Usurpers Of Modern Medicine is a new 3 piece collective from Perth, featuring members of Injured Ninja, Mile End and Carbuncle. They have a unique sound that is formed from carefully constructed layers of sound based around loops, sampling, post rock, electronics and live re-sampling.

Originally conceived as a studio based concept, the band plays its first public live show on wednesday 6th October at Manhattans Bar.

1: Who are the UOMM and what are the members backgrounds?
Usurper is currently Cameron Hines (Drums), Cameron George (Laptop / Keys / Resampling) and myself Steven Aaron Hughes (Bass / Vox). Cam H is the bass player from Perth bands Mile End and Mongrel Country, mostly known for providing the low end rumble, he has been in many bands over the last few years and he is now returning to being behind the kit for the first time in a while. Cam G plays in Carbuncle at the moment and is an avid sound designer and experimental music artist. I play in another act named Injured Ninja, usually playing guitar I am now experimenting with only 4 strings and some pitch shifting instead of the regular 6 string madness.

2: What are some of the bands musical influences and inspirations?
We are all avid fans of electronic music, hip-hop and experimental grooves mostly. The type of stuff that samples everything under the sun and spits it out in bootie-shaking new ways. Combine this with a fondness of 90’s post-rock and 70’s psychedelic / progressive rock / krautrock and I think you can get an idea of the sounds that we are crafting.

3: The sampling/re-sampling is very unique element and must make for unpredictable results at every show/jam etc, how did this element of your sound come about?
As far as I can remember that has been part of the band concept since day 1. We started this project as a studio experiment. It begun with loops, microphones and Cam H (drums) playing to click track. I originally played guitar. We wanted to see if we could hook more organic instruments into the ‘machine’ that was the laptop, holding everything together. I since have switched to bass, and Cam no longer plays with headphones in but just more naturally adapts the loops. For this reason, yes, things to get rather unpredictable, but that’s what makes this interesting. The bass + drums form a solid rhythm section that holds everything together, the microphones and loop samples react to this and create the icing on top.

4: What can we expect from your live show?
Tough question to answer, we aren’t 100% sure what will happen just yet ourselves, yet to play through a decent PA its going to be a rewarding experience to hear everything clearly for once! Expect things to be a lot more energetic then our demos - which were made from pre-recorded loops. In the live situation things get much more organic, intense and loud. Expect to hear noises that you are highly confused as to which instrument they are coming from. Expect to hear echo trails inexplicably flying off drums, triggering synths. Expect to get saturated in some heavy grooves.

 5: Future plans of UOMM
We are developing a live show and recording for our first proper release within the next month. We have several releases planned, the first of which will be the 5-track ‘ACID CHESS’ EP. No release date just yet, considering how we tend to write songs is by recording them first, cutting them up into loops and rearranging them it might take a while for us to settle on the arrangements. That’s what we like about this band though - the ability to be so flexible with the sounds at any point in the songcraft. We are also busy working on developing a visual show to go with our live sets - a real-time generated visual system that can run off our own laptop computers and reacts to the sounds we are playing. This is something i’ve spent a bit of time developing for other bands and I have some ideas of how to craft a fully engaging visual projection that runs by itself and is completely unique every time, hopefully it should be ready to go live in the next few months.

Listen here http://www.myspace.com/usurperofmodernmedicine