Liminal are an experimental Psych-Rock band helping rejuvenate the live music scene of the Northern Rivers region of NSW, Australia. I caught principal member Alako Myles in the midst of launching their second album, White Dots, for a conversation about the band’s inception, influences, and motivations. We discuss the Gen Z perspective on making independent music while navigating late-stage capitalism, and ponder the psychedelic link between David lynch, Aphex Twin, and cursed images of dilapidated shopping malls.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
Congratulations on the release of White Dots! Are the launches going well?
Alako:
The first one went really well, we got like 176 tickets sold for the Lismore gig, it’s decent too, considering it was only a three band lineup. So yeah, I was really happy with that. The Picture House is super lovely in Brunswick Heads, then we’ve got two more. I’m hoping the records will be ready for those too.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
So can you run through how Liminal formed? I think it was mentioned that you just walked in on the rest of the band jamming?
Alako:
Yeah, I came into our high school music room. I saw River, who’s now our lead vocalist, and a bunch of others, but I didn’t know them yet. I had just changed schools, and my previous one didn’t really have much music going on. I was just pretty blown away to see all that was happening — they were having concerts and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I got with River and my younger brother, and we sort of just jammed. A year down the track, over COVID we were just recording stuff because we couldn’t play together, that’s basically how the first album was made. Recording stuff at home and sending it to each other, we didn’t even have an actual band, like with a live setup, because we couldn’t.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
So White Dots was the first album you were able to make together in person after collaborating online for Space; how much did that elevate the process?
Alako:
White Dots was actually still recorded in parts, but we had the ability to jam together as a band in the writing process. Knowing what our live act consisted of really helped with the arrangement. The first album had a crazy amount of layers, the new one still has this sound but is so much more adaptable for a live setting.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
What can you tell me about the album’s title and the significance of its title track?
Alako:
To be honest I’m not sure ‘white dots’ itself has any one specific meaning, the title track was loosely based off me being half asleep/awake and reality becoming a bit bent — sometimes it was like someone had turned the gain up on my eardrums to the point of distortion and I could hear a literal noise floor, I’d get crazy anxiety and experience sleep paralysis. White dots are the substitute for the things that make you feel normal, e.g “but all I can see are white dots, where your eyes should be”. You can take it as an analogy for other things as well.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
You’ve obviously got a whole local scene happening. You’ve got good ticket sales for these launches. Are you reaching much outside of Lismore? You know, like, when you’ve put out an album like this? Is it just about these local shows at this stage?
Alako:
We’re looking to get to Brisbane next, because that’s the closest city. It’s not so much that we haven’t been aiming outside the Northern Rivers, it’s more just a money thing. We’ve also got a younger member, Oscar, who’s my brother — he’s still going to school, so we have to sort of time it with school holidays. And going to 18 plus venues, he’s not allowed in unless he has a guardian. Plus, you know, saving up for accommodation and all that.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
Okay, so then the three others of you are in uni?
Alako:
River is not at uni at the moment, but he graduated high school last year. I’m in uni and so is Tom.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
Through your variety-show web series Anemoia, it seems like there’s four or five different bands who are really going for it up there.
Alako:
This is something that Stu and Joey and Lucas from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, were talking about in a Q&A video call that we just had at uni. It was about creating and focusing your energy on a small area, doing shows just there and creating a scene that is really engaged and supportive.
They did the same thing at New York, when they went over to America in 2014. They were in New York, basically living there, focusing all their efforts just playing live every weekend at this one venue. And it was that typical thing of like, when bands go on tour, their audience, and their support act and everything are not going to attract many people at all. But then as they continued to do gigs, they went from getting no one turning up, to packing the venue with hundreds of people showing up to their last gig they did there.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
So, if you’re selling 150 tickets, you sound like you’re getting pretty into that build already, just for this area. It’s great.
Alako:
Yeah, that’s it. So like, if you just get to the point where within one area, you can be sustaining regular sort of gigs and getting a turnout every single time, then that’s your cue to move on, but at least you’ve created a good audience where you are. If you can do that instead of being sporadic and spending all your money to do a bunch of shows that don’t really get you much of an audience, then it’s way more beneficial. An area like Lismore, which used to have a lot of acts come through, if we focus our efforts here we’re essentially restoring a bit more of a scene where it will attract other acts to come through. People coming up to do support shows and all that kind of stuff, creating the opportunities where we are.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
This is the second album you’ve pressed to vinyl as well, that seems like a pretty huge step. Is that a big financial commitment for you?
Alako:
We’ve done it all independently as far as the costs, but the thing about it is that we’ve just saved the money that we make from doing gigs to be able to pay for things like the vinyls, and the shirts, and all that kind of stuff. We’ve been able to get it up pretty quick from doing regular gigs this year.
