Industrial Relations - An Interview with Daniel Sutherland

The CD player in my car was broken, so I was stuck listening to JJJ. I was on my way to work; traffic wasn’t too bad for a Surfer’s Paradise afternoon. A song came on the radio and completely grabbed my attention; I didn’t know it at the time, but the song was Drown by Switchkicker. Maybe it was the melody, or the subtle yet solid use of synth, or the lyrics and my own relationship with the notion of drowning, but something got my attention and kept it. I spent the next two weeks asking everyone I knew, and everyone behind a record store counter, if they’d heard of Switchkicker. No one had, until the day I stumbled into a small, yet well-packed independent CD store and found it, 17102, Switchkicker’s debut album.

The melody of Drown was replaced with energy and angry despair on the opening track The Driver, with its heavy industrial rock sound, and my love affair with Switchkicker had officially begun.

Daniel Sutherland is the man behind the solo project Switchkicker (SK), and the front-man and driving force behind the Sydney hard-core/metal act Many Machines on Nine (MM9).

Wastrel secured this interview with Daniel some months ago, momentarily dragging him away from his recording work with both bands. It’s all still relevant – thankfully – and we’ve even updated album release dates to keep things fresh. Anyway, on with the interview…

WM: Name, rank and serial number?

DS: Daniel Sutherland

Vocalist and Programmer for Switchkicker and MM9
Control Freak

00100007010-0-02-9

WM: Switchkicker and Many Machines on Nine. Any secrets behind the names?

DS: No secrets. Just words and numbers.

WM: You went straight off the bat with two bands, what drove you to do both instead of concentrating on one or the other?

DS: It made sense. One band balances out the other. Switchkicker is me sitting in a studio most of the time drawing on purely personal experience, screwing with new sounds and being an antisocial fucker.
Many Machines on Nine provides me with a traditional band format; four guys in a room, writing and playing music, making fart-jokes. Those guys are my brothers.
Musically speaking, MM9 is heavier which satisfies one side of me, whereas Switchkicker can be anything I want.

WM: Is that why you brought the MM9 guys on stage for SK live?

DS: Partially. Ben (Drums) and Kerry (Guitar) are two of the best players around. Originally, it was only Ben who was in the Switchkicker live band. Kerry hinted he would like to try playing for the live band at the second show. As soon as I had him up onstage with me, I knew it was right. His sense of melody and his onstage energy is integral for me onstage.

WM: How easily does it happen for you, both writing and performing?

DS: It's as natural as eating.
It's one of those things that can't be helped. You get the urge and you can't deny that. It'd be the same for any artist, be it writers, painters etc…
Plus it's the only thing I can do well.

WM: Could you imagine ever doing anything else?

DS: Not really. The only thing I can do other than my own music, is produce and remix for other artists.
I've done a lot of different jobs in the past, everything from shoe salesman to cleaner. It just doesn't work. I always ended up trying to make those jobs 'fun'. Needless to say, my bosses at the time didn't appreciate it.

WM: SK on 17102 and SK live are two very different creatures. Was this deliberate, or was it a necessary evil in translating the album?

DS: Completely deliberate. I wanted to give audiences two very different experiences while still staying true to the song structures and such on 17102.
I love seeing bands that emulate the recorded versions of their songs live, but I needed to do something different. It was an experiment… However, it's not an experiment I'll be repeating for the new album (Method 2).

WM: Dare I ask you to elaborate?

DS: You may…
I'm going for a more straight forward approach this time around. The new album is a more 'straight ahead' album recorded with about 90 percent real instrumentation

WM: Are you looking forward to hitting the road in a more extended fashion?

DS: I cannot wait.
If it didn't cost money, I'd be on the road most of the time.

WM: How do you find the whole fan-performer relationship?

DS: I really don't like the idea that there are barriers between fans and performers. When I'm onstage, I put on a show and perform, but when I'm offstage, it's back to the geeky, shy person I really am.
We're all people and no one is above anyone else, so I get a little uncomfortable with the idea that people may treat a performer differently to any other person they may come across.
In fact, whenever anyone has treated me like I'm someone special, I tend to shy away and shrug it off because all I want is a normal conversation.

WM: How do you see the music industry in Australia?

DS: Same as any other country. It's business.

WM: What’s your favourite Australian band alive or dead?

DS: There are quite a few....

Insurge
The Church
Primary
Cog
…probably too many to list here…

WM: Who do you count amongst your influences, either directly or indirectly?

DS: Again, there are so many. In the earlier days I would've said Nine Inch Nails… that was what got me started. These days I'm listening to a whole bunch of different music. Anything from Fantomas to Coldplay, Unkle to iOTA… it differs all the time. I like to keep my tastes fairly broad.

WM: What are your favourite ways of wasting time?

DS: I wish I had time to waste! If I had time to waste and money to spend...I'd go Go-Karting. I don't know why.

WM: What does 2005 (and 6) hold for SK & MM9?

DS: Well, an album from each band....Feb/March for new Switchkicker and sometime early next year for MM9. Apart from that, both bands will be touring separately at different times during the year.
It's all about the shows this year.