The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest surviving long-form poem in human historical past. The titular character of the Mesopotamian Story – carved onto stone tablets and predating the Homeric epics by some 1500 years – is a quintessential hero. Born to a mortal father and a goddess mom, Gilgamesh is bodily distinctive in each approach. When topped ruler of the land, his exploits run the gamut from endurance to conquest. The Epic of Gilgamesh will lead us to the story of Australian Duo Gypsy & the Cat.

First, nevertheless, let’s proceed with the traditional poem. Gilgamesh’s hubris emerges in his seek for immortality. The hero pays a go to to Uta-napishtim, a king who cheated an apocalyptic flood, in pursuit of a solution to the query that has evaded humankind for millennia: How does one keep away from the inevitable? He’s put by means of a collection of exams, none of which yield the coveted reward of everlasting life. Gilgamesh concludes that point is fleeting, and the empty promise of unattainable glory should not seduce him. “Nobody in any respect sees Dying,” explains Uta-napishtim, “Then impulsively, nothing is there.”

Gypsy & the Cat named their debut album after this complicated saga. Xavier Bacash and Lionel Towers wrote and produced Gilgamesh of their early 20s. It’s a up to date meditation on the identical themes, invoking the epic conventions of want, tears, and wandering within the album’s music titles.

Bacash opens the title monitor with the lyric, “I’m looking for an limitless second”, the everyman tone of his voice reaches out into time and area, talking by means of the ages. Co-opting the traditional world’s most important literary piece as a logo for the existential anxieties of maturity was an audacious transfer however one which briefly gave two unassuming Melbourne boys the keys to the dominion.

Launched in 2010, Gilgamesh was borne right into a golden age for southern hemisphere pop. A cavalcade of acts from Australia and New Zealand, together with Lower Copy, Empire of the Solar, and Ladyhawke, impacted radio playlists Down Beneath and worldwide. Unified by a standard method, their synth stylings revive sonic components from the Eighties and mix them with the credible indie rock of the early 2000s.

This strikingly nostalgic sound – a brand new iteration of dream-pop – spoke to a era in flux. Millennials swapped cumbersome stereo techniques for moveable units like iPods and began favouring digital downloads over bodily media. In a quickly altering cultural panorama, nostalgic consolation was discovered within the imagined stability of the previous.

Gilgamesh is an unashamedly maximalist document. Punchy, stay drums are augmented by heat pads, and guitar riffs burst into dazzling technicolour. Some reprieve comes with the acoustic nearer, “A Excellent 2”, however the ten songs that precede it are an intoxicating wall of sound, showcasing the multitude of various influences behind Gypsy & the Cat.

Lionel Towers, the quieter counterpart to articulate frontman Xavier Bacash, began coaching as a live performance pianist at seven. The pair met as teenage DJs in a Melbourne nightclub and shortly realised they spoke a mutual musical language.

Bacash has no hesitation in detailing the artists that knowledgeable Gypsy & the Cat’s debut. “Individuals can say we gave the impression of Empire of the Solar or Lower Copy, however we actually didn’t. Gilgamesh was Tears for Fears, Toto – we had been that area, which I don’t suppose others had been. I hear a Go-Betweens vibe after I take heed to Empire, extra of the jangly Australiana.”

“We had been ultra-pop in that we had been referencing actually massive songs, like ‘Africa’ and ‘Everyone Desires to Rule the World’,” he continues. “We most likely didn’t have as a lot of that various edge that perhaps these different bands had.”

These reference factors are significantly evident on “Time to Wander”, the four-minute bildungsroman that initiates the journey of Gilgamesh. Impressed by Bacash’s pilgrimage to Rajasthan, galloping drums mirror the insistent footsteps of the music’s hero as he units out to seek for enlightenment. The chorus, “Now I’m gone, by no means right here, once you look, nothing close to”, remembers Uta-napishti’s warning to Gilgamesh, but in addition speaks to the transience of youth – a momentary glimpse of limitless prospects, tempered by the data it can’t final. It’s no shock “Time to Wander” caught the eye of document label expertise scouts globally, and Gypsy & the Cat had been signed to Sony RCA in the UK.

With their self-produced album full, the rollout ought to have been clean crusing. In reality, Bacash and Towers encountered the hidden machinations of the music trade earlier than a single be aware of music was launched. In an open letter for a Kickstarter marketing campaign to belatedly problem Gilgamesh on vinyl, they wrote:

“The top of the label on the time left to start out a administration company. The corporate was now with no label boss to log off on releases, advertising and marketing budgets, art work, video clips, tour help for six months. This left Gypsy & the Cat to turn into a stillborn musical venture within the Sony system. It’s widespread for this to occur at labels… which explains why many nice younger bands are misplaced to the trade.”

