Music / Features
Track by Track:
Hot Dog - Magic Mustard
Hot Dog - Magic Mustard
After recently signing to HUM Records, Hot Dog (the wacky pseudonym of Melbourne-based multi-instrumentalist Nick Crameri) offers a tasty sonic mix of wiry post-punk, easy-going jangles and shapeshifting avant-pop on his latest EP Magic Mustard.
Sharpening and shifting his DIY lens, the zany multi-instrumentalist Nick Crameri, aka Hot Dog, is back with a new six-track EP called Magic Mustard. Throughout the EP, Crameri compresses his influences into a blender that range from the arty antics of Hardcore-era Devo to the enigmatic Barry Beam and touchstones of Flying Nun. As a result, Crameri wears his influences on his sleeves, while pulling out a heady collection of jangly hooks and nervy guitar lines that twist through the streaking sci-fi synths that fill the air. In short, the album is just as introspective as it is a little wacky.
Opening track ‘Free the Funk’ is an infectious rush of mutated dance-punk with its hyper-active swarm of buzzing synths and frantic guitar lines. Next up, ’Rejected Housemate’ is tightly-wound with menacing rhythmic coils and drenched in spacey synths while telling a quirky story of a failed housemate situation, and the cruising ‘Take Time’ is another synth-heavy affair that sounds like a nod to synth-pop giants Depeche Mode and Gary Numan.
‘Crutch’ slows things down with its bittersweet and breezy jingle-jangle riffs that completely dominate the EP’s second half. The pensive ‘Night Time’ is housed by its raw yet serrated guitar line and bass-driven pulse, before ‘Colour in Your Life’ rounds the EP out, blending its swirling chord progression with a dreamy emotionality, asking in the end: “Don’t you want some colour in your life?”
Now that the EP has been out for close to a month, we had the pleasure of having Crameri reflect on the creation of each track and the stories behind them.
Opening track ‘Free the Funk’ is an infectious rush of mutated dance-punk with its hyper-active swarm of buzzing synths and frantic guitar lines. Next up, ’Rejected Housemate’ is tightly-wound with menacing rhythmic coils and drenched in spacey synths while telling a quirky story of a failed housemate situation, and the cruising ‘Take Time’ is another synth-heavy affair that sounds like a nod to synth-pop giants Depeche Mode and Gary Numan.
‘Crutch’ slows things down with its bittersweet and breezy jingle-jangle riffs that completely dominate the EP’s second half. The pensive ‘Night Time’ is housed by its raw yet serrated guitar line and bass-driven pulse, before ‘Colour in Your Life’ rounds the EP out, blending its swirling chord progression with a dreamy emotionality, asking in the end: “Don’t you want some colour in your life?”
Now that the EP has been out for close to a month, we had the pleasure of having Crameri reflect on the creation of each track and the stories behind them.
Free The Funk
I’ve always wanted to open a track with a distorted synth build and it ended up being a way to hype up the opening of the EP and usher in a completely new sound for Hot Dog relative to the first EP, Beneath The Bun. I guess it also represents the monotonous “funk” I found myself in after following the “adult” advice and ticking the boxes of moving out, finishing uni and getting a job. The whole song aims to build the tempered tension and anxiety through the verses before letting it all out in each chorus. Just like how you can only handle doing the same thing for so long before you need to break out and free yourself from it. The way The Snakes and U-Bahn use their synths without drowning out the other minimalist melodies of the other instruments was a big influence.
Rejected Housemate
When my housemate was moving out, he found these two odd characters to interview for his room. One was a BNS ball-loving ocker dude who worked 60 hours a week and the other was the guy from this song who was a very morose sort of cat but not a bad guy by any stretch. After we found Bonnie who was a bit more outgoing and friendly and exactly who we wanted to live with (she’s also the bassist in Hot Dog’s live band), we let him know he didn’t get it. A few weeks later I was at Sugar Mountain having a real good time and I’d just made two Italian friends who remain close mates and some of the funnest people I know. Anyway, this guy who also happened to be Italian, came up to me out of the blue. I didn’t recognise who he was and the fact he had to explain himself didn’t get the conversation off on a good note. He then started conversing with my new mates in his native tongue about how much of a dick I was for not giving him the room. I’m a very non-confrontational person and was honestly only trying to think of a way to lighten the conversation but I’d consumed too much alcohol to think coherently and the best I could think of was, “So did you find another place to live?”. My friends helped me escape the understandable daggers that guy was giving me but I couldn’t let this story not live on.
Take Time
It’s always really hard to realise the moment when you’re living what will be your favourite memories in the future. As many of these moments that you have to hang onto, you/I always want more. But sometimes there’s a danger in trying to synthesise these experiences when they aren’t really there. Essentially this track is about me trying to tell myself to let things happen and be open to them when they do whilst also trying to avoid letting FOMO take hold and force things onto yourself that can lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. I wanted the positive message within this track to still sound like it was coming from a dark place of self-reflection, so I leaned on Gold Class to help inspire a bit of the sound here.
Crutch
This is an example of music being a form of therapy. After meeting someone really special and then being separated geographically by a matter of circumstance, I soon came to realise that I was using this pseudo-relationship as an emotional crutch. Comforting in the sense that I’d experienced something special with someone I’d never had before and knowing they’re always there but limiting due to the fact I couldn’t build on it or continue to deepen it. It probably resulted in a lot of self-sabotage and this song is both an ode to the positives that came out of that experience in the up-beat poppy nature of the melodies but also, lyrically, me trying to turn a page on it all. I’m a big fan of Candy and I used his blueprint of jangly pop jams to drive this.
