Surrealism, Science and Salmon
Surreal Science will see The Scientists and Kim Salmon & The Surrealists on the same stage (and even all at once) at the Rosemount Hotel on Saturday, April 18, with tickets on sale now. BOB GORDON entered the maelstrom with Kim Salmon to find out more. These gigs combine the powers of The Scientists and The Surrealists. Firstly, can you characterise The Scientists in a gloriously descriptive nutshell?
The Scientists are definitely not what they seem! Our aim was always to make people move by whatever means possible. We haven’t changed. We wanted to be an addiction and a sickness at the same time. The opposite of a cure. We haven’t changed!
Dave Graney just told me, after watching his partner Clare Moore drumming for us in two shows, that he thought We Had Love was as much an exercise in dynamics as a song. He asked me if I’d ever thought of doing a hard techno version with someone who knows how to do that stuff. “Something primal about it. Could be a dancefloor filler at clubs!”
And The Surrealists?
The Surrealists’ members, like the Scientists’ members, were and are my muse. I write the music for them to accentuate their characters as much as their capabilities. Ironically, this has taken me on a continuation of the same journey as The Scientists. And by the definition of my previous statement, a lot of the band’s music has written itself… or the members have felt compelled to play the material into existence. We feed off each other!
What the hell is it like bringing these complex entities together?
The Surrealists and the Scientists have far more in common with me than any of my other musical ventures. Antenna, The Darling Downs, The Beasts Of Bourbon, Smoked Salmon, and even the Mark 1 Scientists are all more about the concept of ‘song’, which is not to say a bad thing. Just very different. I find that the melding of these two entities is a far simpler and more natural process than people might think.
With three drummers, two guitarists, two bass players and two vocalists, what are the mechanics of these shows? What has it been like to pull them together, and how do they play out each evening?
The stage has been set so that various combinations of players can play any combination of Surrealists’ or Scientists’ material without concerns for any conventional hierarchical or chronological structure. Scientists bassist Boris Sujdovic and our sound engineer Andrew Hepburn have put together a plethora of visual projections to integrate the show into an immersive audio-visual experience, giving the show an entirely different focus from a normal rock show. This has been the intention at any rate!
None of us had any idea of how it would play out until the actual shows. I’ve had to spend weeks, in fact months, putting the song running order together as opposed to my normal method of simply calling the songs to my band according to my mood of the moment. I’ve had no idea of how this would look until seeing posts on social media, as all of my efforts have been focused on my performance out to the audience.
What’s it been like to musically (re)connect with the various friends and musicians onstage?
Very interesting and very emotionally rewarding. We’ve all travelled down very different paths musically and otherwise, but we all have these musical connection points that bring us together.
In the middle of the maelstrom, how does it speak to you of your musical career?
It’s more of a break from the conversation of my current musical career. My current career speaks more to this than vice versa. I’ve always believed strongly in The Surrealists’ and Scientists’ mission, and this project has only been an affirmation of that.
What are you up to after these shows?
Smoked Salmon is about to release a new album called Totally Sick with a single coming up called Fully Sick And Tired (laughs). It bears out the idea of my current musical conversation, speaking to the Surreal Science one—The Scientists wanting to be the sickness and addiction rather than the cure!
Surreal Science takes over Rosemount Hotel on Saturday, April 18, 2026. Tickets are on sale now from rosemounthotel.oztix.com.au
