BLACK THE SNOW

Many will remember the single Snow, released a while back now, which brought a then little known Australian artist into the limelight, coming from the Scream II soundtrack & surprising many with the fabulous lush sounds of that song, combined with Alex's vocal style, a softish smooth voice with understated power behind it.

Others may remember Alex's time with Mother Hubbard, an indie band who achieved some degree of success, though that band eventually went their separate ways & put Alex on track to forming his own solo career, of which we're about the see the debut album released. A surprising amount of airplay for the album's first single Black The Sun setting something of a frenzy in place from fans & the much later single Lucky Star, which has only been out about a month.

I recently caught up with Alex by phone & at that time, the launch of the album was about 10 days away & he was obviously vibed about the impending release.

"Wow, now you've told me it's only 10 days, I'm really excited about it. It's been a while in the making I guess & a lot of people seem to have been waiting for a while, but it's been good for me to get all of this out of my system finally & get the songs out."

I mentioned the delay between the title track of the album Black The Sun as a single & the follow up, Lucky Star.

"Yes, it has been a while, but everything has just taken time. I suppose I'm a bit of a perfectionist & the way this album has come about has let me have control over everything as far as the music side of it goes."

Talk turned to Alex's involvement with Mother Hubbard & he was adamant that there were no bad feelings about the split with the band.

"Really, the songs which are on this album, would probably have made up the next Mother Hubbard album, but I just really wanted to take a different track with my music, you know, head in new directions & I just couldn't keep up with the conflict with the rest of the band. Not that we were bad friends or anything like that, but sort of like the old cliche artistic differences."

The style of the album is certainly somewhat removed from the music Mother Hubbard performed & Alex explained.

"You know, ever since I've been in bands, I've been telling other people what to do, you know, like telling the drummer what to do. I don't really know if it means I'm a frustrated drummer or what. The way I made this al;bum, I can manipulate the drummer on the computer or sampler, so it doesn't matter, no frustration or arguments. For me I guess it's the best way to make music. The more technological direction of the music I'm doing now is where I wanted to take Mother Hubbard, but the sound didn't really suit the band, so here we are."

With electronic or technological styles of music, there is often the impression that those musicians don't really have a live presence. Alex is quick to put that to rest.

"Well, at the moment, I'm gearing up for a tour, we'll have a live band & I'm just getting to that now. Once it's settled, we'll go into rehearsal & then I'm going to tour with the band, so hopefully people will see something they don't get from the album."

The conversation drifted back to computers & I asked about the role computers played in his music.

"Well, I've just gotten a powerful new G3 Mac & it's great, so quick. Unfortunately the programs I use with my music appear to be causing some sort of conflict with my Internet access, so at the moment, all my Internet access is at the library. Computers are so good for things like sampling. They don't argue with you & they don't have a problem if you sit there & have a bit of a mental blank."

Lastly, I asked the inevitable question about Alex's experience with radio airplay.

"Well, I've been lucky here. Triple J has been excellent. So has Triple R in Melbourne. I think in fact Triple R has a bigger profile than Triple J in Melbourne, but of course Triple J has the advantage of being huge across the nation. There has been a little airplay across commercial radio too. In the US, there's a station which is a little similar to Triple J, called KROQ. There's this guy there who played Snow after picking I think between the new Greenday single & my song, so I got a lot of exposure, especially after the movie came out. I hope this one does as well. At least Triple J have picked up Lucky Star & hopefully they'll play the next one as hard."

Check out Alex Lloyd's new album Black The Sun, probably available by the time you read this, through EMI & look out for Alex touring near you soon.