Circle Of Willis: Manual Labour.

Circle Of Willis play The Healer on Saturday. The Manual Of Internal Fixation is in stores now.

Sydney based electronic rock experimentalists Circle Of Willis head north for the Terra Australis space rock festival this weekend.

“It’s sort of a mixture of space rock and psychedelia,” Circle Of Willis guitarist Graham Kirk explains of the event. “A lot of the bands easily fit into the space rock thing. We also do a side project called The Drunken Gunmen, which is very much a space rock thing, and we came to the event with that and thought why not do the whole Circle Of Willis thing? It’s not really politically correct to suggest it, but I think what we do is drug music.”

“Not inspired by drugs, or music to take drugs to, but music that is a drug is the philosophy that we use. We’re not big drug fiends, but we like to think of music as a drug, rather than taking drugs to listen to music. I always wonder why drugs and music go together so well, because when I’m making music the thought of taking drugs is overkill. Music is a drug, you don’t need anything else for it.”

What the story behind the band? How did Circle Of Willis come about?

“We were basically all school friends. Three of us went to school together, we’ve known each other since we were kids. We’ve been making music for a number of years together, and in 1999 we got together seriously. We just get in the studio and figure out what to do with things. There’s not a real traditional songwriting process, we just see what works together.”

Is electronic music the new punk rock?

“I think so, very much so. I was a teenager in the punk years. I was of the generation of people that thought that people who could actually play their instruments were a bunch of wankers and couldn’t be trusted. We’ve still got that punk philosophy. The music might not sound punk, but that’s the motivation behind it.:

“The problem with electronic music is that it’s too closely associated with crappy dance stuff. It doesn’t have that sense of being set apart that punk did, but once you get into more underground electronica stuff, it’s certainly today’s punk. That’s the way that I look at it, anyway.”