From the Vault: Revisiting The Herd - An Elefant Never Forgets

YEAR: 2003
WHERE WAS IT MADE: Twin Tower Studios, Von Sponeck Studios, Crash Palace, $nap's Playroom, Studio 547 (Epping), Goose Studios (Leichhardt)
MASTERED BY: Willie Bowden

Urthboy: An Elefant Never Forgets was one of the most important albums for Elefant Traks, whose success bankrolled the label and all our releases for years. AENF came two years after the minor success of our self-titled debut (it felt major to us!), and was a much bolder, more politically outspoken record that surprised a lot of people who'd only heard our song 'Scallops'. It was a weird time with a nastier, crueler side of the Australian psyche coming to the fore - the first flare-ups of anti-asylum seeker sentiment were now being reliably exploited by both major political parties. The strange and amazing group of individuals in the band collectively shared a vision to counter all this bullshit.

We started selling out legit venues and generally transitioned from an improvised outfit wearing different coloured overalls to something resembling a band! We attracted the attention of a young booking agent named Tom Taafe who signed us up to Trading Post Agency under the helm of Owen Orford. We sold a lot of albums that never dented any charts, but our successes gave us confidence in our message and our music. Can't forget that hip-hop was still very underground in Australia, and though it was changing quickly, it was still very much considered by the broader industry to be a passing fad.

Which tracks from An Elefant Never Forgets stands out to you and why?

Traksewt ...
One standout musically for me was 'Ray of Sun', produced by my old friend Damien Johns (Snapsuit) and MC'ed by Shannon Kennedy (Ozi Batla). Damien first got me into electronic music out of my band habits in the mid 90s, and we started writing tracks at the same time. I loved what he did on the drums giving it a lethargic yet rolling feel. Shannon is at his poetic best here, describing a duel personality argument between an optimist and a pessimist.  I also loved 'Burn Down the Parliament'. I was inspired from going to these great dancehall gigs in Sydney at the time by Firehouse Sound System. I wanted to try writing something with the classic dancehall beat, and to mix it up I wanted to try flamenco guitar. The song title was a little dig about what respect we had for our leaders.

Urthboy ...

The recording of some songs took me way out of my comfort zone. I recall the painstaking vocal takes in Kenny's Redfern bedroom for 'Burn Down the Parliament' - we broke it down line to line and butted heads learning how to understand what each of us wanted in the song. In retrospect it was a significant learning curve and I got a lot out of it. The other one was 'When You Thought Nothing Was Happening' - we had a lot of fun cutting up my vocals and piecing them back together. I still think that song is interesting, and there was nothing else like it in the hip-hop scene at the time.

Ozi Batla ...

'Urban Lady Saloon' reminds me how free we were back then, just mucking around and trying new things. Heaps naive as well I suppose, we would make a song in some bizarre time signature or that changed styles three times in a minute or was just completely left field and then put it on an album! That's probably a reflection of the Sydney electronic scene at the time, it was very experimental and exciting, everyone was pushing each other - not in a competitive way, more in that you would hear the weird shit someone else was doing on a Sunday night at Frigid and go home and try to make something even more out there. 

Toe-Fu ...

I had the knee jerk response of '77%' and then went and had another look at the track listing and ….it’s still '77%'. The track is Ozi Batla gold and captures the angst, frustration, anger and disappointment surrounding the Tampa affair and racism in Australia. As we’ve said many times on stage and in interviews, we wish the song was relegated to the history books after it was released, but sadly it remains relevant. I love this song because it’s like being hit over the head with a hammer – you can’t listen to it without being aware of the message.

Rok Poshtya ...

An Elefant Never Forgets was the last of the non-band albums. It wasn't until after this that the band lineup settled (Jane Tyrrell joined for The Sun Never Sets) and we had far less of the random element of divergently different songwriters and styles on there. So in many ways we were still finding our feet as an outfit. I think that leads to some real gems and some more funny moments. I find it amusing that some people who may have come late to the band would potentially be totally confused that it's not a hip-hop album, rather an album of electronic music with some hip -hop elements. It was an interesting time for the band - the successes of songs like '77%' and 'Burn Down the Parliament' meant that we suddenly, within a year or two, formed ourselves into a proper touring band, which lead to the lineup solidifying and made us into what we were in the albums to follow.

What was your mindset as a hip hop artist back when the album was released? What else were you up to in 2003?

Traksewt ...
Thinking back on who we were on that album reminds me of the thousand lives we have lived. That being our second album, we wanted to show the full range of The Herd. We had lots of musical ideas that we needed to experiment with and develop, that we felt were not fully engaged on in the first album. We also know that while the first album was thematically diverse, the song 'Scallops' was the sticking point on what The Herd was. So we wanted to show some variety to people who had only heard that one song.  I did a few solo gigs in Canada with some contacts from the label Ninja Tune. It was a big change for myself, from running the label day to day for 5 years, to handing over to Tim and getting random email updates on the other side of the world. I would be chatting with the rest of the band over the internet as the album was getting prepared.

Urthboy ...

We had a quiet confidence of knowing that our previous album surpassed all of our expectations, so that was carried into this album. There was a strong desire to be more overtly political and it felt pretty satisfying when we'd finished it - I was excited to talk to radio and media and let them know what we stood for. The album was more cohesive than the first one, and though it was still a bit of a dog's breakfast, it had this beautiful spirit about it - curious, ambitious, loose, angry - I can understand how it cut through.

Ozi Batla ...

I was predominantly known as a drum n bass MC and was trying to establish my hip-hop credentials, entering and winning a bunch of freestyle battles. Living down the coast, working just as much as I needed to, writing beats on the audio software Fruity Loops and Reason, writing rhymes like '77%', touring and playing heaps of club gigs still. Living the dream! I'd just met Chasm and was writing for his debut EP which would lead to us forming Astronomy Class with Robbo.

Toe-Fu ...

In 2003 I was living in Darwin and facilitating music workshops on Indigenous communities throughout Arnhem Land. The ‘Darwin years’ for me were extremely formative in relation to music, politics and the first people of this country. It was important to expand and dissolve that ‘south eastern perspective’ which was the only perspective I had before that. I’d spent a couple of weeks out bush and then a couple of weeks in town and maybe a gig down south. It was a very fortunate existence. I met and played with some amazing musicians from all cultures during those years. Me and some mates put on a Darwin Hip Hop Festival which saw Hau and Danielsan from Koolism playing under tiny umbrellas as a massive storm rolled through – it was a real DIY vibe up there (not so much OH&S!)

Rok Poshtya ...
Apart from playing bass on a couple of tracks, I was also responsible for the artwork on the album. At the time I was messing with a technique where I would randomly select points on vector artwork and 'pull' them to make shapes. It was in a program called Freehand which was a little less rigid than Illustrator which I use now. That's how I got the combination of shapes on the cover. There's a little visual joke in there as well—the fierce looking elephant on the front cover turns out to be a piece of kids play equipment, as revealed on the inside cover. Another fun fact is that each of The Herd albums have had a distinct colour palette on the front and inside covers (except Summerland where the disc and lyric book are a different colour). In this case we used warm colours for the cover and cooler blues for the inside. 

Grab your copy of An Elefant Never Forgets...

Physicals at elefanttraks.com