A band whose music is pretty unpredictable at the best of times, their music getting some serious airplay on Triple J & no doubt from community radio as well, plus some decent coverage on Recovery & Rage on ABC TV, Dogbuoy are having a great time since the release late last year of their 5 track ep which was self titled.

I recently caught up with Pauly B from the band, who I later found out used to be in Insurge & who is a very likeable & talkative guy interested in all aspects of music. We spoke initially about the ep itself, but soon moved onto an incredible array of other topics.

First up, the name of the band had always intrigued me since I'd come across the band, which Pauly explained pretty simply.

"Funny you should mention that. It's pretty easy really. Way back before we were even together as a band, we were putting stuff down & it was like... punk in attitude, but we didn't really think it was good enhough to be called punk, so we called it 'dog'. The Buoy part of the name was like all the hip hop influences & we had our own style which we called buoy, sort of like - upvibe you know, so it's just a combination of the two words."

With the band making some serious impressions on TV & radio, I wantd to find out how the band had felt about it's own promotion.

"Like, totally... you know, amazing. Triple J have jumped on the single, which is unreal, plus having the vid for our track Mozzies has worked so well for us too."

That video, if you've seen it, is a talking point all by itself, so I asked how it came about.

"You won't believe this story but here goes. We were like, never gonna afford some real slick video clip like we wanted to do, so instead, we wanted to sort of make it a little bad in the way that bad B movies can be cool. I knew the guy that had done one of the Front End Loader videos & the song was really cool, but the clip was like, bad. So one day, I think it was at one of our shows, he says to me he could do us a video as he'd got all this new computer stuff. A few weeks later, I rang him up & said let's do it! & we were into it."

At this point, Pauly got into discussion about making the clip, which were interesting enough to write another entire article.

"So we were like doing this clip & we were trying to make it pretty simple, but this guy wanted to go right over the top & do all these effects but we had to hold him back. In the end, it works well for the song, like you said."

The subject of technology coming up brings all sorts of computer & internet related questions with it.

"I haven't got net access at the moment, but I've had it. I came across this really cool Dogbuoy site we didn't know existed, from some guy that's been to a lot of our shows. Great stuff. I love doing lots of music stuff on the computer, there's just never enough time or money."

The band haven't got anything currently recorded, but want to get back into the studio.

"There's some limitations with recording on a budget. We have a live drummer, so he can make a lot of the sounds by himself instead of a lot of bands who like oversample 6 different sounds to get the one they want. What we really need is to get into a studio with really expensive mikes. They're the secret to a lot of good albums. Good expensive equipment."

Lastly, still on the subject of recording, Pauly went on to talk about where the band are heading with their next lot of recordings.

"We've got some stuff written, but nothing down. I guess the hardest thing when you play so many different styles of music is that you can't really put any 'serious' lyrics into your music. I'd like to but I can't seem to be able to do it. A lot of bands do songs with really painful lyrics, but I couldn't do it, bare myself on stage like that. I'd eventually kill myself I think."

In a bizarre touring story twist, Pauly finished up by telling me the band's listening material while travelling.

"You gotta write this if nothing else man. We listen to story tapes while we're on the road. They can chew up so much time for you. This one time, we had The Hound Of The Baskervilles on & I was drifting in & out of sleep. Some totally bizarre trip. I was having nightmares while it was playing. Weird stuff, but they're the best."

Check out the Dogbuoy's ep through MDS at the moment or catch them on tour near you.