I Can't Believe It's Not Rock

I Can't Believe It's Not Rock
EP by I Can't Believe It's Not Rock
Released	2000
Genre	Alternative rock, electronica, pop
Length	23:47
Label	Eleven: A Music Company
Producer	Paul Mac, Daniel Johns

I Can't Believe It's Not Rock is the self-titled debut EP of an experimental project consisting of Daniel Johns and Paul Mac.

It contains five songs that were written and recorded at home by Daniel Johns and Paul Mac entirely for their own amusement. Only when the tracks had been completed did the two musicians begin to contemplate sharing their work with other people.

The two first met back in 1997 when Paul remixed Silverchair's "Freak". Later that year he appeared onstage with the band in Sydney as guest DJ and in 1998 he contributed keys to their album "Neon Ballroom".

When Silverchair announced a break, the pair recorded a song called "Rain" in Paul's home studio. Daniel had already been working on the piece but Paul contributed a lot of additional dynamics to it.

Some months later Paul travelled to Newcastle to help Daniel install his eight track home studio. This time the pair created two songs together from scratch. The lilting "Home" was recorded completely live in one take with the multifaceted "Staging A Traffic Jam" evolving over a couple of days. As with "Rain", these tracks illustrate the disparate backgrounds of their creators. At the time these recordings were little more than an enjoyable experiment but in the weeks that followed the pair both realised that they were really happy with the fruits of their casual labour. They felt that they had hit upon a sound which was creatively different from anything either of them had achieved before.

Consequently they got together one more time and recorded the mellow instrumental "3" and the hard edged "Take Her Out" - creating two even more extreme bookends for the evolving project.

It was only then that Daniel and Paul had their first conversations about possibly releasing these five songs, somehow, some way, somewhere.

"When we were making this music we never thought anybody else would ever hear it. It was just stuff we were doing for ourselves", explains Paul Mac. "Once it was done though we liked how it had turned out so we started talking about releasing it even though, as the name suggests, it probably isn't what people expect from either of us."

When both Johns and Mac signed to their manager's new record label, Eleven: a music company, the idea was hatched to release "I Can't Believe It's Not Rock" online. The five songs were streamed for free from the website icantbelieveitsnotrock.com and were also available to purchase for download. A very limited number of CDs are available through the Silverchair fan club, the LAS.

The pair taped a guest appearance for the ABC TV program "Love Is A Four Letter Word" which aired in 2001.

As for future recordings, Daniel Johns was quoted:

"We never actually intended to make this EP", explains Daniel Johns, "at the moment we don't intend to make another one either so maybe that means it's possible."

Both are members of another project, The Dissociatives.

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Track listing

All songs written by Daniel Johns and Paul Mac.

1. "Rain" – 4:47
2. "Take Her Out" – 3:02
3. "3" – 2:39
4. "Staging a Traffic Jam" – 6:32
5. "Home" – 6:48

See also

• I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!
• I Can't Believe It's Not Hall and Oates!
• I Can't Believe It's Yogurt!

References