About
“Music is the language of us all!”, The Cat Empire declare on their new self-titled album. The six-piece emerged two years ago from Melbourne, a multicultural hub with a vibrant music scene that rewards the musicians who take risks. Their shows are a fresh and improvised blend of rhythms, sounds and attitudes drawn from Australia, Cuba, Jamaica, Africa, Europe, the Bronx and Spain. This eclectic musical mix is unique to the band, crisp and contemporary. This is a house band for a cafe of the imagination.
With a popularity spread largely through word of mouth, The Cat Empire have heated up tiny jazz clubs through to huge festivals in Australia and overseas. They’ve been nominated in jazz awards, won music competitions and grants to support their vision, and toured extensively. Such is their live reputation that their shows are remembered as major events and wild parties!
Felix Riebl (percussion, vocals), Harry J. Angus (trumpet, vocals, vocal percussion), Ollie McGill (keyboards, melodica, banjo), Ryan Monro (bass), Will Hull-Brown (drums) and Jamshid “JUMPS” Khadiwala (decks, percussion) have cast their net globally. In the UK, their track “Two Shoes” was on high rotation on BBC Radio 1, they were featured in a BBC4 TV documentary about the 2003 WOMAD festival and they headlined the LateNLive show for 16 nights at the Edinburgh Festival in 2002, returning again in 2003 to larger and crazier crowds.
Before Christmas, they return to the United States. In mid-2003, they performed through Singapore and Malaysia.
Now The Cat Empire have risen to their biggest challenge. On their debut album, they have captured the excitement of their live shows and their six strong personalities and brought to the fore their strong songwriting and musicianship. It also peels back layers of their humour, sometimes accidental political thought, sensuality and spirituality.
The album’s first single “Hello”, accompanied by a video made by the band collated from footage from their global treks, has gained them major radio airplay.
Explains Felix, “This album is a document of our travels in the last two years, of our adventures and the amazing people we met. A lot of our songs are about the thrill of playing live and being alive to be able to play amazing places. The spirituality comes from the creativity, generosity and magic of the six of us playing together.
“We recorded this album over eight months around Australia, including a Melbourne studio, a nut farm outside Byron Bay, and in the house of Andy Baldwin with whom we co-produced the record. There’s a sense of motion about it. Some of the songs surprised us by the way they came out.”
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