Collective Thinking feat. Filthy Children

ISSUE ONE ______________________________

COLLECTIVE THINKING ______________________________

feat. FILTHY CHILDREN

6/6

6/6

Collective Thinking 4/6 Filthy Children 1

FILTHY CHILDREN Enthusiastic, articulate and eclectic, are words that sprung to mind when walking away from a recent encounter

with the members of electronic collective: Filthy Children. Sharing beers and polenta chips in a dimly lit pub, it

didn’t take much to get this dynamic group of young men vigorously chatting about the wonders of joining

musical forces.

Comprised of ten members, Filthy Children are united by friendship, a fierce passion for electronic sound

production, and a collective desire to generate individual artistic exposure. Forming in February this year, the

group has achieved immense things in a comparatively short space of time. Placing great emphasis upon live

performance, notable gigs include Pier 2/3 as part of the Sydney Biennale, pop up bars for the Fringe Festival,

and playful appearances at cultural hubs Five Eliza, Newtown and Plump Gallery, Enmore. On the production

front, they have also released two audio compilations, one of which was included in a collaborative zine

publication with the notorious Pawns and Lords collective.

Determined, highly motivated, yet seemingly defined by fun, Filthy Children describe their group dynamic as a

“democratic mess”. Never a dull moment among them, there is constant banter and jokes, and a refreshing

ambience of mutual respect. With a strong sense of conviction, and no restriction on creative freedom, these

guys are not just a bunch of Filthy Children - they’re seriously going places.

YOLK COLLECTIVE YOLK Collective is a not-for-profit collective comprised of six Art Theory students from COFA. YOLK

Collective’s objective is to create opportunities and editorial for emerging artists. We also write artist profiles,

exhibition reviews, quirky articles, essays, and some of our projects include small focus exhibitions and events.

In an artistic climate where opportunities are hard to come by, we decided to make our own and provide

some for others in the process.


HOW DID YOU ALL MEET? AND WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO FORM A COLLECTIVE? Well, there’s this lovely lady called Willurei, and she used to run Plump Gallery in Enmore. She did a shout out

for artists, and Marty’s housemate alerted him to it. Then Marty told a few of us about it, and we came

together to do a collective show.

The whole idea of the collective didn’t really come together until after we played that show. After we played,

we all had a drunken huddle, and were like, “we can do this, we can be a collective!”.

Most of us went to school together, at Blackwattle.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR SOUND TO SOMEONE WHO HASN’T HEARD YOUR

MUSIC? Experimental electronic. Quite often when you say electronic music, people think of dance music. But none of

us make dance music, just to clarify, haha. It kinda depends on who you’re listening to in Filthy Children. Some

people might call it Beats, or Electronica - which is a good catchall term.


BAERFRENS

WHAT IS YOUR PHILOSOPHY? AND WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO ACHIEVE AS A COLLECTIVE?

Filthy Children is a bit like a record label. Cos we just put everything into one little basket and push it out into

the world. It’s a lot easier working as a collective at this stage, when we’re just starting out, than if we were to

go by ourselves.

It’s kinda like a platform, a way of pulling all our resources together. Somebody will hit you up with one thing,

and you’ll be like “yeah, well, I’ve got all my friends who make beats as well”, and you get everyone involved.

All of us move in different circles, its cool, my friends will come, his friends will come, and we’ll put on a show.

Instead of getting one audience, we get a whole bunch of people.

It’s pretty free form, we’re kinda like Wu-Tang-Clan, haha. They’re this crew of rappers, they all do their own

solo output and stuff, but they’ve also made albums as a group. Wu-Tang-Clan gives a pretty good description.

Haha.

Marty, Sam and Jesse


HOW DO YOU WRITE YOUR MUSIC? COLLABORATIVELY OR INDIVIDUALLY? DESCRIBE THE

CREATIVE PRODUCTION PROCESS. Well, to start with, we don’t actually work under the name Filthy Children, as an artist. We all have our

separate alias’s, we’re all individual artists, that band together under the name as a way of performance. So

most of the time, its just us, doing our own thing, and that’s where we differ from other collectives I think.

We all like to say we “play the laptop,” haha. But we’re all different. Some of us, that started out playing the

drums, we tend to be more percussive. We’ll start out with a beat, or a rhythm, or with atmospheric ideas, and

the melodies come later. Or those who play guitar or keys, might start with chords and work from there.

Some of us like to record to tape, and use samplers and drum machines from the 80s and 90s. With

computers, you can get kinda trapped in the way that you approach it. You can get stuck in the loop, with

looping your ideas, and it gets convoluted. Putting limitations on yourself like using older equipment, produces

different results. It has a certain sound to it that you can’t get from the computer.

