Themata together as a band until after it was fully recorded; what were some of the pros and cons of a situation like that?

[Hoss] A lot of time getting it ready.

[Drew] As I said about that dysfunctional writing method we have before, that was kind of what happened but it turned out good in the end. We got a lot of time to really think about the songs and structure them how we wanted to, the songs and everything are in the right place.

[COMA] What are some of the biggest differences between playing for American audiences and playing for Australian audiences?

[Hoss] At the moment for us, we're quite established in Australia and it's actually quite nice to come over here and play in front of smaller audiences that don't know our stuff, I think that's rewarding.

[Drew] It's just a different kind of challenge, I think there's a challenge to play to a crowd that has come to see you and a challenge to win a crowd over.

[Hoss] In Australia because the touring schedule is totally different, we wouldn't do as many shows there like we have done in the last two months here and I think for us as a band it's been great to do that many shows in a row, it's really made us become better that period.

[Drew] We've never played this many shows in a row, ever. I think we've got this energy on stage between the band that we've never really felt before and it's really gelling, I think we're playing better than we ever have.

[COMA] If you could have anyone, living or dead, hear your music, who would it be?

[Drew] Kurt Cobain was responsible for me starting to play music, I was a young teen when I heard the Nirvana stuff and decided that's what I wanted to do. I'd like to show him my music, I doubt he'd like it but even if he didn't I'd like to show him and say, "thanks, you got me started and this is what I'm doing".

[COMA] That's all, thank you guys!

[Hoss] Thank you, man.

Karnivools debut album "Themata" is out now.
Visit Karnivools official website at www.karnivool.com.au

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