The latest act to sprout from the home of The Big Pineapple packs more flavour than a bowl of fruit salad.

Meet the Sunshine Coast's The Mank: a five-piece hip hop group who also offer equal servings of reggae, down-tempo electronica and saxophone funk. And as the group's drummer Danny Crumbs explains, pushing musical boundaries is key to The Mank's originality.

“The Mank is a sound that is big, dirty, grimey and a mixture of all the nice bits of different styles of music,” Danny says. “We try to adapt quite a few genres into our tunes. Everyone brings their own style.

“We like to think we created the Manky sound – something that had not been created. We could be wrong but we just want to bring something new that people haven’t heard before – give people an eargasm which they never thought was possible.”
Adding to The Mank's arsenal is the variety of instruments at the quintet’s disposal. From live drums to bass heavy beats, and guitars to turntables, the stylistic combinations seem endless for the Sunny Coast lads.

“It’s never the same process in writing a song for us. It’s more like if a fellow Mankster has something with juice we will use that as a starting point. Then just have a few drinks and a smoke and see where we go from there. We like to keep it as open and free rolling as possible.”

And the approach to their craft seems to be striking the right chords. The Mank's self-titled debut EP was heralded by critics from 4ZZZ to Triple J.

“It was quite humbling in a sense; to know that peeps were enjoying the music that we liked creating was a good feeling. We always had faith in the juice we created but it was nice to know others were enjoying our different style.”

The successful release of their first EP also paved the way for the group's first national tour, but Danny reveals the onstage antics of the group aren't always left, well, onstage.

“[When we] played [at] The Beach Road Hotel in Sydney, [it was the] first time for us as a band playing in Sydney and I think we all went fairly wild. We got to meet some good people in the industry down there and capped the night off with a visit from the fire brigade at 5am. [Then we] had to get ourselves up and be on a plane at eight to be back in Byron for a show with the Tijuana Cartel boys. Well worth it.”

The Mank also boast some serious touring credentials, sharing the stage – and partying – with prolific names like Kora and Akil of Jurassic 5 fame. However, the experiences also introduced the collective to the growing pains of what it takes to remain successful on the road.

“It's quite inspiring to share the stage and get messy with music peeps whose music we blast and just to see how and why they keep doing what they’re doing,” he explains. “[It] just shows us that there is still a long way to go and grow as a band and we need to stop getting wasted so much.”

Now with their touring cycle over, The Mank are back in the studio, writing and recording their first full-length release.

“We are indeed back in The Electric Fruit Factory – our little studio up the coast. It started off a little slow but this time around everyone is getting a little more involved in the process which is helping to grow our sound fatter and fatter [with] each track.

“[We're] not so much trying something different as to keep evolving our sound. This time 'round, however, we have another singer, The Velvet Fox, and trumpeter, Rasta, on board to try and keep evolving our sound.”

And while we've all heard horror stories of record labels controlling creative freedom, that doesn’t concern them. Not only do they run their own recording studio, but also their own record label – The Mank Industries.

“Mank Industries is the baby of Jonny Boinkin and [myself], which is a little record label and recording studio. It just means that we have our own creative space that we can work on tunes at our own pace. That, and we save a few beans not having to worry about paying to record or mix our tunes.

“That was the whole reason behind setting up The Mank Industries record label. We wanted to make tunes at our own pace and the way we liked and all of us have bosses in our day job so we didn’t want another one controlling our music.”

The Mank play Earth Frequency Festival at Landcruiser Mountain Park, Sunshine Coast, February 15-18. earthfrequency.com.au