On The Road Again 

With eight releases to their name, Laneous & The Family Yah is rather prolific by today’s standards. Frontman Laneous has no problem expressing himself, but procrastination is one word that is not in his vocabulary.

Fresh from an intensive summer festival season - taking in Big Day Out, Woodford, Sunset Sounds and Peats Ridge - Laneous & The Family Yah released 'Scissors', the first of three EPs to be rolled out this year in the band's 'Found Things Collection'.

At the point where most bands would be returning home, unpacking their suitcases and, let's face it, washing a season's worth of dirty underwear, Laneous & The Family Yah is back at it again with a new string of east coast tour dates.

“Festival season was great,” Laneous says. “We got to play on some really good stages to some really good people and it was awesome. One of the highlights was playing Sunset Sounds at Riverstage when it was raining horribly, but there were still heaps of people out in rain coats getting down. We didn't really get to see too many bands ourselves, as we had to go back to the studio and finish recording our EP.”

Even now, as the band readies to tour 'Scissors' across the coast, Laneous is already one step ahead.
“I'm at the studio right now, recording the second EP in the trilogy. We got into the studio again a week after we released 'Scissors'; it has just been nonstop,” he explains.

Consisting of EPs 'Scissors', 'Paper' and 'Rock', the 'Found Things Collection' will see Laneous & The Family Yah dismantle and explore the musical concepts on the band's sophomore album, 'Found Things'.
Leading with a complete re-imagining of a track from 'Found Things', each EP will also contain three or four new tracks in a similar musical vein.
“Basically, 'Found Things' was a mash-up of all of these different feelings and styles of music and we decided to do three EPs that touched on some of those feelings,” Laneous explains.

“The first one ('Scissors') is sort of more of the melodic, soulful, downtempo side of things and this next one ('Paper') is more of a quirky, rocky type of thing. A little bit Frank Zappa-style crazy.
“We're hoping the last one ('Rock') will have an Afro punk, hip hop kind of vibe. It's like these EPs are sort of like the 'Found Things' album split up into understandable little chunks.”

Despite having set musical themes to each EP, Laneous admits it is often hard to stay on track with the many musical personalities that exist within the band.
“We can't help ourselves, actually,” he says. “We always get in the tour van and different people sit up front and play DJ. There's a whole bunch of different styles of music that are constantly going into our subconscious.
“We were supposed to go in the studio for the 'Scissors' EP just doing soulful, R&B stuff and we just couldn't. We did pretty well considering, but I can't help myself but write a little silly, quirky track or something that's quite different. It's kind of an accident, really.”

With such a diverse back catalogue, one can only imagine the demographic profile of Laneous & The Family Yah's collection of devoted minions. Laneous plays it down, at the risk of selling himself short.
“I kind of hope that there's people out there that just like heaps of different types of music and maybe that's our demographic - people that don't really have a set genre that they like,” he says.

Or maybe it's that Laneous & The Family Yah is a ‘one-stop shop’ for an emotionally unsettled audience.
“People definitely have different emotions and different musical moods, so I guess we satisfy quite a few of those. As songwriters, we have different emotions and different feelings as well and that's why we do this in the first place.”

The 'Scissors' shows are set to showcase Laneous & The Family Yah's more melodic and soulful side, but when considering the band's genre-hopping nature, who really knows what to expect?
"Audiences can expect some pretty quirky music and stage antics," Laneous says.
"We've got our backup singers (Birdfire Choir) coming along and we're just going to be playing some crazy music."

LANEOUS & THE FAMILY YAH WILL PLAY THE ZOO ON MARCH 24. ‘SCISSORS’ IS OUT NOW.