Tobias Broughton, Omni Anti

Tobias Broughton is the MC in Brisbane’s Omni Anti, who are a mini-orchestra playing jazzy hip hop.

Do you come from a musical family?

TOBIAS BROUGHTON: My grandfather was extremely musical. He was the head of music at Brisbane Boys Grammar for like 25 years and was at one point the head of Music, French and English. They used to do that kind of thing to people in those days, classes of 40 and all of that, but he was the Master of Music and he was the organ player for churches. He was the one who gave me piano lessons, which is why I can write with Johnno [Jonathan Bolt, keyboardist/saxophonist] musically, because he taught me how to do that so I guess he’s the biggest musical influence in my life. There’s one more, my grandmother who was a violin player. My sister’s inherited her violin and I’ve bought a viola and we just love the sound of it. She was a big influence, she was the opposite of my grandfather who was a stern cat. She played by ear, she never read music or anything. That’s more what I do I suppose. I really play by ear. Johnno’s the technician.

Your day job is as a teacher as well, just like your grandfather.

TB: Yeah, yeah, for the same reason you know. Either love or necessity and usually a good measure of both. Music’s necessary although there’s no filthy lucre in it, it’s not lucrative at all, not at this stage anyway in the really pointy end. We get riders and people being nice to us and getting to engage with cool people asking us questions.

Alexander Grigg, Red Riders

Sydney’s Red Riders are a cheerful bunch of indie rock miserabilists with a fine line in martial and anthemic live shows.

Do you come from a musical family?

ALEXANDER GRIGG: Not really, man. Like, we had a piano in my house and my mum and dad sang on it, but it was more my cousins I think. They were really into the Jesus And Mary Chain and Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine and The Cure and all these bands and it was really through them that I got exposed to a lotta, like, really good music. And my sister was really into You Am I and Hi Fi Way and all that stuff. So yeah, it wasn’t really a musical family, but I think that – without sounding like a pretentious douchebag – I’ve kinda always been musical. It’s only something I’ve really only noticed lately when I think back. I’ve always been making up little songs since I was young. Not amazing, anything amazing, but it just comes pretty naturally to me – music and being musical. So I guess I’ve always been musical, but not really from a musical family, yeah.

So do you have notebooks full of things you wrote when you were a teenager?

AG: Yeah, embarrassing notebooks I try not to look at ever. Because they’re just full of intense – when I look back at me as a teenager I’m like, ‘Oh my God, you were so intense and annoying! So angsty and bad.’ I try not to look at that stuff too much. I have more cassettes actually because I recorded everything with this dictaphone, I’d record all my ideas. I must have at least 50, more than 50 cassettes lying around my house of different stuff, different ideas screamed down into a dictaphone.