My name is Griffin. I do music, uh, under the project, Sans Merit, from Melbourne, Australia, originally from Canberra, but pretty much raised in Melbourne/Naarm my whole life.
Where did your music inspiration come from when you were younger?
I would say my musical inspiration mostly came from my parents. I was very lucky to have cool parents that from a young age really geared it into my brother and I to actively seek out alternative music. They were into punk music and different kinds of alternative music and they really pushed it on us, which I guess geared me and my brother to go through life trying to seek out different music and alternative cultures.
How about now?
Um, yeah, it's pretty broad. I couldn’t say for sure where my inspiration comes from but it could be that when I was younger I would take a lot of inspiration from skate videos because skateboarding was the cool thing that the older kids were doing and that’s what I wanted to do. And they were all listening to this crazy, interesting music, and that was really inspiring. And then I guess as I got older, I'm still watching skate videos and I'm still finding new music. But I think at the moment I'm mostly inspired by the people around me.
Do you find your inspiration comes from overseas or Australia or everywhere?
I think when I, when I it's always when you what you can't what you're not like, oh, it's always like this grass is greener mentality. I think when I was in Australia I was super inspired by Americana and and just what wasn't around me in music from England in the eighties and American rap music and American grunge music and all these different scenes and worlds that existed in music outside of Australia. But I think once I left Australia, when I was 23 and lived internationally, I suddenly started to see what was so good about Australian music. Because I think you just have to get away from it to really see the beauty of it.
Do you think Australian music has a distinct sound?
I thought when you sent the questions over, I read that one and I feel like that was the one that I thought about the most. And I think in the past I would have said something distinct probably in relation to a type of music I was listening to. If, you know, if I was saying or in Australian dance music there's a certain element or an Australian eighties rock music, there's a specific guitar sound that is so iconic and whatever. But I think what makes Australian music, Australian music compared to the rest of the world is Australia is a place where the idea of success I don't think really exists in a lot of people.
And so it is the sound of a true underdog story. And I think because of that, you you've got a lot of people making music just because they want to make something that sounds rad instead of making music to make money, you know. It's people making music in the little communities or whatever, saying you're in and you just trying to make some crazy shit to impress your friends. And then because of that, I think that that's why there's so much interesting music and there's a lot of people who should be so big from Australia, but they aren't and they and they kind of don't care about it either.
Nice, how about mixtapes. Do you have a nostalgia for that concept?
Well, I think mix tapes only started to really mean something to me when I started listening to dance music, which was like adulthood and but before that I was watching skate videos, which are a form of the mixtape really.
I think like a lot of people my age did the whole recording cassettes on the radio with a little cassette player things.
Are mixtapes gonna hold up as the algorithm takes over?
I don't know, it's like I guess being in the world of deejaying the long form of listening. And I, it's important to me because it's, it's also a good way to tune out because you don't really, it's like, uh, when you let someone decide for you what you listen to for the next 2 hours and you trust them. I think that's an interesting phenomenon compared to you sitting there flicking through Spotify song for a song, or even just listening to your own.
What’s your recording set up like?
I've made it set up so if an idea strikes, I can just quickly jump in and get a base idea down before developing it.
My band is currently my friend Damon Palermo. He's playing drums and also another friend named Sam Eaton. He's been involved in a bunch of music stuff over the years with different artists. Sam’s helping me design the live set and he's playing bass and synth and I'm playing guitar and synth and yeah, we're trying to figure out a bit of a theatrical live set at the moment. So it’s not just a simple song, pause, song, pause, you know, just a classic rock show, but maybe more like a Soulwax live set, just like nonstop, relentless music for 45 minutes or so, and just real sound design and lots of crazy shit going on.
What sort of music are you gonna play in your mix?
So I'm thinking I'm just going to make an hour of Aussie Pub Growlers. Yeah, yeah. Just Aussie musos doing Aussie music shit.