Neu Gold Fields

Australian teenagers Gold Fields have been together for little over three months, but have already got their debut single all planned out - ‘Treehouse’ is due on 6th December, through Young & Lost.

We have a chat with frontman Mark Fuller to find out more.

Hello Gold Fields, nice to meet you. First thing’s first: who are you, where are you from, and how did you get together?
Hi there, nice to meet you too. Well, four of us - Vin, Rob, Luke and I, went to school together in Ballarat, near Melbourne in Australia. We met our drummer Ryan through playing in different projects and we decided to start a new band. That band is Gold Fields and we’ve been going since about mid-way this year.

In One Ear recently described you guys as ‘a less wanky Friendly Fires’, is that accurate do you think? How do you describe yourselves to those who haven’t heard you?
We generally just tell them to listen to our music. A lot of our influence, especially the studio and production side, comes from hip hop and pop music. We’ve written a whole bunch of songs and we’re still writing a lot at the moment. Out of all the music we’ve made so far, maybe the song ‘Treehouse’ does sound like a less wanky Friendly Fires to some, haha? But it’s certainly not what what we were going for. It’s been really well received, it’s been amazing and we’re really looking forward to showing people the rest of our music, and not-so-much trying to describe it.

How did you end up working with Young & Lost? Do you spend much time in the UK?
This is our first time in the UK. Before we came here, we’d only played six shows in Australia. We decided to come over here in the early stages to properly gauge what we were doing. When Young & Lost said they were keen to put ‘Treehouse’ out, we thought it was the best opportunity to get over here and make the most of the release and back it up with some live shows.

Have you released much in your native Australia yet?
Nope, not yet. Initially we had a six track demo, which we wrote and recorded at Vin’s bedroom studio in Ballarat. ‘Treehouse’ is one of those original six, and we had it re-mixed and mastered for release over here in the UK, and it’s currently getting played on Triple J radio back home (Australia’s main alt music station.) Since then we’ve written and recorded a bunch of new songs which we will hopefully put together and release somehow soon.

Other than your forthcoming single, do you have any releases or interesting projects in the works? We read on your Bandcamp that you’re working on an album?
Yeah, we’re doing so much writing at the moment that we’re looking at putting it all onto an album. We’re still in the very early stages of planning what we will do from here and because the writing is working well at the moment, I think we’ll keep doing that and see where it takes us. We want everyone to hear our music as soon as we can, but at the same time we obviously want whatever we put out, to be as good as it can be from the start.

So, what’s next for Gold Fields? Do you have any plans for the new year?
We’re just excited to keep playing more shows. We’re looking forward to playing a festival or two back home over summer, as well as spending some time in a proper studio, because so far all our recordings have been done at home. Hopefully we can get back over to the UK in 2011 for more shows, this place is amazing. And hopefully the new year will also see our first album being released.