Thursday

Towradgi Beach Hotel

Tickets: Free entry

For a three-piece band, Sub Atari Knives manage to produce a very big sound.

The "organic/electronic" act from Melbourne consists of singer Hugo Tremayne, bass player Nick Adams and drummer Ben Ellingworth.

Tremayne says fans coming to see the band perform live for the first time often expect to see a few more band members up on stage.

"People will come up to us after we've done a show in a fresh town - and they'll have the EP or they've heard something online but haven't seen any film clips on Youtube or whatever - and they'll rock up and be quite surprised that it's a three-piece, because it is a big sound," he says. "But once you incorporate the electronic with the organic through your synthesisers and computers and all your MIDI instrumentation ... it gets phatter and bigger and harder."

Describing the band's style of music is trickier, other than too say that it doesn't fit neatly into any pre-defined genres.

"It's a tough one," Tremayne says. "Part of the music you can dance to but there is also an element that is quite punk rock.

"It's often quite hard and fast - hard and fast with a rock feel to it, but it has definitely got a dance groove.

"I think we're still looking for the exact words to describe what we do."

The Sub Atari Knives formed a year and a half ago and in that time have established a reputation for high-energy live shows.

"The idea is to get the audience on the same page or to musically take them on a journey.

"I suppose because the music we are creating is so action-packed people jump on that train and that is reflected in their response."

All three band members had played in other bands.

When those bands stopped performing they naturally gravitated towards each other.

"We knew each other through the industry and playing festivals and the gig scene," Tremayne says.

"We'd loosely joked about one day getting a band together.

"It happened really quite organically - before we knew it we were jamming pretty frequently and hunting around for gigs and here we are just over a year later on a tour."

Tremayne says their experience in other bands helped the Sub Atari Knives hit the ground running.

"You learn from your past," he says. "With my first band I was cutting my teeth to an extent, whereas with this one we've all come in quite focused and honed to get it up and running and to record and to get it touring.

"I suppose to a degree we are more focused as well because we have played in bands in the past we know what we want to do and we know how we want to get it there.

"So everyone is on the same page, which is great, and the wheels are turning fast, which is also a real positive."