The Brag

TZU
Moment Of Truth
By Benjamin Cooper

They may have a reputation as fun lovin’ nice guys, but it turns out TZU have a very strict dress code. “There’s only one rule in my studio: you must wear your daggiest and comfiest trackies, at all times,” Yeroc commands. It seems an odd stipulation on the part of TZU’s percussionist and sample wizard, but he’d deadly serious about what he does. The man his mother calls Corey McGregor has been making beats in his inner-Melbourne abode for over a decade, and is understandably particular about the kind of influences, sartorial or otherwise, that seep into his space.

The Victorian crew have just released their fourth studio album, Millions Of Moments, and although he may reign over the beats, Yeroc acknowledges that the recording process is a democratic one. “[Frontman] Joelistics makes a bit of noise, as you’d expect, but we’re all fairly vocal when it comes to recording,” Yeroc explains, ducking outside the whoops and yells of the studio for a quick chat. “I’d like to say I enforce a ‘no-jeans’ policy on Joel, and everyone else can wear what they want, but the truth is there’s really no restrictions: you could rock up in a bathing suit or a leotard if it’ll help you work. Actually, maybe don’t print the leotard part… I don’t want anyone getting weird ideas.”

Yet weird ideas are flowing aplenty on Millions Of Moments. The album revolves around a character called Persephone, who tests out a new drug called Chronos that allows her to travel to different moments in Australia’s history. It may seem a little bit out there, but Yeroc reckons it’s just as adventurous and playful as their previous work. To him, it’s the album that they had to make. “Obviously this record is so very different,” he says. “We’ve all been working on our own projects and collaborating with different people recently, so when we sat down to work on this record we decided we really wanted to trick it out. We’ve been doing this for a few years now, so when people started throwing around concepts, [this one] just seemed like a fit. We just thought, ‘Let’s do it!’
Screaming hordes at sun-bleached festivals and sweaty club shows have been baying for more TZU since their awesomely-titled and supremely cheeky debut EP, Um… Just A Liddlbidova Mic Check, back in 2001. After releasing the Computer Love LP in 2008, they made the radical choice to hand over all tracks to be remixed and released as the (oh-so-clever anagram) Cover Up Motel in 2009. The remixes and cover work were created by a group of artists and producers including Hermitude, Blue King Brown and M-Phazes, and Yeroc admits to the difficulties the group experienced in releasing creative control. “I will happily describe myself as a studio rat,” he says, “so it’s always difficult to drop off the master tapes at someone else’s house. Thankfully we were giving our tracks to people we really trust and admire, so there was less anxiousness.”

Fast-forward three years and the group are feeling quietly content following the last stages of their new record’s production. “I feel really resolved in one sense, actually, which is weird for me. I think because this project was such a massively drawn-out process it feels really good to have that sense of resolution. I felt like I’d been locked away in a bunker with these guys for years. That tends to make you a go a bit crazy after a while,” he says. “But this record was so different to anything we’ve done before, so I think it ended up making us hungrier and hungrier for it. Like I said, I’m a studio rat, so normally I’m the most keen to be pushing things around and trying things out, but this time there was this innate drive to keep working [that was] propelling us all. It’s like we were all just hitting the canvases with every style we had, because at the end of it we wanted to walk away feeling like we’d made the greatest thing we could. It was,” he starts, pausing for dramatic effect with tongue firmly in cheek, “an artistic purge of the highest order.”

Yeroc may be most comfortable in the studio, but it’s on the road that his band have carved out their enviable reputation as party starters, with their catchy live instrumentation a welcome change to the usual MC and DJ combination of most Aussie hip hop acts. How will he cope with being forced to shed his tracksuit pants and abandon his creature comforts? “Well, if anything there are less actual comforts in the studio: no Tweeting, and we don’t have any Facebook access. I purposely made it like that, and it’s not a problem for me because I can focus more without the distractions.” As for the live shows themselves? “[They’ll] be a lot of fun. We’re always reinterpreting and tweaking what we do to make it more interesting. The problem for me is that I’ll be on the road agonising over our record, wondering about possible changes that we can’t make to the studio version any more. I suppose the great thing about live shows is that it means that the record is never finished. It just continues on this whole new life.”

What: Millions Of Moments is out now through Liberation
Where: The Standard
When: Saturday October 13