On Pushing Their Boundaries

With their second LP Gracetown peaking at #2 on the ARIA charts earlier this year, San Cisco have hit the ground running, performing non-stop in a multitude of states and countries as music continues to take over their lives. 

“The response has been good,” guitarist, Josh Biondillo explains. “It’s been out since March and it’s sent us to the US, the UK and Europe and a couple of Australian tours and a few festivals. It’s done good things for us and people seem to like the songs, so it’s good.

“The US is different. The last time we did it on a bus, which was something we’d never done before. We didn’t really have a hotel to go home to - we just slept on the bus. It was good because we could play the show, hang out after the show, crawl into bed and wake up in the next city.”          

The group are headed back to their hometown of Fremantle to launch WA’s newest venue J-Shed on Saturday, March 19, located behind Fremantle Roadhouse.

“It’s really good,” Biondillo states. “I grew up in that area, I’ve walked past the J-Shed when I was a kid with my parents. It’s cool to see the West End of Fremantle starting to become something very cool.

“There’s some great venues around but there isn’t many of that size. It’s always good to have new places to go at night.”

“We are having a bit of time off,” Biondillo reveals. “We’ve got a few shows here and there but at the moment we’re relaxing.

“We will be writing; at the moment Jordi (Davieson, vocals/guitar) and I are moving out and then we have to set up a studio space and start plugging away.

“We’ve managed to make music our only job so it’s cool like that. We spend all day working on music and figure out what it ends up becoming, be that San Cisco or something else.”

With a home studio in the works, the local four-piece are set for a clean slate when writing their next work, however Biondillo is open to exploring and pushing the dance element within their sound.

“I don’t think we’ve ever been downed by exploring,” Biondillo furthers. “The thing with our music is there are elements that make it sound a little bit like San Cisco like Jordi’s voice, Scarlett’s (Stevens drums) voice and our guitar/drum sound which are characteristic of our style. Whenever we approach a song it will become San-Cisco-ey one way or another.

“The music we’ve always made has been quite dance-y and I wouldn’t mind pushing further into the dance kind of vibe, maybe not so much electronic but our interpretation of dance. We’ll see what happens when we get into the studio.

“It’s always good for us when the crowd is extremely excited and as a result we get excited and as a result we get excited so it’d be great to write some music that pushes that more.”

With their recent tour behind them and a big schedule ahead including performances at Southbound and Ozfest, San Cisco have taken the time to re-group and relax back at home before jumping back on board again.

“I grew up in that area, I’ve walked past the J-Shed when I was a kid with my parents. It’s cool to see the West End of Fremantle starting to become something very cool.

“There’s some great venues around but there isn’t many of that size. It’s always good to have new places to go at night.”

Originally published in X-Press Magazine