Night Time
This song was one of the first I wrote when I started getting into bedroom recording/production. It was always an instrumental until this EP and came from a time when I was so into lo-fi indie stuff like Beach Fossils and Craft Spells. I ended up writing lyrics for it just trying to capture that sweet spot of the evening of any house party that we’ve all been at where you’re nicely settled in but also have so much fun still ahead of you. The audio engineer for Magic Mustard Impi Tarjavaara helped add a lo-fi, RnB feel to it all thanks to her percussive powers!
Colour In Your Life
Of all the tracks on Magic Mustard, this is what Hot Dog is at its barest bones; a lo-fi jazz-chord driven downtempo number of sorts. Much the same way that ‘It Can’t Work’ closed out the first EP, I wanted Magic Mustard to finish with a slightly solemn piece of self-reflection that still leaves you with a melody-driven solo. This is all about having people in your life who may have dissonances with some of the eccentricities that make you, you, and can disparage you for it knowingly or unknowingly. I’m not trying to say I have the most colourful life in the world, far from it. Instead, it’s just a reminder to leave cynicism behind and try to remain open minded and excited by what everyone, especially your friends, are into. You can never tell people these things because it’ll push them further away so I hid it in this closer.
I’ve always wanted to open a track with a distorted synth build and it ended up being a way to hype up the opening of the EP and usher in a completely new sound for Hot Dog relative to the first EP, Beneath The Bun. I guess it also represents the monotonous “funk” I found myself in after following the “adult” advice and ticking the boxes of moving out, finishing uni and getting a job. The whole song aims to build the tempered tension and anxiety through the verses before letting it all out in each chorus. Just like how you can only handle doing the same thing for so long before you need to break out and free yourself from it. The way The Snakes and U-Bahn use their synths without drowning out the other minimalist melodies of the other instruments was a big influence.
Rejected Housemate
When my housemate was moving out, he found these two odd characters to interview for his room. One was a BNS ball-loving ocker dude who worked 60 hours a week and the other was the guy from this song who was a very morose sort of cat but not a bad guy by any stretch. After we found Bonnie who was a bit more outgoing and friendly and exactly who we wanted to live with (she’s also the bassist in Hot Dog’s live band), we let him know he didn’t get it. A few weeks later I was at Sugar Mountain having a real good time and I’d just made two Italian friends who remain close mates and some of the funnest people I know. Anyway, this guy who also happened to be Italian, came up to me out of the blue. I didn’t recognise who he was and the fact he had to explain himself didn’t get the conversation off on a good note. He then started conversing with my new mates in his native tongue about how much of a dick I was for not giving him the room. I’m a very non-confrontational person and was honestly only trying to think of a way to lighten the conversation but I’d consumed too much alcohol to think coherently and the best I could think of was, “So did you find another place to live?”. My friends helped me escape the understandable daggers that guy was giving me but I couldn’t let this story not live on.
Take Time
It’s always really hard to realise the moment when you’re living what will be your favourite memories in the future. As many of these moments that you have to hang onto, you/I always want more. But sometimes there’s a danger in trying to synthesise these experiences when they aren’t really there. Essentially this track is about me trying to tell myself to let things happen and be open to them when they do whilst also trying to avoid letting FOMO take hold and force things onto yourself that can lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. I wanted the positive message within this track to still sound like it was coming from a dark place of self-reflection, so I leaned on Gold Class to help inspire a bit of the sound here.
Crutch
This is an example of music being a form of therapy. After meeting someone really special and then being separated geographically by a matter of circumstance, I soon came to realise that I was using this pseudo-relationship as an emotional crutch. Comforting in the sense that I’d experienced something special with someone I’d never had before and knowing they’re always there but limiting due to the fact I couldn’t build on it or continue to deepen it. It probably resulted in a lot of self-sabotage and this song is both an ode to the positives that came out of that experience in the up-beat poppy nature of the melodies but also, lyrically, me trying to turn a page on it all. I’m a big fan of Candy and I used his blueprint of jangly pop jams to drive this.
Night Time
This song was one of the first I wrote when I started getting into bedroom recording/production. It was always an instrumental until this EP and came from a time when I was so into lo-fi indie stuff like Beach Fossils and Craft Spells. I ended up writing lyrics for it just trying to capture that sweet spot of the evening of any house party that we’ve all been at where you’re nicely settled in but also have so much fun still ahead of you. The audio engineer for Magic Mustard Impi Tarjavaara helped add a lo-fi, RnB feel to it all thanks to her percussive powers!
Colour In Your Life
Of all the tracks on Magic Mustard, this is what Hot Dog is at its barest bones; a lo-fi jazz-chord driven downtempo number of sorts. Much the same way that ‘It Can’t Work’ closed out the first EP, I wanted Magic Mustard to finish with a slightly solemn piece of self-reflection that still leaves you with a melody-driven solo. This is all about having people in your life who may have dissonances with some of the eccentricities that make you, you, and can disparage you for it knowingly or unknowingly. I’m not trying to say I have the most colourful life in the world, far from it. Instead, it’s just a reminder to leave cynicism behind and try to remain open minded and excited by what everyone, especially your friends, are into. You can never tell people these things because it’ll push them further away so I hid it in this closer.
Magic Mustard is out now via Hum Records.
