The Omnific – Wizards of Oz

The Australian trio The Omnific make music like no other band—with two bassists, a drummer, and a whole lot of genius. We meet Matt Fack and Toby Peterson-Stewart

- By Matt Fack and Toby Peterson-Stewart

How long have you been working on The Omnific?

Toby We’ve been writing together for just over five years. When we started, people were like, ‘What the fuck? It’s two bass players!’ I would say that there’s been a lot of maturing along the way. As we get older, and this band gets older, the way that we write music grows older as well. At first we thought, ‘You can do anything with two basses, and it’ll be cool’, but now it’s more about growing into the whole concept.

Matt When we started, we were 18 or 19—just kids. We haven’t exactly matured yet or anything, but we’ve progressed through life, and with that growth comes the maturity of our new album, Escapades, which will be out before too long.

How do you write the songs?

Matt The songwriting process is different for each of us. I’m really into sitting down for a long session, where the song almost seems to write itself. I have to do it in a single sitting or I lose the ideas behind it. I program a TAB because that helps my workflow, and I can put all the instruments down in one go. And then when we come to demo it, the other two guys add a bit of input to it.

Toby For the new album, Matt wrote six songs and I wrote four. Three out of my four took me two weeks to write. For each one. I literally slogged every day for two weeks, churning out all the crap ideas that came from one idea that I had, until I had a song that I really felt flowed. It’s not the smartest thing to do, because it takes ages, but I’m very happy with what came out in the end.