Mad dogs

Petra Starke

05May08

Andrew Garvie, aka DJ Katch of the Resin Dogs, is proud to be an Aussie hip-hop artist. Just don't ask him to rap about barbecues.

``What is Aussie hip hop?'' spits Andrew Garvie, aka the Resin Dogs' DJ Katch.

``I mean, aren't we a multicultural society? We might be all about throwing shrimp on the barbie but there's a lot more to it than just drinking beers and cussing out people.

``To me, that's more like yobbo rap.''

It's a passionate response from the Australian hip-hop veteran to the criticism he and his band have heard many times over their nine years  that they're not ``Aussie'' enough for Aussie hip-hop.

Since the hijacking of the previously solely American genre in recent years by pioneering Aussie bands like the Hilltop Hoods and The Herd, a strange parochialism seems to have crept into local hip-hop.

Now it's seemingly become ``unAustralian'' to rap in anything other than a broad ocker accent, something the Dogs tend to steer away from.

Garvie says the band sees their latest album, More, as a ``global record''.

``You've got to fit in a certain curriculum in Aussie hip-hop, and a lot of people that come from outside the Australian market tend to say that as well,'' he says.

``More isn't `Aussie hip-hop' in a way, but we are Australian artists and we're making a global record, in terms of the producers we used and the people that we work with.

``People say `Oh you don't have any Aussie artists on there' but ... when we were recording this album we invited like, seven or eight different Aussie hip-hop artists to come up and record and we handed out beats all across the country. At the end of the day they must have been smoking bongs and sitting on the couch or something, because nobody came back with the goods.

``We're producers, at the end of the day, and we're trying to find the best people for the job.''

The best people included UK producer Brad Baloo of The Nextmen, Los Angeles rappers Abstract Rude and Aceyalone and UK hip-hop artists Mystro and Yungun.

The result is a groove-filled album that mixes hip-hop with a whole alphabet of funk, from Parliament style P funk to 1990s Snoop Dogg style G funk.

``The last couple of records were more about us going off and playing festivals and being that live band that everyone came to see,'' Garvie says.

``This one is a lot more down tempo, more songs, more structure, more lyrics, I guess hence the title More.''

With the airwaves saturated with mass marketed, commercial, ``ring tone'' hip-hop, the Dogs' instrument-based, organic sounds are a breath of funky fresh air. But is Garvie bothered by the current state of the genre?

``No, because then we come along and do our thing and people get blown away by it,'' he laughs.

``When people move onto the next thing, I'll still be keeping on. It's all about reinvention. Who knows, we may come back and do a whole Aussie hip-hop barbecue album.''

Resin Dogs with Dexter (of The Avalanches) - Live on Light Square (formerly Night Train), Saturday, May 24. Bookings: Venuetix.