The A&R crew in the UK did what they may, producing an oddly telling, low-budget video for “Time to Wander” with out Bacash and Towers, choosing a flash mob of company fits carrying silver bins on their heads as a substitute. “There was a younger director that got here in,” Towers remembers. “We didn’t have loads of say, however they pitched the thought, then they went off and filmed it.”

Though the idea accommodates the faintest suggestion of wry, English humour (the headgear was in the identical universe because the styling on a Pet Store Boys tour the identical 12 months), not utilizing the band members themselves obscured their picture and impacted the marketability of a brand-new act.

“It was irritating,” Bacash sighs. “We had no actual idea of the aesthetic once we made Gilgamesh. We acquired Leif Podhajsky to do the art work, and he’d carried out Tame Impala on the time and some others, in order that made sense, however by way of how we needed to current ourselves in movies, we weren’t allowed to as a result of we had been left in hibernation. When you consider the primary document, there’s no visible illustration of Gypsy & the Cat in any respect.” Promotional images of the duo had been taken by their associates, not skilled photographers, and media retailers lifted them from the band’s MySpace profile.

But, the music discovered its viewers. Gilgamesh was launched in Australia and authorized gold, named considered one of Triple J‘s Hottest 100 Australian Albums of All Time. “Time to Wander” snuck into the High 10 of Germany’s radio charts, and the follow-up, “Jona Vark”, peaked at #6.

“Jona Vark” traded on the identical confluence of outdated and new, its phonetic title playfully reanimating Joan of Arc as a contemporary lady determined for steerage. Like Gilgamesh earlier than her, Jona “appears to the celebs and asks for recommendation on the place to go”, travelling from town to “a spot amongst the bushes”. The guitar strains summon Tango within the Night time-era Fleetwood Mac, the singalong melody taken straight from the Christine McVie college of earnest, uncynical songwriting.

In deference to the album’s surprising success, a pretty music video for “Jona Vark” materialised in 2011. The idea seemingly acknowledged their native and European markets, with pictures of Australian bushland at sundown digitally remodeling into the Aurora Borealis by evening. That very same 12 months, Gypsy & the Cat supported Kylie Minogue on a nationwide tour, and Gilgamesh was nominated for each Breakthrough Artist and Greatest Pop Launch on the annual Australian Report Trade Affiliation Awards. The preliminary tensions of the album’s launch had been forgotten for a second.

With a rising popularity as a robust stay act, Gypsy & the Cat had been invited to play Coachella, the small, bohemian Californian music competition that advanced right into a defining cultural occasion. Populated by main artists, rising abilities and influential scenesters, Coachella was meant to launch Gypsy & the Cat in America. Bacash and Towers readily accepted the supply and had been listed as a part of the 2011 line-up till Sony RCA knowledgeable them there was no technique to fund the journey. Inner document firm politics destroyed a vital alternative for the duo, who name it “probably the most heartbreaking second of our musical careers”.

The lyrics to “The Piper’s Track“, one other towering entry within the epic Gilgamesh music canon, would possibly as effectively have been written about this second. The primary verse’s jubilant description of “singing songs of victory” is threatened by gathering storm clouds within the second, when “sooner or later the thunder struck” foreshadowing “a change, good to dangerous”.

Sony RCA had a window of six months to place Gilgamesh out in the UK. The window closed, and Gypsy & the Cat relinquished their deal. On the similar time, they had been nonetheless booked for gigs in Germany and Australian festivals, together with Massive Day Out. “We labored our asses off making an attempt to offer [Gilgamesh] life, like respiration oxygen into it, as a result of it was minimize off at each angle,” says Bacash. “We simply needed to give that document the respect it deserved as a result of there have been good tracks on it. It felt proper to work on them stay.”

After honouring these commitments, Bacash retreated to his father’s farm exterior of Melbourne to begin work on a sophomore album. Burned by the expertise with Gilgamesh, he and Towers determined to problem it independently on their label, Alsatian Music. This added one other layer of complexity to the lore of The Troublesome Second Album, because the pair had been now in command of each side of the discharge.

The Late Blue arrived in Australia nearly precisely two years after their debut. The shimmering pop cues of the Eighties had been changed by Sixties psychedelia, with better emphasis on stay instrumentation and strange music constructions. Bacash’s vocals turned half of a bigger soundscape, dreamily drifting out and in of the manufacturing, as on the languid “Soul Kiss”, or disappearing altogether, as on the instrumental “Valleys of Kashmir”.

Blended by American engineer Dave Fridmann, who introduced a sonic sophistication to 2 key album tracks, “Human Want” and “Sight of a Tear”, on Gilgamesh, The Late Blue was an about-face. Bacash studied Fridmann’s work intently, particularly his contribution to American rock band MGMT’s sophomore, Congratulations, which he cites as considered one of his favorite albums.

