Sometimes you can hear a whole lot about a band and then realize that you know nothing about their music. I’d heard a whole lot about Aleks and the Ramps’ live show – that they regularly come on stage in matching basketball uniforms, and that their sets include choreographed interpretative dance. They’ve even shot a “guerilla” music video for one of their songs at Charlton’s, an infamous karaoke bar in Melbourne which involved outlandish dance moves and frequent cuts to the bemused faces of Charlton’s regulars.

 

But with the release of their second album, Midnight Believer, Aleks is hoping that people will be talking about more than just their onstage antics – “as soon as you get known for something other than your music – and we became known as the basketball uniform band – then it’s a good time to stop!”

 

If anything, the band has mellowed out since their debut, Pisces vs Aquarius, which was almost schizophrenic in the abruptness of its changes. That’s one of the things Aleks was less than happy with on the last record – “we used to have no filtration process with our ideas – we’d just be like ‘well and then what happens?’”

 

The key to their sound – at times smooth and layered and at other times sharp and abrasive – lies in their musical process which brings together, rather than separates, the writing and recording phases. Aleks says that the process is one of “writing, recording, cutting and pasting and then shifting around.” And the live show isn’t separate either – songs are often demoed live before going back to Aleks shed for “the never ending overdub sessions”, which in turn affects how they play the track live – “[we realized” that maybe that guitar part isn’t as important as it used to be, because now there’s this new synth bit which we’ve learnt through doing the recording is more important.”

 

Not that the new album is a complete depature, “I do still like music that leaps from big to small, and goes places. But [instead we’re] trying to find where it’s fluid but still jarring – where it’s natural.”

 

As for their live show? They may have ditched the basketball uniforms but that doesn’t mean the gigs will be any less manic – “I just think that if you’re a band putting on a show, you should put on a show!”