Click Me

In terms of collaboration, we like to remix each other’s tracks. We also have a drop box where we’ll put parts

of tracks, or field recordings, and then we just, you know, swap parts around, and use them for ourselves.

Collaborating with (real) people is key to developing your sound. Like when you’ve listened to your own song

50 times in the space of a day or two, it starts to sound really surreal. It’s always helpful to get a different point

of view, and the great thing about Filthy Children is that we're all such different producers, so everyone’s got

their own perspective. We hear those little things you put in tracks, that you think people will never hear,

which is awesome. Haha.


______________________________

“JESSE SAYS HE LIKES TO “PLAY THE MICROPHONE”

HAHA. IN THE SENSE THAT HE DOES A LOT OF

FIELD RECORDING. SO YOU TAKE A PORTABLE

RECORDER, AND JUST “MAKE SOUNDS,”

OR JUST RECORD SOUNDS FROM THE

ENVIRONMENT AROUND YOU.

“THE WORLD IS YOUR INSTRUMENT MAN!”

THERE YOU GO, HOW’S THAT FOR A QUOTE? HAHA.

BUT YEAH, GETTING PHYSICAL WITH THE MUSIC IS A GOOD WAY TO

GET INSPIRED.” ______________________________


LEDESMA

BAERFRENS

DEFOCUS and KAUKANA

CANECUTTER

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT AS A COLLECTIVE?

(All talking over each other in a jumbled mess…)

Um, it was probably the Sydney Biennale show, where we got to supply noise for the night.

Yeah, how bout that line? Yeah, yeah. That was pretty decent, there was probably just over a thousand people.

That was a really special night. Yeah loved it.

Can I add to that? I’d just like to say, it was also my most memorable moment in Filthy Children because the

sound system was so loud that my hand, when it was on my laptop, was just shaking and shaking, cos of the

vibrations on the table.

So we all agree that it was the Pier 2/3 gig? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ah it was great. We had like one free drink each. And.. Haha. Haha.

It was seriously big time though, it was this HUGE room. And the window above from where we were playing,

you could see the Harbour Bridge. Yeah it was a really culminative thing for us man, it was pretty crazy.

Oh, and, also, there were these crazy visuals. A weird virtual, kind of, meta reality, you know? People had to go

with either their ipads or iphones and scan this little code thing, and then they could walk around the Pier and

see all these virtual frogs and stuff, that weren’t actually there!

But yeah, we turned it into a crazy electronic gig, haha, it was nuts. Cos it wasn’t supposed to be that, we were

just supposed to provide subtle background music. But yeah, we blew the fuck out of that shit! Hahaha.

Kaukana’s AV video remix About You – XXYYXX


FILTHY CHILDREN, Sydney Biennale Gig, Pier 2/3.

HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR EGGS?

(Sam) I often scramble them. Haha.

(Ruebin) I, too, scramble them.

(Mikey) I… you know, sunny side up, definitely. Fried all the way.

(Jake) Definitely poached, I’m going poached.

(Tom) I’ve gottta go with that, poached as well. Yeah poached.

(Marty) Um, I’m an omlette man myself. Haha. Um recently ive been cutting up lots of shallots and garlic and

mushrooms, chucking that in with a bit of milk. Its kinda the only thing I can make. Haha.

(Jesse) Hard boiled.

(Kynam) Haha, poached all the way dude!


KUWAIT PARAGRAPHIC

FILTHY CHILDREN IS:

CANECUTTER - Jake Stanaway-Dowse

DEFOCUS - Tom Corben

LEDESMA - Jesse Ledesma

BAERFRENS and MOUFTEEF - Hugo Drummond

BAERFRENS and OCCASIONAL OCTOPUS - Mikey Moxon

KUWAIT PARAGRAPHIC - Marty Peppers

KAUKANA - Kynan Puru Watt

CYBER.AKB - Samuel Quinteros

CARPET BRICK - Reubin Boswell

ILKI - Liam Schoneveld


THANK YOU Filthy Children & to all collectives involved.

Images courtesy of Filthy Children & Georgie Hannam, edited by Angus Hannam.

We would also like to thank Arc @ COFA and Frontline Print.

YOLK COLLECTIVE Oliver Godsell

Paloma Gould

Georgie Hannam

Vanessa Low

Tahjee Moar

Olivia Welch


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yolkcollective.blogspot.com

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http://filchil.tumblr.com/ ______________________________

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Collective Thinking feat. Filthy Children