PLAY AND RECORD

THEY MAY BE RIDING THE CURRENT WAVE OF DANCE ROCK HYSTERIA, BUT AS SINGER KATRINA NOORBERGEN TELLS CRAIG SPANN, CASSETTE KIDS ARE A BAND THAT ARE IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL.

Patience is not often a virtue you associate with young bands. But if there’s something that Sydney’s dance rockers Cassette Kids have learned of late, it’s that taking your time pays off. 
“It’s hard because you just want everything to happen right now… but you have to be patient,” singer Katrina Noorbergen says. “If you just wait that little bit longer, bigger and better things can happen.”
Which is exactly what’s been going on of late for the four-piece. Granted, they’re not exactly veterans, but Noorbergen says the last couple of years have been about finding their feet and their sound. While she admits there’s been some “trial and error” with the line-up, the current combination has been in place for the best part of two years and is really starting to fire. It’s a solid creative relationship she says that’s built on mutual respect and a very diverse set of influences – from dance to noise rock.
“A lot of bands, when it comes to the [song]writing process, I think there is often a dominant figure, one person who is directing where the band is going,” she says. “But our situation is we all contribute quite evenly. And we all come from quite diverse musical backgrounds. We all listen to very different stuff and somehow that all comes together to make something new… instead of just sounding like our favourite band.”
While their sound may not be exactly “new”, the Cassette Kids are definitely on to something – and it shows on new mini-album We Are. While there’s little that separates them from the disco-meets-guitars approach of so many bands today, Noorbergen’s presence gives them an edge. At the very least, it’s refreshing to hear a female voice making an impact in a genre fast becoming yet another boys’ club.
“I don’t think we ever sat down and decided what we wanted to be, what we wanted to sound like,” she says. “It’s been an evolution and I think we are just getting better at songwriting as we go.”
Describing their earlier songs as “punkier and harder”, she says the band elected to shelve the first EP they recorded – despite the fact it was that EP which first caught the ear of the band’s new label SonyBMG.
“They [Sony] really like it and they wanted to release it, but we knew we could do better,” she says.
When the label offered the band some no-obligation studio time, they leapt at the opportunity to not just reassess some of the older tracks, but write new ones. It took just a few weeks for the record to take shape, a quick turnaround she says no one expected. In the end just two tracks from that first EP – ‘Acrobat’ and ‘Listen Now’ – made the cut.  Noorbergen says that while the band were keen to move in a new direction, they were adamant they shouldn’t lose touch with their roots.
“For us, this is the first collection of songs that shows where we came from, and where we are going,” she says.
Racking up seven songs in a shade over 20 minutes, the mini-album format also captures the energy of the band, she says. 
“It’s kind of like our live performance,” she says. “When you are a new band, you just have to get up there and go ‘bang!’ and leave them wanting more.”
There’s also the fact that if the record ran any longer, it would start to wear a little thin. To her credit, Noorbergen says that while the band are rapt with the album, they appreciate they have a long way to go. 
“It’s funny how once you think you’ve got it down, you start writing again and I goes in a different direction,” she says. “We’ve started to open up to experimenting more. The one thing I know is the next few songs are not going to sound like ‘Acrobat’.”

WHO: Cassette Kids
WHAT: We Are (SonyBMG)
WHERE & WHEN: Alhambra Thursday Oct 30, Elsewhere Friday Oct 31