Fresh post-punk treat on the horizon | The Areola Treat

No resting on laurels here

We're hard workers for the most part, and after releasing [2011 full length album] Pleasure Machines, we didn't really take a break and started work on new material right away. We'd started playing with new stuff before the launch itself. Despite having another addition to the Areola family, (drummer Chris Busuttil's baby boy), we've managed pretty well. We're not really ones to waste too much time before hashing out new ideas and experimenting.

Still no adequate spaces for musicians to perform in

It's quite sad that this issue keeps cropping up from time to time. I've been in about a hundred bands before joining The Areolas and it's always been a losing battle to find places we feel we fit in and things have not changed since. The island has got hundreds of clubs and stages for bands to perform in - only they aren't to our liking and style. It's the clubs and club owners I have beef with. It's tremendously hard to find clubs that play our music and the playlists are extremely predictable or we've all heard that before, so it's kind of disheartening yeah. It's like there was a brief moment where it seemed like Malta was progressing in terms of its underground scene, but now we're back to where we started and the island's only punk club [V-Gen in Paceville] has closed its doors for good. It would be great if there were more venues that played surf rock and rockabilly, shoegaze, hardcore punk and 1970s garage, black metal and psychedelia, where you could go in and the DJs blasting your kind of music -  we'd love that! Perhaps we'd fit in somewhere! Alternative music and punk clubs here don't last long. Given another 10 years, there might be a choice of punk clubs available. Or perhaps not.

The help of the Malta Arts Fund

The funding is honestly is blessing. Artists crave that much-needed support anywhere in the world but we count ourselves really lucky to have got it, because they won't give it to just anyone. The quality will always be true Areola Treat quality so funding doesn't quite alter that in any way. And it's not a guarantee that more people will come to your shows after the funding. What I believe it has done is kept us content artists with more motivation to fulfil the dream of releasing those B-sides we've wanted to release for a while!

Extending The Areola Reach

We have done small European tours, so who knows what lies ahead? It'd be great to play Germany and Finland - where we have some connections - and France. Belgium is a place we've in played several times and we wouldn't mind playing there again at all.

For the most part of it, the internet, music blogs and marketing your music online is the only way to expand your business now, and everyone has heard of You Tube and iTunes and social networking and giving out free music. There's no room for bands that want to be stingy with their music. You're not going to make a cent that way and you won't earn any respect.

There's no doubt that touring helps, but if a band's online marketing strategy is secured and if we keeping working on our own PR, that's the biggest advantage any band will have at making any sort of luck worldwide.

We work at for it to keep growing somewhat exponentially. It takes time because there's competition but if you do it right, you can monitor your progress and the rewards can be greater than just selling your records to your friends and the 200-odd people at your shows.

With the online marketing strategies we employed in 2012 alone, people in Japan, Korea, the US and Canada, Italy, Russia, Sweden and France now have access to our music and are writing back and spreading the word which in turn will prove profitable. The key thing is not to think short-term. More people now enjoy our releases than we would have otherwise done without the legwork. And it's those figures that will make all the difference in the long run.

Thanks to the internet, you have the satisfaction of saying you're doing it without help of power-hungry labels that feed off impoverished artists.

Getting down and dirty... in the store room

Director Daniel Cassar and Lisa Micallef Grimaud take us behind the scenes of Areola Treat's latest - and very first - video, a promo for their new single Radio On.

Daniel Cassar

I had been thinking about an Areola Treat video way before they asked me to do it, in fact I filmed them out of my own initiative at some of their gigs just because they give a great live performance and they're an immensely fun subject to film as a band. I was a little frustrated at the fact that not enough live footage exists as they seem to have not focused too much about that aspect - so when they asked me to do it, seven years after they formed.

I immediately thought they must have a video of them performing, in the form of a live set up, to capture their show as close as I can. We set up at a store room the band had access to at which we would not be stopped due to the noise we would generate, and filmed - one camera - and countless takes.

They are great musicians and great live performers so in the end they made the video - I resisted temptation to add anything to it because I wanted the rawness to come out.

The only direction I gave them was, number the takes, cue the song and dress like a band, nothing fancy. All I did was capture it.

Lisa Micallef Grimaud

It's funny how this is our first ever video - it just somehow crossed our minds too late. Everyone had been saying it was a real pity and all that we never had a video to our name. Now I see what they meant. People are extremely visual creatures and that was a crucial part of our PR that was missing. We'll try not to let another seven years go by before releasing a second one!

Daniel Cassar was uber-professional and really easy to work with. The shooting was always going to be the best part though. I guess the image sells what the music is: fun, furious, dingy and above all, dirty!

'A collection on everything new and old'

Lisa Micallef Grimaud teases us with what we can expect from Radio On - launched on July 12 at Ir-Razzett L-Ahmar, Mosta.

The best is yet to come

Just because we're releasing an EP now doesn't mean there's no full length album on the horizon - we're just getting warmed up!

The Areola Treat: Director's Cut

Radio On is a collection of some of the previously unreleased material we'd recorded a while ago in the studio and in the garage that never made the cut. Pleasure Machines was very experimental in comparison, and our forthcoming album won't be quite as upbeat throughout. I'd been counting the days until the release of Halfway Nurse, and now it's out! Our previous bassist Matthew Cuschieri had recorded on Speed Bump and Halfway Nurse too. The things we'd added to the 'old but not forgotten' collection was our noise intro, [the Edgar Allan Poe inspired] Ligeia, our single Radio On, Last Dance With Cabiria, Waste Land and Mighty Grand Illusion. In retrospect, it's a collection of everything new and old.

Track listing

1.    Ligeia

2.    Radio On

3.    Halfway Nurse

4.    Speed Bump

5.    Waste Land

6.    Last Dance with Cabiria

7.    Mighty Grand Illusion

Doors open at 21:00. Entrance is at €8 without EP, €10 with EP included. Supported by the Malta Arts Fund. To stay updated on The Areola Treat, log on to their official Facebook page.