Greenroom Magazine (Issue #01 / Fall '13) | Page 10

HIATUS KAIYOTE

GREENROOM

HIATUS

PAGE

How did the band form?
Berrin: Bender discovered Nai at a solo gig
and wanted to work with her, so he started
transcribing Nai’s original songs after she
returned from the desert. I came along to a
random jam session and they were downstairs
playing some music - they told me to stop by
rehearsal and we started playing around with
five people from the start, [with a] different
guitarist and different keyboard player. That
kind of fizzled away and then Simon came
along, who we were living with at the time, and
then magic started happening.
What were you doing in the desert for a year?
Nai: [laughs] I wasn’t in the desert for a year, I
was there for maybe two months. The manager
we have now (Si) put on something called the
Bohemian Masquerade Ball, a pretty crazy tour

with circus acts and shit. It was right before
my twenty-first so I planned to celebrate my
birthday while I was out there and just ended up
traveling around, hanging out with iguanas and
eagles. I came back from the desert, without a
plan or place to live and I just kind of flipped it.
Bender and Pez saw me play like a year before
so when I came back to start fresh, it came
together really organically.
You all stayed at the same house and that was
where you recorded the album?
Bender: The three of us: me, Simon, and
Berrin, were living together with a couple other
musicians and Nai was living about ten minutes
down the street. That’s where we recorded
most of Tawk Tomahawk. It had been a musician
share house for about a decade and has slowly
transformed into a sort of pseudo professional

11

PHOTO:
LUCAS FARRAR

LED BY A VOCALIST AS EXPLOSIVE AS HER NAME, NAI PALM AND HIATUS KAIYOTE HAVE
CREATED A NEW GENRE THAT IS RESTRICTED BY NEITHER TIME NOR PLACE - “FUTURE
SOUL.” AN EXPERIMENTAL MASHING OF NEO-SOUL, JAZZ, ELECTRONIC AND HIP-HOP, IT
WAS DEVELOPED IN A RUNDOWN MUSICIAN SHAREHOUSE IN MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.
SINCE FORMING IN MID-2011, HIATUS KAIYOTE HAVE ATTRACTED HIGH PRAISE FROM
TASTEMAKERS SUCH AS QUESTLOVE, ERYKAH BADU AND GILES PETERSON - ALL
BEFORE A PHYSICAL COPY OF THEIR DEBUT, TAWK TOMAHAWK, HAD EVEN BEEN
PRINTED.

INTERVIEW AND WORDS
BY JAKE HEINITZ

ISSUE 01

KAIYOTE

MUSIC

rehearsal space.
You cited famous Spanish flamenco guitarist
Paco de Lucia as one of your main influences,
a true testament to your eclectic sound. What
do you take from Lucia?
Nai: My mum was a contemporary
choreographer and would bring a lot of really
awesome music home from the Uni[versity]
library where she was studying, including
flamenco like Lucia’s. I remember being haunted
as a child by these people singing, the way you
could hear their soul crying in the music. With
our influences, it’s more about adapting them
into our consciousnesses and then creating and
expressing who we are with originality but with
the essences of those different influences.
As a child, besides the flamenco music, what
were some of your biggest influences?
Nai: Predominantly Stevie Wonder. He was like
my surrogate godfather, sonically speaking. I’m

What is the origin of the name Hiatus Kaiyote?
Nai: I was hanging with some friends and we
were just throwing out buzzwords. I think
“Luscious Integrity Dragon” and “Zen As Fuck”
were in there but we couldn’t have a swearword
in our name.
Bender: “Zen as Fuck” is now Nai’s fashion
accessory line, watch out for that.
Nai: [Laughs] Essentially they just came
together. Kaiyote is a made-up word that
incites imagery of Native American shamanistic
stuff, like peyote and coyotes. My father left
when I was little, but he used to make Native
American jewelry, clothing and teepees so I
grew up with that kind of culture, Navajo and
Hopi. Essentially Kaiyote is a word that involves
the listener’s creativity and how they want to
perceive it - Hiatus is like a pause to absorb your
surroundings and then Kaiyote is hollowing it
out in a creative way, challenging the listener to

so honored that my mom exposed me to good
music when I was young; some people grow up
listening to mostly Neil Diamond records. I learn
how to play music from listening a lot, so for me
to grow up learning to create by listening, Stevie
Wonder covers a lot of ground. The reason I
can sing is predominantly from soul greats like
Aretha [Franklin] and Donny Hathaway.

be creative with how they interpret it into their
psyche.
Has living on an isolated continent helped you
to stay true to your sound and uninfluenced
by contemporary music trends?
Bender: With my experience of Australian
music, most of the people that I know do a
whole bunch of different stuff. There will be guys