The thing is that we don’t have any other overhead costs for mixing or mastering or anything, because I can do that myself. So essentially, all we have to do is pay for the pressing, and the shipping. I’m pretty sure you only have to sell half to make the money back. So it’s not too bad. We still have never made the money back from uploading something to Spotify.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
Where are you pressing the records?
Alako:
We’re doing that at Zenith Records in Melbourne.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
I’ve had just a little bit to do with vinyl production, just like art prep, which is why I’m curious. You don’t see many people getting into it as quickly as you guys are, but if you’re making it work, that’s really cool. I guess the production is not too delayed anymore either? The wait list was a year long pretty recently.
Alako:
Yeah. I mean, like, I only submitted this a month ago and now we have the test pressings. Then we’ll have two weeks and then it’ll probably be finished by then. I think half of it is also because we’re not making screw ups and stuff. I was really careful in the mastering process to make sure that everything was right. If we get the test pressings back and it doesn’t work, we don’t have enough money to do another plate, but it’s also just so much more time. It adds another month onto the wait. I’m pretty sure it also depends on the size of the order that you’re asking for, we’re only doing 150, so it probably takes them way less time to do that than for 1000.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
So it’s all totally independent and self done. Are you self taught with mixing and mastering and the rest?
Alako:
Yeah, I’ve never been taught how to do that stuff.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
I didn’t really expect that to be honest, you don’t really have a lofi sound going on.
Alako:
It helps that I’ve been doing electronic music since way before this. I started out, I guess, when I was 12, using gear my parents already had — stuff like the Korg Electribe, Kaoss pad, Boss DR-5, Gakken SX-150, and apps on my phone. I got them all to MIDI sync together, I would just make stuff with that. Moving on to Ableton Live, that was really cool because I was mixing hardware electronic tracks that were already halfway there in terms of the mix. So if you learn to mix like that, when you move on to recording bands, it’s less of a technical leap.
I think it was in 2017 when I first heard King Gizzard and I just loved it from the get go. Seeing that Peeling the Flying Microtonal Banana video, where they’re all in the room at night just having a jam, it was just a really awesome way that they were recording it all. So I just went straight into the caravan and just set up my mum’s drum kit and recorded a rip-off of Rattlesnake pretty much. That was my first experience recording stuff, and then yeah, just developed it with trial and error. After I finished school at RRHS, I got a scholarship and bought some basic recording gear, and I’ve just been building on doing it properly since then.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
So I found you guys through Rage when Ettarath was featured last year. And I think I saw Sand Dream as well?
Alako:
Yeah, both got featured.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
I know you’ve got stuff up on Unearthed as well. Are you really pursuing the ABC further than that? Or have you hit a wall, do you think?
Alako:
Rage is sick because the people who program it have so much more freedom and are pushing for stuff that isn’t mainstream. I think Rage is still where that’s at in terms of the ABC. But things like Triple J, it’s sort of the opposite, it’s like they are running like a commercial radio station. It’s a shame even within the Australian music they represent, it really just sounds like cashed up North Shore kids who have gone to a recording studio. What’s the band that won Unearthed High recently, The Rions? They’re all Northshore kids, their tracks are all so heavily produced and done in a professional recording studio. It doesn’t really feel in-line with the original idea behind Unearthed High. The whole thing becomes more a contest of who can pay the most at a recording studio to record something that sounds as close to a pop hit as possible.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
I heard them or maybe a similar Unearthed band promoting new material at the moment on Triple J, and one of them said that this new stuff was ready for whatever their last release was but they held it back because they knew it was better. You hear that alot with new bands, you know, holding back what they think is the best for the right moment. Given that you’ve already got two albums out and you’ve never played a capital city, I figure that you probably don’t operate that way. Is that right?
Alako:
Yeah, I mean, like, there’s no point hyping things at this stage. It’s like: ‘Oh, get ready, guys we’re hyping this’, and then like three people actually care. You should just actually make stuff and put it out, that’s what it’s about I think. I don’t want to be hypercritical about those other music groups; I do still value everyone’s creative output. I just think that some of it has way greater leverage, purely from its commercial value. It’s a shame because the ABC is publicly funded, they can do whatever they want, regardless of the ratings on Triple J. I think they could actually attract more listeners by having a more inclusive range of genres and sounds.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
You do have to dig for that stuff a bit on Triple J.
Alako:
Yeah, even the multicultural representation, within that, there’s a small amount that is all still within the box of like, fully mainstream pop music. It’s a shame, community radio has such a huge range of music, I think that’s what Triple J should be. It’s just community radio on a National scale. That’s the point of it being publicly funded.
Back to the original question, our approach with the ABC. Rage is awesome, and then with Triple J, you know, you’ve just got to put stuff on Unearthed and see how it’s received. I’m pretty sure Sand Dream got played on the Unearthed radio channel, which was cool. At least got like a small feature from that sense and I think that’s because Sand Dream is pretty digestible.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
So outside of Psych-Rock, I guess you’d be listening to a lot of electronic stuff if you were making it so young?
