Ben Michael X, Chris Hollow and I sit suspiciously in the doorway of Melbourne's Corner Hotel. Two of us look like regular, everyday gents in their thirties, and those two are members of the Sand Pebbles. I, all pale and stricken with computer eyes, belong to no such lauded outfit. Ghost Transmissions is the album that the Sand Pebbles released in 2004. It followed their second album (funnily enough), Eastern Terrace; a meandering shadowy collection of loosely driven rock tuned offset by the odd indulgence into space-rock and vivid, 'drunken' sprees of unkempt song. The release of Ghost Transmissions has been successful, it's fair to say. The album has been embraced, in particular the strident, heady riffery of the eleven minute song Black Sun Ensemble, and in turn the Sand Pebbles appear now to have cemented themselves a place in the musical psyche. The musical component is important; Ghost Transmissions as assured, focused collection of tracks which are both interesting and soulful as well as utterly enjoyable. Ben and Chris enjoyed talking about old times: past musical experiences, their heroes, and their admiration for this publication. A lot of what they said about the latter has been discarded.

Without wanted to have you guys express any old demons, why do you think it has taken up until this record for the band to be 'heralded'? I mean, you're the next big thing!
C: It's because Sadness is in the Sky never really jumped on it (laughs)…

B: I reckon to be honest we couldn't get people to listen to us before now. Our previous label (Camera Obscura) was fantastic for overseas for us: we were in the New York Times and the Sunday Times, and so you're reading all these newspapers going 'f*%k! I can't believe we're in the New York Times' and having a laugh, when in this country, cause the label didn't make their sales from here they didn't really give a f*%k about what happened in Australia. I think the difference was this time around with Raoul (Records) they don't really care that much about overseas, they only care about Australia and so for the first time they've put more time into saying 'here's this band'. I think this record is an easier record to get into than say Eastern Terrace, the one before it. I think Eastern Terrace is a fantastic record but it just wasn't getting out to enough people to listen to it.

Ghost Transmissions is the third Sand Pebbles record yeah?
C: Well we only like to admit to two but there has actually been three.

So how would you place this record in terms of your evolution as a band? Is it an indication of growth, new headspaces? Have things been reduced or intensified in terms of how you approach the sound?
C: I think this one's wiggier than the one before it, but more focused.

B: I think the difference between this and Eastern Terrace is we spent more time on every little part of this record. The other one's more left of centre; there's ten minute drone kinda songs and one chord songs which I think are cool, but I think we spent a lot more time on this one saying none of us could get bored. There's a pretty low attention span with the band so we'd be recording it and say for instance Black Sun (Ensemble), which goes for eleven minutes, and that was just me saying 'I wanna do a three chord, 60s long song' and Chris would be going 'yeah but I wanna put background vocals. I wanna do things where we turn things around within the song', so there's something to grab onto throughout the whole thing. I think we spent a lot more time making it as exciting as we could.

C: My theory on that is that we didn't actually play live much with Eastern Terrace. We wrote that without having to present them live to anyone, whereas the Ghost Transmissions songs we were written in a period when we were playing with Arthur Lee & Love, and stuff like that, where we had to present these songs. Eastern Terrace is kinda like a bedroom record, whereas Ghost Transmissions is exactly what it is live; trying to grab people's attention.
B: We weren't really a band with Eastern Terrace. Chris and I started the band and Eastern Terrace was more Chris and I doing our home recordings and getting mates in to help us to flesh them out. Over the process of doing that people would come along and say 'ohh I really like doing this, let's do more of it', so then when we got time to do this record it was all of us playing and putting in as well. It became more like a band rather than Chris and I's hobby.

So with the first two records was there a complete open-mindedness to expansion of sounds and expansive sounds? This record definitely seems more direct both rhythmically and structurally.
B: Well the first two we'd do a song and Chris and I would've worked out the entire song pretty much and we'd say to Andrew (Tanner, vox/gtr), 'OK, you'd play guitar like that in this bit and sing like that on this bit' and because he was just a buddy that was coming in to help out he wasn't gonna sit there and go 'f*%k you! It'd sound better if we did this', whereas this time around everyone was sitting behind the console going, 'nah, do this'. Piet (Collins), as a drummer, came on board a lot more. Everyone was putting their ideas in. At that point no gave much of a f*%k about us but we had a lot of self belief, so you'd be playing these gigs thinking, 'well, I don't know if anyone's really getting into it' but we were pretty excited by it. Basically the story of every band is that it's your mates helping you out and a few little diehard people that check you out. When your buddies are coming down to watch you to make it look a few people turned up so that the pub will book you again, you don't give that much of a toss.

Don't think the Sand Pebbles are 'different' because they struggled to pull the masses in early on in their career, it's a common phenomenon. Chris, Ben, and additional Sand Pebbles Andrew Tanner (vocals, guitar, coconuts and handclaps), Piet Collins (drums) and Murray Jamieson (anything from Rhodes to accordion, saxophone to strings) have played long and hard to get to the point where they still have to play long and hard, but now it's their mates AND their girlfriends coming to the shows. Ghost Transmissions has solidified the band in some ways, with punters externally and Chris, Ben and their cohorts internally, making the Sand Pebbles more confident about taking chances and also clearer about where exactly they should be travelling musically.
B: "We've always found ourselves, up until just recently, too indie for the pub rock crowd and too macho for the indie cardigan kids, so we were sitting there going 'f*^k, we're in no-man's-land', cause we don't want to play that kind of super-macho rock. We're probably closer to the twee-er end of rock but then we're the kind of blokes who like footy and sh%t and we're never gonna be skinny enough or cardiganed enough to fit into that World..."

C: And we can't cross our legs!

B: I can't look good in a little tiny suit cause I'm too fat for it! We just felt like we were stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. Our audience is a funny mix of kids who haven't ever gone and watched bands that could play ten minute songs, but then my buddy said there's also plenty of forty-something record nerds.

During our conversation, the Corner Hotel started getting a little infested with young hipster kids in stripped shirts and we all started getting sweaty and slightly claustrophic, maybe there was something in that feeling that fits in with the musicality of the Sand Pebbles?
Chris and Ben waxed a little more about musical heroes and folk who have been important to them, people like the Velvet Underground, Spiritualized, even shoe-gazers were discussed. Chris talked about not wanting to sound like Deep Purple but acknowledging his desire to write a riff as good as Wolfmother's new single ('Woman'). Seems whatever makes for good music is OK by the Sand Pebbles.