Giants crushing it
Brisbane indie rockers the Jungle Giants had a massive 2013 that saw them traverse the country on the back of debut album Learn to Exist.
The young quartet is making one last jaunt around the nation before knuckling down to work on their second album.
Bassist Andrew Dooris says the band plans on spending six months in frontman Sam Hales' poolroom studio to work on a record with a more clear-cut direction.
"It's going to be cool and I think that we learnt a lot from the last recording," Dooris said. "It's going to be a lot easier to recreate sounds that we like and to experiment with different sonic ideas."
But first the Jungle Giants will complete the Groovin the Moo festival, which they hope will be at least half as much fun as the Big Day Out. The four-piece opened the BDO's Essential Stage and were repeatedly star-struck by their encounters with some of the headliners.
"We played ping pong for about 5 1/2 hours backstage in Melbourne," Dooris recalled.
"When we stopped playing the Arcade Fire walked out of their compound and (singer) Win Butler starts playing and he was a machine. He's a really huge guy, and he's just really athletically minded."
More recently, the band accomplished a goal by playing the esteemed South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas - a dream come true for the wandering mind of Dooris. The bassist says he always wanted to play overseas, but it turns out his dreams aren't always in English.
"I remember having dreams as a 15-year-old about playing in front of a whole bunch of French people," he said.
"It was such a weird dream because we were just playing a gig and I was doing all the banter in French. It was really funny. I didn't have my French dream in Austin but it was still really exciting for us. The feeling among us was just ecstatic."
