The name is Bond
Bond are the sort of band classical music purists love to hate. Aussies Haylie Ecker (pictured far right) and Tania David and Brits Eos Chater and Gay-Yee Westerhoff are all classically trained, but play instrumental music that is frenetic, emotional and simple.
Their music is more film score than legitimate symphony, more pop than Pachelbel (whom they sample). It started with Primal Scream, Haylie Ecker explains by phone in London.
Gay-Yee just got back from doing a session with Primal Scream and she was just going on about how fantastic it was doing what she was doing, but in a different medium, Ecker said. And I was just like -“ wicked -“ and I thought I’d really like to give that a go as well.
So Ecker introduced Tania to Gay-Yee, who knew Eos, and after they all watched Dr No and confessed a shared love of composer John Barry, they became the band Bond.
Ecker is very friendly, very beautiful and very young. Words like leafage can be found in Ecker’s web diary (www.bondmusic.net). Performing at the Miss Universe contest this year was the funnest thing we’ve ever done, she said, sounding more like Buffy the vampire slayer with every passing second.
Thankfully, Ecker seemed to have few illusions about the group’s music.
We’re classically influenced, we’re not a classical group, and we’re really careful to say that, she said. We write a lot of our music -¦ and because it’s quite fresh and it’s fun, if anything it’s acting as a stepping stone to getting a wider audience into classical music.
Ecker admitted she has had to temporarily abandon her classical violin career because of Bond’s success: a journey that has taken her to two film sets (Johnny English and the XXX sequel), a Miss Universe contest and some truly freaky private engagements.
We got flown out to Indiana in this guy’s G4, which is like a private plane and it was all decked out in Versace, Ecker said. He was honouring General Schwarzkopf for the evening and we were like, we didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into.
The evening raised money for a wildlife foundation, but one that involved controlled game hunting. Ecker was shocked.
He had a private -˜zoo’: six rooms which had like 20 lions, two grizzly bears, two elephants, all taxidermed, she laughed, nervously.
For those unconvinced about Bond’s appeal, you’ll soon be granted a free sample -“ and how! Channel Seven has bought the rights to use their single Explosive as the theme music and their glamorously scanty film clip for its Athens Olympic Games coverage.
At potentially every commercial break, a blast of Explosive. You may well be shaken, not stirred.
Classified by Bond will be released on 9 August. For more information visit www.bondmusic.net and
www.universalclassics.com.