“On the time, we had been fairly influenced by the truth that they’d gone off and carried out one thing within the extra art-rock area,” says Bacash. “I used to be concerned about going that approach, and I don’t know if that was wholesome for the fanbase.” A nodding Towers agrees. “There have been some issues that tied it [to Gilgamesh], however it was sonically completely different. It positively took some followers away.”

The brand new course was previewed on the primary single, “Sorry”. The intelligent, sample-based manufacturing depends on a collection of drum machine loops, making a surreal melange of sounds and textures nearer to the type of the British trip-hop outfit Gorillaz. Gypsy & the Cat’s woozy kiss-off to a relationship gone bitter is matched by an excellent stranger video. Decorously sipping on cocktails and studying from a hardback e-book, Bacash and Towers are passive observers of a celebration that rages in sluggish movement; one visitor anoints the room by ceremoniously flinging slices of bread within the air, one other marches a burning teddy bear previous a window on a stake. It’s the equal of Ari Aster (director of Hereditary and Midsommar) doing an internship at MTV.

While Bacash admits The Late Blue was a threat (“perhaps a number of the tracks wandered off too bizarre”), he maintains the second single, “Bloom”, embodied a artistic excessive level for Gypsy & the Cat. Lyrically, “Bloom” presents change as a vital ceremony of passage, taking the buoyant optimism of “Time to Wander” and giving it an indie-pop makeover, with rubbery bass and a stirring, earworm guitar riff instead of a refrain. Bacash and Towers lent the music to a promotional marketing campaign for Jack Daniel’s whiskey that included efficiency footage of Gypsy & the Cat, cementing “Bloom” as a significant a part of their stay set.

A six-track stopgap EP known as Hearts a Gun was despatched to digital platforms in 2015, a launch Towers believes “goes beneath the radar”. Initially envisioned as a bigger physique of labor, the duo reverted to a clear, synth-driven method, crafting songs impressed by their experiences in entrance of an viewers; on “Crimson Wine & Cigarettes”, Bacash borrowed the chord development from a New Order remix he steadily performed in DJ units, whereas “Fireplace” was a stay staple later reproduced in a studio setting. The EP additionally housed a collaboration with fellow Melbourne digital duo Shopper Liaison.

The distinctive “Evolution” stays Bacash’s most strident vocal efficiency thus far, pushing him to new heights within the refrain. “I’m the life that defies evolution!” he cries, an ironic retaliation to the criticism levelled at The Late Blue for transferring too distant from their established sound.

A full-length album, their third, adopted in 2016. Digital Islands represented a musical compromise between the shiny pop of Gilgamesh and the experimentation of The Late Blue, capturing the artistic expanse of Gypsy & the Cat’s sound. The lead single, “Inside Your Thoughts”, an irresistible slice of moody, acoustic-led funk, turned Bacash’s stacked falsetto harmonies right into a one-man tribute to the Bee Gees’ disco period.

A video filmed in Japan offered one other homage, with pictures of Bacash and Towers strutting down the streets because the Gibb brothers did in “Stayin’ Alive“. Wearing boiler fits and onerous hats, their look additionally evoked the industrial stylish of the Beastie Boys, without delay simpatico with their city environment and delightfully alien.

For a band that by no means felt significantly cool, the funding in a location video, with a transparent inventive perspective and a tapestry of clever intertextuality, confirmed exponential progress. “I’m so glad we did that,” beams Bacash. “I really feel like that was the step ahead aesthetically; that is who we’re. Lionel was studying Japanese on the time. It’s nonetheless a timestamp for what we had been concerned about, and it’s ageing effectively.”

Japan offered fertile floor for Bacash and Towers as songwriters. Their commentary of a well mannered society the place residents coexisted however stored to themselves impressed the album’s title and laid the foundations for his or her most bold monitor thus far, “Odyssey of the Streets“. The five-minute pop opera was, in accordance with Bacash, “a commentary on the variety of life and demographics, and wealth and disparity”.

Towers calls it “a flex”, noting the affect of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” within the music’s grandiose musicality and malleable time signature. “It was only a disgrace that the trade on the time didn’t get it,” Bacash provides. “We’ve acquired two guys right here doing classical music in a pop context – it went straight over folks’s heads.”

A sure heaviness hung over the album. The music video for “I Simply Wanna Be Any individual Else” prolonged the visible world of “Inside Your Thoughts”, following a lonely Japanese businessman carrying an outsized, hyperreal cat’s head as he fills in time on a late-night journey residence from work. He stops off at a driving vary and a comfort retailer however doesn’t work together with any residing soul.

When Bacash and Towers seem beside him at a karaoke bar, they, too, appear to be digital islands; their eyes by no means meet, every gazing off in numerous instructions, with physique language that means some fatigue. The one indicated a pause for Gypsy & the Cat.

