Rhibosome

Impulsive Behaviour - Rhibosome are shaping up as one of Perth's best exports with a sound style that's winning rave reviews both here and overseas. Clayton Chipper, Dave McKinney and Chad Hedley are busy fusing together beats, breaks, disco loops, vocal samples and Latin asides in a heady mix that's sometimes startling. Is this the band to look out for in the 21st Century-

Outline your history with music - how long have all three of you been DJing, and how long making your own music-
"Everyone in Rhibosome is - first and foremost - a live musician, so we've all played in different live bands over the years. All three of us previously played in a street theatre percussion group, which we toured to festivals in Singapore, Canada and Melbourne. We had a machine each, which was basically a wheely-bin filled with wheelchair batteries and a chassis bolted to the back. It had wheels on the front and back, and you could steer the whole thing with a joystick. The bikes were covered in percussion and drums and had a sampler and PA installed on it, but the music we wanted to make was constrained by the format of the festival circuit.
"Then, in October last year, we got commissioned to write a live electronic soundscape for urban circus company Bizircus. We got a good response from that, so we took the songs back into the studio and gave them a bit of a workout. Since then we've supported Coldcut, Jose Padilla, and Endorphin, and played at Vibes on A Summer's Day.
"DJing-wise we've all been into collecting music for years and have been playing parties and gigs around town for a while. Our weekly Sunday night residency at Phillimore's in Freo [Fremantle] is just coming up to its first anniversary. We've also just started a regular Wednesday there as well playing soul, jazz, funk and afrobeats."

What experiences have you had together, and what keeps you inspired as a collective unit-
"We've worked together musically for quite a while now, and I guess we've been through some rough patches like most musicians. It's taken about a year for us to actually get our live shows to a level that we're happy with. Obviously DJing keeps us massively inspired as we all get to hear so much amazing music. There's a lot of great new music coming out at the moment with all kinds of hybrid styles fusing elements of music from around the globe. And we listen to a lot of old stuff from jazz, soul, and funk to world music, so all of this is starting to come out in the style of music we're writing.
"One of the things which happened this year which was inspirational for us was playing with groups like Coldcut and everyone at Vibes on a Summer's Day. It's amazing to see electronic artists pushing boundaries so hard. We played with Coldcut in April, so we got to watch them soundcheck and talk to them about how they use their equipment. They are at the absolute forefront of using technology in music and they completely blew our minds. It was truly a moment of radical inspiration for us.
"We've also just finished a track which has Trilok Gurtu playing drums on it. Trilok is an Indian percussionist who is a major player in the jazz fusion and contemporary world music scene. He was voted 'number one percussionist' in Downbeat magazine and has played with John McLaughlin and a whole stack of amazing musicians in the jazz scene. Basically, we were given an ADAT of his drums multi-tracked, and we were told to chop them up in a cut and paste kind of style for this duet piece between him and a local Aboriginal musician called Richard Walley. If you know his music, then you can possibly imagine how the collaboration sounds. I think it is quite scary."

Imagine you're talking to somebody who's never heard one of your sets before and isn't up on electronic music in general - how would you describe to this person the kinds of sound and mood you work with-
"Our music is a hybrid beast which ranges from downtempo per Tags

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