Alako:
Yeah, like I’m really into Aphex Twin, I guess all the sort of early 90s Warp Records releases. Even earlier, I was really into Delia Derbyshire when I was super young, like the 60s Doctor Who theme and Radiophonic workshop releases.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
So King Gizzard has kind of brought in more of the psychedelic element for you?
Alako:
Yeah. Like, I just wanted that feeling of being with friends, that we’re all just gonna jam and make weird music. I think there was something weirdly nostalgic about seeing videos like theirs. I don’t know why, but I think it was because my parents used to play music and record stuff in their band The Pants. That was really sick, I remember hearing just like crazy distorted guitar and drums, really reverbed out and nice and warm, late at night. King Gizzard sort of reignited that, I just wanted to do that with people and have fun.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
Yeah, I am picturing the Rattlesnake music video where they’ve got that very fuzzy, retro combination between the sound and visual.
Alako:
The whole album Flying Microtonal Banana, it just feels like you’re in the room with that album. I can just see the room they recorded Open Water in when I listen to it.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
Looking at the band’s name, and the concept of liminality, I also picked up on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. What makes psychedelic music the conduit for these sorts of ideas like anemoia and lachesism for you?
Alako:
Well, the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, for me, ties in with the whole liminal thing really well. They’re all feelings deep in the subconscious — you don’t really put them into words usually, or try and tangibly express anything like that. With music, sort of similar to those feelings is what I was talking about before, of feeling the people in the room, it’s sort of in between reality and dream.
The first album, Place, had a bunch of different influences, but yeah for example tracks like Kenopsia — that was a word taken from this dictionary. I really love the meaning of that; the feeling of being somewhere that’s usually full of people when it’s empty. There’s an intensely weird feeling associated with that.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
Yeah, it’s funny that that is what the word liminal has really come to be associated with, it’s really attached to that visual aesthetic. Like the ‘cursed’ sort of trend in memes.
Alako:
Oh, totally. Like that weird-core kind of Instagram stuff — empty carpeted rooms, play equipment, malls, swimming pools, and all that.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
Because liminal itself is not necessarily like that. The dictionary definition is: “occupying a position at or on both sides of a boundary or a threshold”.
Alako:
Yeah, it’s so broad. I think those cursed images aesthetics all have that same sort of feeling, and was the first time I think that anyone had tangibly represented it. So I think it brought out shared, undercurrent feelings for a lot of people, and that’s why it became so popular. The ones that really hit me are those liminal space compilations with Aphex Twin’s Alberto Balsam playing in the background. That was just like, such a hit of pure nostalgia and weirdness.
But I think it exists in many other things. Artists like David Lynch, for example; someone who constantly meditates and engages with the subconscious, has so many liminal scenes and moods in his film work, prior to becoming a trend on Instagram. It taps into something very raw and primal.
So, I’d say liminality serves our approach to psych rock. Songs like Kenopsia, or White Dots, we make them a bit tweaky. We arrange lyrics and sounds based on the feeling.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
So, the definition of Anemoia, is: “nostalgia for a time one has never known”. It has a bit of a Recovery, or even like a Hey Hey It’s Saturday variety show kind of energy happening in it. I suppose that makes the episodes like dispatches from… somewhere else.
Alako:
Yeah, definitely. I never grew up in the 90s, I have no lived experience of it. But I watch the VHS rips, and I’m like, that looks sick. I can totally feel it and get into it. So Anemoia was just basically recreating that. I wasn’t necessarily alive at the time, same as anyone involved in making the show, but we can all get into it; it’s about bringing it into now. So, we feel there’s a deficiency in the chaotic kind of vibrant 90s feeling, then we’ll make it happen again.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
A lot of cultural cycles last about twenty years. So thinking back to trends that are from your childhood, are there any that you are looking forward to comebacks for in the near future? Or perhaps any that should just stay dormant?
Alako:
Us all being 2000’s kids, I’d honestly rather not see about 70% of that stuff come back haha. Although we all love the y2k design stuff, kids shows like Teletubbies, and all the funky looking laptops and early mobile phones. We’re happy to keep the depressing trance super-sawtooth a memory.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
Elwood and Sasha, how associated are they with the band? Is this a tight circle that’s going on surrounding all this?
Alako:
I mean, the first episode was us and we all went to school together. But then every other band afterwards wasn’t as connected. Like Loose Content and Rat Mongers are from Byron Bay… pretty much all the other ones, we know them and we are friends to the extent of they live within the Northern Rivers. But it’s cool because it’s not all just immediate close friends. We were able to get people who weren’t otherwise always around to travel over and play their set and have an interview, which is pretty cool. In this new season we’ve got bands lined up that are from Brisbane, we’re sort of spreading it out and the appeal is there for people to come over now and do what we’re doing.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
I read your essay on DRM on the liminal band website, which got me thinking.
