June 6th, 2012
Artist Interview: Hunting Grounds
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Hunting Grounds is the up-and-coming sextet from down under, landing with their brand new album In Hindsight on July 6th. What I love about this album is its fantastic diversity, branching out from multiple songwriters. The album is truly a group collaborative, as each of the six members traded ideas, inspiring an intelligent blend of alternative rock, post-punk, and shoegaze. Check out this sweet video for “In Colour”, one of the tunes on In Hindsight.
Here’s a little Q&A I had with Michael Belsar (vocals/guitar): |
| Newdust: What brought you all together to form Hunting Grounds? | 
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| Belsar: We all went to High School and I guess originally bonded over music. It was sort of inevitable that we’d start a band. | |
| ND: I hear Australia’s a pretty cool place to live. How’s the music scene? Who have you recently shared the stage with? | |
| Belsar: Yeah Australia’s great and so is the current music scene. We live in a little regional town called Ballarat in Victoria with a population of under 100,000 people. Somehow it has this crazy music scene which we were lucky enough to grow up with. The last big show we played was probably Golden Plains Music Festival alongside of Bon Iver, Ariel Pink and Chic. That was pretty sweet. We also played a festival called Big Day Out with Kanye, that was pretty fucking rad. | |
| ND: What are some albums in heavy rotation amongst you guys lately? Any major influences? | |
| Belsar: I don’t know about the other guys but I’ve been getting really into Sebastien Tellier lately. Go and buy his new album ‘My God Is Blue’, it’s brilliant. Apart from that I’ve been writing a lot whilst listening to the new Battles and Atlas Sound albums, you can imagine how strange the songs are (haha) | |
| ND: What changes have occurred, throughout the writing and recording processes of this past year, in the sounds of Hunting Grounds? Where do you see your sound going? | |
| Belsar: It took us a long time to write this album, which mainly was because we wanted to find our own unique sound. I guess the sound of the album came from the idea of writing the songs we wanted to hear, instead of what we have been pigeon holed as, and what people expect us to do. The new sound of the band seems to have opened so many doors writing wise, so I have no idea what to expect for future works, all I know is I’m excited to get it started. |
