Listen to Goyte

Wally De Backer can pinpoint the night when he decided to become Gotye, an award-winning sample magpie whose second album, Like Drawing Blood, is about to be released in Britain. It was eight years ago, a few weeks after one of his parents’ neighbours had passed away and the month he bought his first computer. A drummer whose band had just split up, the then-20-year-old was thumbing through records in his bedroom in the family home on the outskirts of Melbourne.

“I was depressed about the band and desperate to make music, but I didn’t see how a drummer could go solo,” recalls the tall, lanky De Backer, who was born in Bruges, Belgium, but moved to Australia aged two. “A friend came round, saw the records and suggested I try sampling them. They were mostly cheesy 1980s compilations I’d inherited from the lady next door, who’d died. To cheer myself up, I spent the evening sampling bits of the Police and Culture Club. It sounded horrible, but something sparked in me, so for the next few weeks I persevered. By the time I had finished one semi-decent song, I was hooked.”

While getting a degree and working in bars, De Backer recorded 30 songs by stitching together bits of the compilations and other old albums he bought in second-hand shops. He called himself Gotye (pronounced Gaultier), a French-Flemish nickname his mum had for him as a child.

“Some of my songs were very basic,” he admits. “One stole a string line from Engelbert Humperdinck, took a bit of Robert Goulet and looped Neil Diamond, with me playing drums and percussion. On others I sang, although my mum advised me not to.”

In fact, it was the tracks with De Backer’s vocals that got the best response from local radio stations he sent demos to. Eleven of them he reworked, making the samples less obvious, for a debut album, Boardface, that took in Latin, trip-hop and reggae. Copyright issues, however, meant no label was willing to release it. Instead, De Backer pressed 1,000 copies, colouring in every sleeve by hand. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive, and his songs made it to radio, but only 300 albums sold.

For the follow-up, Like Drawing Blood, De Backer sought out more obscure records, chosen largely for the weirdness of their sleeves, took smaller snippets of sounds and manipulated most beyond recognition. The chord progressions, arrangements and melodies were his own, and he played more instruments, including piano and Mellotron. The result is the best cut’n’paste album since his fellow Melbourne musicians the Avalanches’ Since I Left You. From the joyous Motown stomp of Learnalilgivinanlovin to the haunting first single, Hearts a Mess — on which De Backer sings in spine-chilling falsetto over a loop of eight stitched-together snippets from Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat Song — Like Drawing Blood is a meticulously crafted mishmash that sounds not only thoroughly modern, but as though 30 musicians were required to record it.

When it was completed in 2005, however, still no label would sign Gotye — this time because he had proved he couldn’t play live. To promote Boardface, he managed just two shows, which took four months of preparation and made him no money. “I needed a 12-piece band for the songs to sound even remotely as they did on record,” De Backer says. “I pulled in favours everywhere, but there was no way I could play outside of Melbourne. I couldn’t even afford to offer people petrol money.”

Still flying solo, he pressed 1,000 copies of Like Drawing Blood, this time hoping to sell half. Almost immediately, he was ordering more, and when Triple J, an Australian youth radio station, playlisted Learnalilgivinanlovin, Like Drawing Blood jumped into the Top 40. Last year, Gotye was named best male artist at the Aria awards, the Aussie Grammys.

Offered festival headline slots, De Backer put together a mini-orchestra, but, despite several successful tours, disbanded it late last year. Now he performs solo, either frantically jumping around the stage to play different instruments or setting off samples from his drum kit while singing, like a futuristic Phil Collins.

“I might start on congas, trigger a backing track, sing a bit, play some samples, run to the piano, play the chorus on drums, manipulate my computer, then return to the front to sing some more,” he laughs. “As for the Phil Collins comparisons, bring them on — to play the drum patterns he does while singing is amazing. Besides, we singing drummers have to stick together. We’re a small group.”

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