CHOCOLATE STRINGS

FORMING IN May 2006 for a charity benefit for West End Community House, Chocolate Strings started life as a spur-of-the-moment acoustic trio. They've since expanded to a quintet, specialising in tropical slices of reggae, dub,  and soul, with a dash of funk.

"Coming from a Polynesian background, I grew up listening to a lot of chilled-out reggae as a kid," vocalist/guitarist Ofa Fanaika opens. "I bring a lot of that kind of sound to the grooves we work on in our music. Then, growing up in San Fransisco and moving to Brisbane allowed me to gain other influences such as soul, jazz, and hip-hop, so our music is a wide blend of genres."

While Choclate Strings' chilled-out tunes radiate with the laid-back vibe of a summer's day, they also actively use their music to support social and environmental awareness.

"I wouldn't say that we really have much of a social or environmental theme to our music," guitarist/vocalist Alex Skinner asserts, "but that's where we are as people. We'll use the music for this purpose, like helping to organise and play at tree-planting festivals and charity gigs like the Black'n'White Unite fundraiser for West End Community House that we formed the band for.

"But lyrically you couldn't really say our music is socially conscious; some of the songs are barely conscious in general."

On top of their own enticing tunes, Chocolate Strings have been known to throw some unexpected covers into their live sets, including Nirvana's 'Heart Shaped Box'.

"I used to play a lot of pub-type gigs playing covers," Fanaika explains. "The covers I'd play were never exactly the way the artist intentionally wrote them. I'd always try and add a spin to it. We normally play our originals but we have a couple of covers that we really enjoy playing so if the mood's right we'll throw them in."