download: nhac - save yourself (2009) or listen:
www.nhac.com.au
In 2006 I took a holiday back to Mackay where I grew up to get away for a weekend, and found myself playing and writing on my dad's acoustic guitar. I didn't really know what to do with it since it wasn't really right for Run Amok, so I just kept it aside and titled it with my name. Over the next year and a half, I kept slowly writing and demo recording songs, and eventually found my old nylon string acoustic from when I was a kid. It was a terrible instrument, but made the songs sound softer and more intimate, and I really liked it. In late 2007 while still working on Run Amok, Luke suggested that I record some of the music I'd been writing, and since I didn't have enough material for an album I suggested to Dane that he might want to do a split with me. He didn't want to record his stuff but suggested he do some accompaniment for my songs. In 2008 we had a few jams and the songs started coming together. I spent the rest of the year writing and recording on my own until I had a full album written. He joined me again to demo the whole thing, and it was about that time that Ben expressed interest in adding some light percussion to what we'd done. Eventually after a discussion with Hayden about how much he missed playing, he was added to the line-up on bass, and we had a full band, which we named nhac (which we pronounce en-hack), after the vietnamese word for music, and an acryonm for 'never had a choice', which was an article I'd written about free will when I was at university. After much deliberation we decided not to do a full album and go for quality over quantity - record a good quality EP of our best songs instead. The EP was released online on the 11th of June 2009 with full pressing to come, with the songs that didn't make it relegated to history. Writing has begun for a full album which we're aiming to start work on early next year. back