Feelin Kinda Free is the sixth studio album from Australian band The Drones, and their final one before going on hiatus. Having grown tired with the more rock-oriented sound of the band up until that point, frontman Gareth Liddiard became fascinated with both vintage and modern electronic equipment - ranging from drum machines and samplers to the Teenage Engineering OP-1 synthesizer - in conceiving the album's sound. Its genre-defying musical style has been described as visceral and ominous, featuring a relative absence of guitars and a prominent use of electronic textures. Its sessions also marked the first appearance of drummer Christian Strybosch since 2005's Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By.
Their shortest at just over 40 minutes, Feelin Kinda Free received fairly positive reviews for its eclectic sound and Liddiard's darker, more politically-charged lyricism. It also charted at #12 on the ARIA Charts - the band's highest till date. The album went on to appear on numerous year-end lists and would later be chosen by Junkee as one of the best Australian albums of the decade.
Background
After the release of I See Seaweed in 2013, Drones founder Gareth Liddiard expressed his desire to step away from the more rock-centric style of previous Drones albums on their next project. "Before we moved to Melbourne back in the 90s," he said in an interview with Musicfeeds, "we were a very weird sounding band. It was Melbourne that turned us more into a rock band, which kind of helped us to get gigs. This is a return to the way we were before in a way – getting drunk, getting stoned, noodling on anything you can find and making weird little songs."
The whole thing was to not have blues guitars in it [...] I’d been listening to really old four-track tapes from the '90s that me and [former The Drones member] Rui [Periera] made, and they’re all totally bizarre. It was almost as though having two guitars playing American-ish, country-ish, blues-ish guitars music – that was a stretch for us. We had to learn how to do that. But just being completely f-cking weird is so natural. It was a relief. Everyone was on [our] side, everyone was cool.
Recording
The album, recorded in the band's studio in the Fitzroy North suburb of Melbourne, was mixed on the desk that was reportedly used by Nile Rodgers for Madonna's Like a Virgin. It was mixed by Aaron Cupples, who had previously co-produced 2006's Gala Mill and would go on to mix Tropical Fuck Storm's debut A Laughing Death in Meatspace. Drummer Christian Strybosch, who had previously drummed on the band's first two releases, performs on this album having replaced Mike Noga in 2014.
Liddiard described the genesis of the album's sonic experimentation as follows:We rented out this studio with a couple of mates. One of those mates, Phil, had stopped being interesting in buying vintage rock & roll equipment. He moved over to buying hip-hop equipment – vintage stuff that acts like Public Enemy or Kool Keith would use. We had all that shit laying around for the first time in our life – synthesizers, samplers, sequencers, stuff like that. He had an OP1, a very modern synth, and I became fascinated with that to the point where I bought my own.
Noting that recording the album had taken them an entire year, Strybosch expanded upon the album's recording process in an interview with Tone Deaf:Rather than just bashing away at drums and guitars…this time we used more triggers and loops, synth, minimal guitars in places, mixed samples with live…sometimes it’s like working at a little space station. It was conscious in the way that we wanted it to sound different from other (The Drones) records, and I think we achieved that.
Despite this, a majority of the album's effects were, according to Liddiard, generated on guitar.
Content
Style
According to Liddiard: "It's a pretty weird record and you can dance to it...We're sick of being a bunch of drags." The album was described in its press release as "a bad trip you can dance to".