wo weeks after forming the band Fabulous Diamonds Nisa Venerosa and Jarrod Zlatic played their first show. They were 19, barely friends and could barely play their instruments. In these DIY times that’s not an unusual story but the difference between Fabulous Diamonds and every ratty band of first timers is that they were good from the get go. Now, two years later, they’re even better. They still don’t play it straight, preferring to keep their sound fluid but that’s why even though they’re one of the hardest gigging bands in Melbourne no-one’s sick of them. Nisa and Jarrod are friends now but talking to the two of them is like trying to umpire a game of Cheat between an old married couple. PS: impossible.
Vice: How did you two meet?
J: Oh here we go.
N: I used to come to Melbourne with (Sydney band) Kiosk when they were playing. I just tagged along and used to stay at the house I currently live at, which is where we met. I never really liked Jarrod. I thought he was bit of a snob when I came to Melbourne. PS: he was.
J: We both just had some funny dalliances in the bathroom of that house.
N: Not together.
Have you ever kissed?
N: No, we’ve been offered money to kiss, many times.
J: Nisa’s exposed herself to me before.
N: You’ve exposed yourself to me as well. We were walking down Little Bourke Street and Jarrod was taking a piss in the alleyway and he yells out “Nisa” and I turn around and he’s like shaking his dick at me. It was disgusting. The band started before we were really friends.
J: Yeah, when Nisa moved here I was like “we should start a band” and a couple of days later we had a jam. At the time I was also in Oh! Belgium so Fabulous Diamonds started off as a funny sort of side project. Then Oh! Belgium came back from Brisbane one time and we never played again.
N: And I was just there for your convenience.
So you barely knew each other, didn’t really like each other but decided to start a band?
J: Yeah, I still remember the day we first really hung out.
N: Jarrod was in Sydney and he had nothing to do so I was like “want to come and hang out at my parents’ house?”. So he came. It was funny.
What did your parents think of him?
N: Mum thinks Jarrod’s a bit of a freak but she loves him.
J: Hey!
N: She thinks you’re a bit neurotic, which you are.
J: And you don’t have issues?
How would you describe your sound?
N: We started out more experimentally pop and now we’re kind of turning into, like, techno or something.
J: Psychedelic techno. It’s like Terry Riley with a beat. I’m really interested in minimalism—trying to use the least amount of stuff possible.
N: That’s what Jarrod’s into but I like using a full drum kit. I used to use just a floor tom, a snare and nothing else but slowly I started bringing hi hats and eventually I brought in a kick drum. Now I’ve got a full kit and Jarrod doesn’t complain about it.
J: When we started Nisa had never played drums before. So whoever saw us from our first gig to now has actually watched Nisa learn to play drums.
N: I was learning drums while singing and now the two have just melded into one and I can’t really and don’t enjoy doing one or the other anymore.
J: That’s really annoying by the way.
N: They’re kind of a part of each other. Now that I can actually play drums confidently or I don’t have to think about it nearly as much as I used to I can concentrate on singing a lot more.
So Nisa drums and sings. Jarrod: what do you do?
J: I play an electric organ, a saxophone and I have a drum machine and one delay pedal.
N: The drum machine’s faded out a bit though.
J: No, I’ve brought it back again. When we started, cause we only had a minimal kit we used the drum machine. But since Nisa’s got better at drumming it’s faded out but now I’ve brought it back to give electronic textures and extra percussive effects. You can play a drum machine and use pedals and have it not sound like a drum machine—it’s just a sound. I like playing with electronics.
YULE TIDE
TO BE CONTINUED:
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