“I instigated it,” Towers discloses gently. “I used to be turning 31, so I used to be like, I believe I’m too outdated for this. That was my feeling. I’ve spent eight years doing this, and the band wasn’t getting greater, it was getting smaller. I used to be toying with the thought of doing movie scoring, which I nonetheless wish to do. I wanted to do one thing else.” Towers gave Bacash his blessing to finish a farewell tour by himself to offer some closure for Gypsy & the Cat, however his bandmate was already eyeing solo initiatives as effectively.

“At first, I used to be stunned,” Bacash responds, “however I believe with the collection of challenges we’d had as much as that time, it made sense to me, too. What was unlucky was [Virtual Islands] coincided with an absence of curiosity from radio stations and retailers, and perhaps a little bit of wavering consideration from our fanbase. So, the thought of getting my venture and exploring completely different kinds of music was a superb factor for me. If the band didn’t try this, I wouldn’t have met my spouse; I wouldn’t have my son.”

Bacash’s solo alias, an ambient deep home venture known as Sonny Ism, led him to Scandinavia, the place he lived for half a decade. When he returned to Australia, he reconnected with Towers, and over a collection of casual studio jams, the 2 instinctively began making music once more.

Quietly, in September 2023, the duo launched “Mud”, their first new music in seven years. The hypnotic guitar loop, harking back to Fleetwood Mac’s “Goals”, immediately catapults the listener again to Gilgamesh, however there isn’t a hero’s quest on this new, extra weak narrative. “I see faces, faces flip to mud,” the pair sing with lived-in pathos, reconciling the passing of time and private losses. Fifteen years after the conception of Gypsy & the Cat, Gilgamesh faces his mortality head-on.

The video for “Mud”, directed by Towers, demonstrates the mutual belief of their collaborative course of. In a rented Melbourne movie studio, Towers singlehandedly used three cameras and a drone to reintroduce Gypsy & the Cat, now rebranded as GATC, to the world. “Lionel’s operating backwards and forwards, altering lenses and digicam positions, so it was actually a house video, delivered with high-end tools,” explains Bacash. This time, there isn’t a silver field or cat head in sight, only a tasteful overlay of a vinyl document in post-production. “We tried to go for the Air aesthetic, a bit extra subtle. For the subsequent one, I’ll put on a shawl.”

For now, the main focus is on celebrating their accomplishments. The group-funded launch of Gilgamesh on vinyl in 2024 reveals a groundswell of ardent followers, and in February 2025, the duo performed a hometown present to rejoice the album’s fifteenth anniversary. The expertise introduced with it some catharsis, particularly for Bacash.

“I’ve by no means appeared again at that document with any resentment,” says Towers, earlier than turning to his bandmate. “I reckon you had been perhaps a bit resentful years in the past of it.” Bacash concedes there was a interval when he noticed Gilgamesh as an albatross round his neck.

“In an inventive sense, my frustration was that it pigeonholed us and didn’t enable us to maintain pushing the vanguard out additional. I don’t like standing nonetheless and repeating issues I’ve already carried out. I like being curious after I get into the studio, that feeling of exploration. However I look again on every thing we’ve carried out with pleasure.”

“Once I moved to Denmark,” he continues, “loads of my Danish associates didn’t find out about Gypsy & the Cat, however in each Danish bodega – which is their equal of a pub – there’s a jukebox, and ‘Jona Vark’ is on each jukebox in Denmark. I used to be like, fuck, you recognize what? One thing I put time into made it right here, of all locations. And in order that modified my perspective.”

As with all epics, the deadly flaw of Gilgamesh’s character drives the strain of the 4,000-year-old poem. Nevertheless, one side that’s typically missed is the function of Enkidu, a pal long-established from clay who accompanied Gilgamesh by means of life. To fulfil his objective, he should take human kind and, inevitably, endure the indignity of mortal demise. In a narrative marked by ambition and reckoning, a 2019 article in The New Yorker surmises “their friendship is probably the most tender relationship within the poem”.

The identical is true of Bacash and Towers, whose nearly two-decade friendship is the nucleus of Gypsy & the Cat. “We like making music collectively. It’s actually that straightforward,” Bacash expresses unequivocally.

The way forward for the band is open-ended. Each Bacash and Towers are fathers now, and there may be speak of writing a Gypsy & the Cat album for teenagers. Their newest single, “Analogue Love”, is suitably unhurried, a percussive chillout session about disconnecting from “ghost-lines and web love”, up to date trappings that detract from residing within the second. The sonic reset signifies a dedication to writing the subsequent chapter of the band’s mythology at their very own tempo.

“Once we had no strain, we made our greatest work,” says Bacash. “So we’ve now stated to one another, we don’t care if a radio station picks up on this, somebody writes about it, or no matter. It’s about making a document we wish to make.”

“If we’re a heritage band now, cool,” he continues. “So long as we will do a tour and get collectively as associates and bash out some music.”