About The Emergency

Who?
What?
Why?
How?
Influences?
What Else?


The Emergency was born in December 2001 when Milo Kossowski heard that the Bus Gallery, Melbourne was putting on a one-night electronic music festival. He cooked up the name just minutes before the festival's flyer went to press.

The band was then hurriedly cobbled together, when Milo convinced his closest friends, Daina and Sarah, to play synths.

Originally The Emergency was an instrumental band playing melodies inspired by old Moog records by Electric Coconut and Jean Jacques Perrey, as well as more abrasive, experimental stuff by Essendon Airport, and the music of Suicide.

Milo and Daina were later joined by Daniel Miller and Morgan McWaters to form the current line up.

What?

The Emergency is lo-fi high-voltage electro rock and roll, with a horror movie twist.

"It's just the music we do," Milo says. "We love the sound of overdriven horror movie organ and the crazy blips and squeals you can get out of a synthesizer and we prefer artificial, computer generated drums to the real thing.

"We're just obsessed with making the kind of music we make. We think we sound unique and that's a good thing."

Why?

"The audience went wild at our first show. It was so exciting. We really didn't expect a response at all but there was a lot of handshaking going on in the aftermath of the gig," Milo says.

"People started congratulating the band, saying we were 'just like Kraftwerk, man!' or 'you guys sound like Devo'.

"It felt like a whole new world had opened up to us that we hadn't seen or been a part of before, so we just kept at it," Milo says. "Not because we ever felt like our band was 'the best', but just because we realised being in a band was kinda fun."

How?

"We bought an organ (apparently used at some stage by Judith Durham from the Seekers) and our sound became all about abrasive organ squall, clunky thudding driving repetitive beats and analogue synth 'effects'," Milo says. "We cautiously started adding vocoded vocals and then eventually had the balls to start singing without a vocoder."

"Some people can never get over the fact that we don't have a drummer, although that seemed to be more an issue when we were starting out," Milo says. "People are a lot more accepting now of the kind of performances we give and the fact that some of the sounds come from a sampler, they're not all generated live. When we first started, we had a CD backing, playing the beats. Nowadays that seems pretty common, for a band to have a CD or DVD or iPod playing the beats at their shows."

Influences?

Right now, The Emergency is into some pretty obscure stuff: European New Wave electronic music from the late '70s and early '80s, German bands like Der Plan and Palais Schaumberg (part of the 'Neue Deutsche Welle') and French bands such as Mathematiques Modernes and Metal Urbain.

"That's kind of the sound we'd really like to replicate," Milo says. "Very cold but catchy. And as far from Jet as you can get. We've always loved Suicide and the B52s, the Stooges for the hard-edged but vaguely glamorous atmosphere of their music, Telex and Kraftwerk for their amazing synthesizer sounds, ? and The Mysterions and other 60s garage bands for their catchy organ riffing, Stereolab and Krautrock bands like Neu! and Faust for their otherworldly drone.

"We're also inspired by '70s cinema. Disaster movies from the '70s and sci-fi flicks from the time like The Omega Man and Soylent Green have some of the lyrics on our album."

What Else?

The Emergency's most memorable gigs so far have been supports for ARE Weapons, Trans Am (they do push ups and sit ups before they play), Enon, Spod, Cut Copy, Biftek and Minimum Chips.

"The three most encouraging people or bands in our development have been Minimum Chips, who got us our first shows (after our very first, that is) and who we all love; Biftek, who also gave us support slots and asked us to remix them (for their double CD, Frequencies Will Work Together) and who have just been really supportive and friendly generally; and Dave Graney," Milo says.

Graney compared a night at the Rob Roy (for their first birthday as a band venue) and saw The Emergency playing there and said a lot of complementary things.

"He got us to play on the lawns at the Victorian Arts Centre with his band, which was a great show with a really random audience."

Milo has been collaborating with Graney off and on since then.

Check Feral's gig guide for more gigs and news.