Keep at it for long enough and folks will find you – an interview with Black Cab’s Andrew Coates

 

“Sydney torments us,” says Andrew Coates, one half of Melbourne-based electronic duo Black Cab. “We’ve had one good show there in 15 years.”

 

Not that the ‘Cab come to Sydney often. The most recent Sydney gig, which Starpower and I attended, was at Mary’s Underground, near Circular Quay, in May of 2023. The occasion was the album launch for Black Cab’s most recent long-player, Rotsler’s Rules. The ‘power and I lapped it up, absorbing the synth power of Andrew and musical partner in crime, James Lee, with the grooves augmented by the live drumming of Wes Holland. 

 

“I felt like I was in a trance the entire show,” Starpower said. Sadly, there was probably less than a hundred folks there. The Melbourne crowds are larger, and I constantly wonder why Black Cab aren’t more popular or better known. It’s like they’re an insider secret, but once you’re hooked….

 

From guitars to electronics

 

The ‘Cab’s first LP, Altamont Diaries, is a tribute to the infamous Stones free concert at Altamont on December 6, 1969. Altamont was meant to be something similar in vibe to the peace, love and understanding of Woodstock, but it was far from it. 

 

The Stones hired members of the Hell’s Angels outlaw motorcycle club as security and the gig was marred by violence and a death. Some people say Altamont marked the end of the flower power era, ushering in something harder, more violent, and cynical. Altamont, ultimately, was the birth of the ‘70s.

 

The first two ‘Cab albums – Jesus East being the follow up to Altamont Diaries – are largely traditional guitar-driven works. There’s some electronics there, but it’s not at the forefront.

 

In the ‘90s Andrew was in a band called Foil, which is where he met James Lee. Foil was industrial, with some guitars thrown in. “Musically, Foil was a bit of a mess,” he says, “but where it ended up was the sort of stuff I liked. I liked electronic music, but I also liked guitars and I liked rock.”

 

“So that blend was always part of the deal, but the ‘Cab has morphed a lot in the last 20 years.”

 

Their third album, Call Signs, was transitional, with electronics taking a much larger role in the band’s sound. Andrew says at this time the band still had a ‘big rock sound, which I enjoyed,” but many of the newer songs, like Sexie Polizie and Combat Boots, where primarily programmed.

 

“When we tried to perform those live in 2008, it was very hard to do,” he says, “because combining beats with a rock band ends up being a very messy thing. It’s rare that you can find a band that can combine those two things. New Order might be one of the few.”

 

Up until this point, around 2011, Black Cab were still a full rock band, with guitar, bass, and drums. But Andrew and James Lee realised it wasn’t where they were heading musically, so they cut the rest of the band loose and morphed into a duo. 

 

By the time the fourth album, Games of the XX! Olympiad came around the two had fully embraced electronics, but they realised something was missing from their live sound, and through a series of accidents at gigs, as well as luck, Wes Holland joined them as sticksman for their live shows.

 

Audience pushback

 

With the band’s sound shifting from guitars to electronics, there was also a shift in the people coming to the shows and buying (streaming?) the albums. “There was definitely some pushback from the slightly older Melbourne rock crowd who would come and see us,” he says. “But I think James and I quite liked that.”

 

When they got rid of the band, they started playing small club shows, something Andrew says they both liked. It meant they could experiment and, he says, they found their demographic changed. Suddenly, the average age of an audience member had dropped by a decade and “there were 20-year-olds coming to our shows.”

 

“We really shed all our old audience in one fell swoop.”

 

The club shows helped them evolve their sound, and songs that were unstructured and short evolved into proper arrangements. 

 

“Because I had the chance to change and evolve [onstage] and throw new sounds in, you could see what it was doing to the room, you could feel how it was sounding and how people were responding to it.

 

“And I think without doing that, without that process, I wouldn’t still be making music.”

 

Ultimately, Andrew says, the appeal of electronic music is that he says he hears sounds he’s never heard before – unlike guitar music – and that’s what he responds to as a musician and songwriter. 

 

Making a living from music - or not

 

Both Andrew and James have day jobs. “There’s no money in music,” he says, but they do get some income from publishing. Merch and vinyl releases also sell well, and when they perform in Melbourne (but not so much Sydney) the band makes a little cash.

 

“We do have a publisher, and every now and then we get a game sync or some TV revenue, and that’s enough to pay for our recordings. But I wouldn’t recommend music as a career option.”

 

So why do they keep making new music? Andrew says he’s “not about the fucking money,” but makes music because it’s an intellectual challenge and an outlet for creativity.

 

“If you have a body of work and you keep it up, keep at it for long enough, then eventually folks will find it.”

 

And that’s the thing about Black Cab. The folks who have found them, adore them, me and Starpower included. You know that when you meet a fellow ‘Cab fan, they’re going to be spot on. I just wish there were more of them.

*******

 

Black Cab are playing a one-off show in Melbourne in March with post-punk icon Lydia Lunch performing the songs of 70s synth punk legends Suicide. More info here.