words chris ress

In three months, TwoByTwo have attained fans on at least three continents and a professionally recorded album all for the price of a flight each and, if they count, phone bills. Welcome to the digital age.

“This guy in Sydney was running around the main street putting our posters up all over the place when the cops came to bust him. They saw the posters of us, and let the guy go because they’d heard of us too! We’d never met any of them.” That kind of attention for a band that has been together for well under a year is a dream come true. But for a band that has put absolutely no money into advertising and has released no albums, it is astonishing.

Kai, guitarist and lead vocalist for TwoByTwo, a trio that also includes lead guitarist Chris and drummer and backing vocalist Jono, calls it “The Great Experiment”, which is also the title of their first EP. “We have no base; I’m from HK, Chris is from America and Jono from Australia,” he says as we chat over coffee. Even as we talk, Chris and Jono are in their respective countries. Yet the band can already claim competition wins, an ‘almost’ tour across Australia and an album due for release in early 2008 with Grammy award winning producer Joel Jaffe.

“We started together around July 2006,” Kai tells me – they were all students in Australia. “My friend Matt [and future manager] was doing a project at the college we all went to where he had to record a version of the ’40s song Mule Skinner Blues by Bill Monroe.” The three acquaintances, Kai, Chris and Jono recorded the song and realized “it sounded pretty good”. From there, with only three months left of Chris and Jono’s courses before they all went their separate ways, a binge of practice and recording sessions sprang to life, the trio meeting “12 hours a day, every day for three months straight”. They recorded their EP and were all set for a tour around Australia when, on the day they were due to hit the road, the headlining act pulled out. “We were so fucking angry. We got pissed, acted like rock stars and broke a guitar.” TwoByTwo had hit their first roadblock and had nowhere to turn.

When Chris and Jono left the country, and while Kai was still finishing his last year at university, the band went into limbo for six months. It was during this time that Matt, working under Joel Jaffe in San Francisco, remixed a few of the
tracks from the EP. “Joel heard them and I guess he liked them,” says Kai. “He gave us studio time and helped us put together an entire album for free. All we had to pay for were the flights [to San Francisco] and… do phone bills count?” It was all part of TwoByTwo’s great experiment in the “age of the internet”.

“Things like the guy in Sydney were happening every day. We played at a show in San Francisco that was purely organized for us by a woman who found us on MySpace. The entire thing was set up around us by a woman we had never met.

“We want to see where the roof is on this thing,” Kai says of his exploration into the extent of their internet exposure. “We have no idea how many people have listened to us. There’s the counter on MySpace, but we’re on loads of other sites – and people have shared us around.” But even he admits things might have to change if they take the extra step by releasing a debut album. “We have to start thinking about paid advertising now,” he speculates half-jokingly over the band’s good fortune so far. And he admits to a small worry at the back of his mind about the people who listen to and love TwoByTwo. “It might turn out that it’s five people across four countries,” he says, “but we want to see where the experiment goes.”

That experiment is a very modern idea, as is the theme of their new album For Those of Us Left Behind. “We’re the bored generation,” the one that is “told to be scared by the news 24-7, and [also told] everybody’s trying to ‘fight the Man’. But who is the Man? Who are we supposed to be fighting?” Kai himself admits that he is confused and that the band’s album is for all those willing to accept that they’re confused too, which is the first step in the bored generation’s quest “to find our place in the world”.

The album is planned for release on internet download and purchase sites and, as soon as the band settles on a location (or at least a continent), “we’ll try for HMV and stuff”. As for moving on from The Great Experiment? “We still write back to our fans as much as possible,” says Kai. “Because we don’t get to see most of them, it is our way of communicating. So write any of your questions to us – so long as you don’t mind a three-page rant in answer.” He does like to talk.

TwoByTwo plan to release their debut album For Those of Us Left Behind in late January/early February. Find out more on their website: www.twobytworock.com.