Been Here For Years

Hilltop Hoods are no strangers to performing to massive crowds. With their addition to the Big Day Out travelling circus, festival veteran MC Pressure tell us how the Adelaide crew keep their live shows fresh.

“A lot of the content we're going to perform at Big Day Out will be from our new album that won’t be quite out then, it’s due out in February, but we'll perform I guess at this point three, four new songs from that album and then a variety of tracks that people know and work well.”

The Hoods aren’t shy about mixing it up on stage with live instruments either. They’ve previously had the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra backing them up, as well as funk outfit Lowrider. Now they’ve headhunted drummer extraordinaire, Plutonic Lab, for the latest round of shows. â€œWe just like changing it up live, so for people that have seen our show they’re not just seeing the same shit, it'll be new takes on old tracks plus new tracks. So hopefully it’ll be something cool and something that people haven’t seen before.”

Hilltop Hoods have a busy couple of months ahead of them, with a tour to Canada happening next month. â€œCanada is our strongest territory away from home. We're basically just doing a short tour there, firstly as an excuse to get away and hopefully do some snowboarding, and secondly to give the Canadian fans a bit more love because last time we went there we sold our tour out. We can’t get enough of going back there, the crowds are just amazing.”

The new album from Hilltop Hoods will be titled ‘Drinking From The Sun’, and Pressure says it will be full of that familiar sample-driven music they’re known for, plus a couple of party joints as well as a few moody tracks. â€œThere is a fair bit of live instrumentation, there is a fair few guests on the album, there's some rappers, some producers, I can't really drop any names at the moment because it’s too far from completion, and some of the tracks might not make the cut.”

As for whether we can expect a Golden Era tour or posse joint in the future, only time will tell. â€œI don’t know if there will be a posse joint at this stage, there could be, it can always happen in the last week of making the album, a lot of things happen in the last week of making an album! There is definitely some collaborations. Trials has done some production for the album and I’m sure there will be some more, but I don’t know about a posse joint or a tour at the moment, although it isn’t a bad idea!”

After leaving Obese Records in 2008 to start their own label, the Hoods had a lot of ideas about how they wanted to operate. With a shelf-full of successful releases to their name, Pressure believes the imprint’s success can be credited to the strong relationships they enjoy with their artists. â€œWe are a pretty laidback label really. We give our artists all the creative control so they make all the calls on their music, which is everything from their film clips to how they want to present themselves in their photo shoots and their artwork, that’s all them. Sometimes we're probably a bit too casual, but it’s a fine line between being a fellow artist, being a label, and to all the guys that are on our label, being their friend as well.”

As they get set to embark on the 20th anniversary of Australia’s biggest travelling music festival, Pressure leaves us with his favourite Big Day Out memory. â€œI think my best Big Day Out memory was making DJ Debris do push ups on stage! He fucked up our set so badly one day that we were like, ‘Right, you’re doing push ups in front of like forty thousand people’ … He got to about nine, he couldn’t even get to ten!”

CATCH HILLTOP HOODS PERFORMING AT BIG DAY OUT, AT THE GOLD COAST PARKLANDS, SUNDAY JANUARY 22. BIGDAYOUT.COM