Alako:
You must be the first, I have to say.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
It was good, I’m into that kind of thing, and that’s why it got me thinking I want to throw some approximated stats at you. Then I’m going to ask you a question.
-Only three companies control over 80% of the music industry market.
-The vinyl market is bigger than it ever has been, but 50% of record buyers in the US don’t own a turntable.
-Of all the songs with over 1 billion Spotify streams, a single investment fund owns the publishing rights to a quarter of them.
–Tik Tok has nearly 2 billion monthly users, generated nearly $10 billion revenue in 2022, and it still has no viable scheme for creators to profit through the platform.
With all that in mind, are you daunted by trying to enter into that industry, to navigate it? Or are you kind of more excited by the possibilities?
Alako:
That’s a tricky one. It’s basically just capitalism summed up, for the music industry.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
Are we at an end stage, or can it go further? Or, are you just trying to do something different?
Alako:
I think it can go further, which is scary. But at the same time, I love a challenge. I’d like to combat it and work around it, you know. It’s an ongoing conversation we have with the band. Realistically, we know that we essentially just want to make it a sustainable thing, and to reach an audience that enjoys it, because then it sort of feels better for us knowing that people are enjoying it. Then we can just keep doing it for however long. That’s essentially the end goal. So even if it’s not like this hugely successful thing where everything just gets bigger and bigger, we don’t really care about that.
We just want to be making music, and for it to have an audience in different places to sustain our activity, and I think that’s achievable with what we have at the moment. With those bigger music industry concerns, the way it’s going with the internet, I think other things can sort of coexist within that. Real world connection is still totally integral and bypasses the more rigid control of social media. We also want to experiment and put stuff out to download for free eventually, with a donate button underneath. I heard one project that made more money off their album doing that, than they ever did via their label.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
I’m sure you’re thinking of what Radiohead did with In Rainbows.
Older generations tend to be perplexed at Gen Z’s fascination with vinyl records. What does the format mean to you? Obviously you’re using digital production processes, but is the analogue vs. digital debate important to you?
Alako:
It’s funny that the older generation are the most skeptical when we talk about how we press vinyl. The reaction is sometimes “Oh really? Well let me know when you do CD’s.” I think the appeal for vinyl is that you truly own the music you invest in. A company can’t take it down, you don’t lose access if you stop paying a subscription, and legally you can make copies onto other formats to share to friends. With new streaming services, that’s a violation of the terms of use agreement — all the music engagement and sharing happens within that company’s bubble. CDs don’t last nearly as long, cassettes sound really lofi; vinyl when looked after has proven to be pretty solid. Younger people also didn’t experience the same marketing wave against the analogue formats that people in the 80s and 90s experienced, so there’s that as well.
I loved all the vinyl releases of King Gizzard‘s Polygondwanaland; I think that’s the perfect example of physical sharing of material facilitating incidental promotion of the music. I think it really boosted them in terms of their audience because everyone went nuts over it. It was like, all these labels were pressing Polygondwanaland across the entire world. There’s like, I can’t remember, over 100 variants of it.
W.B.T.G. Slinger:
I think it’s nearly 400 yeah. When I mentioned earlier that I have done some vinyl production. It was actually for an edition of Polygondwanaland, which is something I wouldn’t really have been doing otherwise.
Alako:
I just think stuff like that, where it’s kind of more actually just connecting with people is good. And the hope I think lies in the physical kind of community connection that you make.
I was talking to River about this, because he went to see Black Midi recently, and I was using it as an example, like: ‘so how did you find out about this and ended up going to it?’ And he said: ‘Oh, a friend told me’. So then who told him? He found out from some other friends. So it was like: ‘Did anyone actually see the Black Midi poster on social media’? And he’s like: ‘Yeah I haven’t seen that at all’. So like, obviously, the bigger bands, the more successful bands have started actual real life conversations, that makes sure people will actually show up to these things.
Splendour in the Grass, you know, as an example of a huge festival, heaps of people go to that because they actively talk to their friends about it, and it takes organisation to go and see it. But no one actually acts on anything generally, if they just see a poster on social media.
Like, people still come up to me and ask when a gig is, and I know they’ve liked the post. I think social media fosters its own reality, kind of effectively and in a pretty addictive way, but it doesn’t actually help people that much in terms of starting out with getting gigs and all that kind of stuff. It just accompanies and complements it, but I think the real world stuff and the real world connection is still necessary, that’s where you get all the nuance and freedom.
White Dots is now available on DSPs, but the band can best be supported by purchasing their merchandise on Bandcamp. Check out season two of Anemoia to keep track of Liminal’s steady rise to the forefront of Australian Psych-Rock, one half-memory at a time.
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