In what would normally be considered unusual behaviour these days for a record label, Virgin Australia has signed up new Australian band Lino, who have been receiving some decent airplay for the opening track "Troubleshooting" from their new self titled album.

The trio have gotten together 11 songs on the album which are definitely not what else is floating around on the charts at the moment & it seems that their new record label thought the same. I recently caught up with Lisa Ffrench from the band, who put some things into place.

One of the first quesions I had was about how the band came to actually be signed to a label in the first place.

"We're in the very fortunate position of being one of the few bands who get this chance in Australia these days. I don't really know why it is, but it's worked out very well for us. We haven't even got together for live gigs yet & I guess that's going to be the next step for us, working out how we're going to translate our sound into a live setting."

Another thing which interested me was the experience the listener gets even before getting the CD into a player, as the front cover material is made up of a plastic sort of material, a substance I haven't seen on an album since 1995s album from Autohaze.

"We were lucky to get in contact with a guy named Mark Gowing, who is really clever. He had some definite ideas as to what the artwork should look like & if you open it up, you'll see some interesting effects against the light. When it's open, you see sort of a silhouette on each page of the cover, but when you fold it back up, the silhouettes combine to make a full colour composite picture - neat huh?"

The band are doing some very interesting things with electronica & dance sounds & I asked where the band got their influences from.

"Well, I guess you already mentioned a couple, Portishead & Massive Attack. Those guys are just huge. We really wanted to do something that other people aren't doing in this country & I don't know why. We've gone a little bit in all sorts of directions, but we think it's worked well. I like a lot of the trippy tracks, but I also like the way I'm able to add a vocal to a lot of the instrumental songs too."

As noted in their bio, the band take a somewhat different writing style than they used to & I asked Lisa how things had changed.

"Things really started out with the 3 of us getting together for sort of a jam session & I guess we all realised that things were working out rather differently than we'd assumed, just as a bit of fun. Jad & Andrew used to put things together with computers & samples & other things & when I started putting some vocals in, they had to make a concious effort to change the way we wrote songs. I guess it's very hard to write songs with just a sampler when you're using a vocalist, so we have changed a bit in that way I guess."

Lastly, I asked how the band had coped with the exposure they'd gotten thanks to Triple J & some already decent press coverage.

"It's certainly been the opposite to what a lot of bands have had to do before they've gotten themselves signed. Most bands these days seem to have to jump through the hoops for a couple of years hard slog beforehand, but we've sort of bypassed a lot of that. We're really lucky in that respect & Triple J have given us a real push by playing Troubleshooting. I don't really know what the future holds for us yet, but we're going with it wherever it takes us while it lasts, which we all hope is a good while yet."

Check out the band's new self titled album, out now through Virgin, or look for their forthcoming live incarnation touring near you soon.