He’s different, he’s unusual and he’s been pushing the edge of the Perth music scene for several years; he is Tomas Ford. Recently beating Pendulum for the best electric producer award at this year’s WAMI’s, Ford is setting himself up for great success. He spoke to FL about the music, the audience, and the confronting pleasure that is his onstage antics.
At last week’s WAMI festival, Ford was nominated for two awards. It was the first time he had received a nomination so he was understandably a little shocked. “I had absolutely no idea I was going to win, so I’d actually got drunk enough that I’d be able to deal with the fact that I lost.” He describes attending the event, purely to remind people of who he was, “I went down to the kind of the… announcements thinking that I would just go down and show my face and remind everybody that I exist.” Reminding people of his existence is no longer going to be a problem for the electronic artist, who beat Pendulum to the Best Electronic Producer award, one he was sure he wouldn’t win.
On the subject of why he decided to make music electronically, Ford explains it was because he couldn’t really play an instrument. “I just kind of grew into doing it because I can’t really play any other instrument… I guess I started playing around with electronic music years and years ago because I didn’t have any skills in any other areas but I wanted to make something.” Now that he’s proven that he has a knack for the electronic genre, Ford explains how the process has become somewhat obsessive for him. “I really enjoy the process of doing electronic music it’s something that you just kind of sit there, you get really obsessive you can… tweak fine details and make something as perfect as you want it to be… now it’s become an obsession”
Ford explains that he grew into the electronic genre as opposed to falling in love with it straight away. “It’s… more something that I’ve grown into, than something I’ve always wanted to do.” Despite that, he has completed four records since 2006, toured nationally a few times and embarking on another tour too be announced soon. “I’ve toured quite a lot… this is actually my 13th or 14th tour… around the country or at least over east.” Most recently he toured nationally with Birds of Tokyo, so exactly how did the audience react to Ford’s music?
Both artists have a different style of music and it’s reasonable to think that the audience were not expecting an artist such as Tomas Ford to open the show. Explaining, “that was kind of the point I think… to kick everybody awake a bit” he describes that “the audience were generally fairly positive.” That is, besides Newcastle. “I did a show in Newcastle that was kind of hilarious… I had played in Newcastle before, and it’s the place in Australia that you’re most likely to get abused on the streets… I kind of knew that was going to be a bad show, and it was -it was absolutely horrendous.” Joking that he was just happy to have lived through the show in Newcastle, Ford adds that “generally it was really positive and I got some great reviews, I got some bad ones, but that was great as well.”
“It’s kind of me running around a room…” is how Ford sums up one of his performances, “the majority of my live show is me interacting with the audience.” Seeing Tomas Ford live is quite confrontational, and possibly why he had such a bad reaction in Newcastle. It is, however, what sets him apart and Ford puts it as “trying to get little bits of humour out of confrontation basically.” Trying to put what he does into words, Ford explains “the problem is that whenever I describe my show the people get really scared.”
Ford’s latest EP Bash Myself is available at most good records stores in WA and will be on iTunes’s in time for his National tour. Dates for his national tour will be available soon, so keep an eye out.
