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Perth MusicPhrase Interview
Halo 3 is one of the most popular video games of all times and made $170 million in its first day of release. It has also had one the biggest promotion campaigns for any game ever. When XBox needed a song to encapsulate the energy and theme of the game they approached Phrase. Phrase decided to collaborate with Ian Kenny form Perth bands Karnivool and Birds Of Tokyo and Face It was born. Phrase caught up with Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.
Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (14:32 - 1.7Mb)
“One of the guys from XBox is a big fan and loved the first record and the last single off it, so I think they just wanted to try and do something with an artist to hit a different demographic. So they hit up Universal and approached me about writing something specifically for it, and I was making my record at the time, so I banged it out. I hooked up from (Ian) Kenny from Karnivool in Perth and got him on it and sent it through and they loved it. We shot a video and it’s kinda all snowballed from there” Phrase explained about how the song came about.
Asked whether he was apprehensive about doing a song for a game Phrase answered “To be honest I was in the beginning… but I thought I’d have a crack at it anyway and once I’d written the song, it doesn’t talk about the game and I think it does stand by itself and it fitted in on the record with the sounds that I’ve got on the album. I didn’t realize how big Halo 3 was and my manager was like ‘Dude, it’s the biggest game in the world’”.
Collaborating with Karnivool and Birds Of Tokyo frontman Ian Kenny would be something many musicians would love to do and Phrase explained how it all happened. “I hooked up with him in Perth and he’s such a chilled guy, just your run-of-the-mill Aussie bloke, thongs, having a beer sort of thing. We got along really well and I sent him the song and I just said ‘Look, you do your thing on it’. I didn’t want to sway in any way what he was going to do to it coz I love their sound and I love what he does. He sent it back and I was wrapped man, and since then we shot the video and done a gig together up in Sydney. Hopefully when I come out to Perth he’ll be able to come down and do the song with me”.
“I think it’s cool for Kenny coz he’d never done anything with a Hip-Hop guy before. He really, really dug what I was doing as well and I think it’s cool for the genres to be crossing over and working with each other. We are all from the same country and we are all making music so there’s no reason why we can’t mash those things together”.
“I knew that I needed a big hook on it, something powerful and there’s not that many other people in this country that can do that. I was tossing up getting Ella Hooper from Killing Heidi or somebody along those lines and then I thought of Karnivool. We reached out and it all just went ahead”.
Face It will be available in stores and online October 27 and Phrase’s forthcoming album Burn It Down is scheduled for release in early 2008. For more info on Phrase visit www.myspace.com/bigphrase
Face It
