If ever he should stop...

Bradley Dawson interviews David Thrussell

David Thrussell, friend, musician and satirist, unlocks the door, laughs and welcomes me loudly into his big old house, hidden behind a tall hedge on a quiet road in a smallish country town. It's dark inside, as usual.

When I was looking for an angle for this interview, the issue of privacy came immediately to mind. The windows at the front of his house are covered up, he always locks his front door and his telephone answering machine message is cryptically simple and anonymous. I could assign sinister motives to all of this and say that David is fiercely protective of his privacy and perhaps a touch paranoid, but then I realize his door is one of those that can't not be locked when closed, just like my front door; the covered windows protect valuable recording equipment and answering machines all over the world are filled with similarly obtuse greetings. Perhaps I'm the one who's being paranoid.

David's house has the most CD's I've ever seen - bookshelves, whole rooms even, are filled with them and not all stacked particularly neatly. I wonder at how he can find a particular album or book. But then he's got a memory like a trap, untainted by the usual musicians' friends, drink and drugs.

Tired after early morning radio work and late nights and not in the mood to cook, he suggests before we start this interview to move to a restaurant where he knows he can get a vegan meal.

At the restaurant he is playful. "You hate it that I'm a cagey bastard, don't you?" he laughs - a laugh that he almost coughs out at you as a test, or as an honest encouragement to laugh along with him.

Well no, I don't hate his caginess, because I enjoy the challenge of trying to get him to reveal things he doesn't want to reveal. But then I realize I'm only trying to do this precisely because he keeps telling me he's so cagey. It annoys me to know that I'm no match for his fierce intelligence and wit anyway. He slips easily into automatic when talking about his music - the litany of an eternity of interviews over the years - then playfully provokes and prods me back after some questions and is too practiced at this, too sharp, to let out what he doesn't want to. From his sarcastic and biting responses in previous interviews I see he doesn't suffer fools lightly, but he's on his best behavior with me today. He must like me.

I'm not interested in talking about his music - that's all been done by others. I know that David's work in Australia, and more recently in Europe and the US, with his electronic techno-industrial band 'Snog' has brought him a measure of fame, and his propensity to attack and parody corporate values, economic rationalism and governmental and business evils would have attracted some unwanted attention. I want to know what affect this relative amount of fame and notoriety has had on a humble boy from Kyabram.

"I am more guarded... " his voice quietens as if to illustrate. "People try and shoot you down because of who you are and you become a target in the rumor mill because you're some sort of identity. I've been subjected to some fairly nasty incidents." I listen as he lists horrible things that he's endured and I try to feel what he might have felt, but I can't. "After a bit of that stuff you tend to withdraw a bit." A shorter laugh trails off.

He leans forward, his wide eyes alert and fixed on me.

"In my, um, natural state - whatever that is - I used to be far more outrageous," he laments, "but now I can't really afford to be. I remember the day it first started to happen. As a band we never took ourselves seriously, although we did take making music kind of seriously - we wanted it to be interesting and different. We were just larking about and people started to say: 'Oh, you rock stars' and I went 'What? What are you talking about?' It was quite a depressing day. And I thought, 'Is this the beginning of some negative change? "

He talks of how all of this has led to alterations in the way he feels he can behave, but says resignedly and with that open smile of his, "It's just in my nature to make trouble." Thank goodness.

David believes that part of the duty of artists is to communicate with their audience and with their peers and that 'once the walls go up' that stops. "This is why the really big artists, Billy Joel, Phil Collins, Madonna, - their art is so bad. It's become this one way street."

I recall a conversation with him about the band 'The disposable heroes of hip-hoprisy' and their song with the repeated lyric '...if ever I would stop thinking about music and politics...' This is the man that song was written about.

With album titles such as 'Third mall from the sun', 'Relax into the abyss', 'Buy me, I'll change your life', 'Lies Inc', to name a few, the content and bent of his music is obvious. I ask if he has always been a skeptical socio-political animal. "I think I grew up under the influence of my father, who was interested in politics... I remember being a tiny little kid and whenever something would come on the television about the JFK assassination my father would say: 'if you believe that you'll believe anything'.

There's a hint of anger in his voice when he recalls how some people have suggested Snog should include more personal lyrics. His lyrics actually reflect the amount of time he spends thinking about different aspects of the world and he is dismissive of the "indie circle... who want this navel-gazing crap." He does what he does and he doesn't care what you think he should do. But there's also a strong sense of theatre in his work.

"There's this idea that we should tear away the masks and let the real person out... that in itself is pretence. We put on a mask and tell a story, people are naturally theatrical."

There's been no shortage of theatre in his life recently. Snog's last release 'Third mall from the sun', features Canadian artist Chris Wood's wonderfully mocking paintings of McDonalds employees in salutation of the great golden arches. McDonalds threatened to sue the band, their record label and promoters, and eventually all major record stores refused to stock the CD. The best and most popular CD they've ever made has been effectively banned in their home country, but is available everywhere else in the world.

David tells of how, at this time, he actually thought about giving it all away, especially when it was affecting people close to him.

"That was one of my motivations for heading to the hills. I actually went through a stage of feeling uneasy just walking the streets," he remembers. "You put yourself into a corner, or drop the ball, to use a sporting metaphor... But that's one of the intended side effects isn't it?"

He doesn't want to give the bastards another victory, they already win enough battles. "I do have a slightly tenacious side," he understates mightily. "And what else could I do? I'm an art guy."

The disposable heroes of hip-hoprisy, to the great disappointment of all, went apolitical on their next release. There'll be no Lennon-esque switches to love albums for this not-so masked man.

David bounces up from his chair. "I want to dance around now. Let's go out and listen to some loud music!"

I think all this talk about music and politics has woken him up.