This week, Mick Turner will be taking to the stage at Friday Nights at Italian Masterpieces. Here, we asked him a few questions about music and art.
Describe your sound in 5 words or less?
post-rock rock-opera (not?)
If your music was an artwork what would it look like?
It would be the collaged sculpture that keeps almost falling off it’s plinth only to rise again
Who’s your favourite artist/artwork?
‘Favourite’ is such a limiting concept. Recently I saw a sculpture while on tour by Ana Maria Pacheco who is a South American artist based in the UK. It was called Man and his Sheep and consisted of several life size human figures. The figures were wood, but they had real human teeth. it was striking. it had more presence than any other artwork I’ve come across.
What’s your favourite gig you have played to date?
With this band, we’ve only done a handful, the Northcote Social Club album release night was great. I put the band together to play the album
What inspires/influences your music the most?
The insatiable hunger to create
What song do you wish you wrote?
Venus de Milo by Television or McArthur Park (Jimmy Webb)
What part of making music excites you the most?
The bit when you forget where you are and who you are for a moment or more
What can a punter expect from your live show?
10 piece band including 3 piece horn section, a musical collaged sculpture that keeps almost falling off it’s plinth only to rise again
Tell us about the last song you wrote?
“over waves” It started as an ode to the power of music but quickly changed into an 8 minute epic of the story of a suicide and a journey through grief and a search for meaning in the kingdom of middleagedness .
I don’t write many songs, lots of instrumental pieces, but not ones with lyrics, in fact I’ve only written a handful and they’re all on my last album ‘Don’t tell the driver’.
The collection of the Spanish royal family formed the basis of the Prado Museum collection. If you could develop a collection including any artists past or present, who would be your top three?
I’ve started a collection, its local Melbourne artists mostly but also some street vendor art from around the world and for me its priceless.