Fugazi are an anomaly in the record industry. There is no dichotomy in their music. Business isn't business when it comes to the music; highly-seminal sounds that have been churned out through five records and a decade plus, the same four members for the entirety of that existence. Dischord recs, the mail-order distributor that refuses to bend towards market prices. Plain fucking honesty. When Fugazi promise they will return, they return. It's that simple. Does anyone else remember when the Smashing Pumpkins cancelled a string of shows in Sydney, and promised they'd be back as soon as possible? Courtside seats at Bulls/ Heat playoff games and major motion picture soundtracks soon obscure such promises (heroin'll do it, too). Fugazi take their promises seriously. And are back in Australia.

With the groundwork for record no.6 layed down, Fugazi have taken time out to return back to Australia after a string of shows were aborted late last year due to a serious illness that afflicted one of the barking frontmen, Ian MacKaye. The other barking frontman, Guy Picciotto, allays the desire to return through a reminiscence: "I remember as a kid being a huge fan of the Jam, and the only tour they cancelled was Washington, DC; and I just remember being so completely bummed." Never having cancelled more than one-off shows in the band's decade of touring, for the band it was a hard circumstance to take. "Psychologically, it was a really extreme situation" Picciotto details; "We felt really bad about the situation, we felt bad about not being able to complete the tour, letting down a bunch of people who wanted to see us. Especially because we don't get down there that often, especially playing places like Darwin, where we've never played before, who don't get a lot of concerts. That one was especially hard to cancel."

"We made it clear that as soon as it was possible, as soon as the doctor said Ian was healthy, that we'd be back. It was our first priority." And unlike so many others, they've been true to their word. And that sums up Fugazi perfectly. Not having to worry about release dates or record company strategy, the band was able to re-schedule as soon as the four members were able, not as soon as the A&Rs were able. "Our schedule has never worked in any way shape or form in relation to what would be smart. Usually we'll put a record out and not have tours scheduled, and tour we haven't got a record out. We've just always gone when we've felt like playing, or when stuff opens up. We tour all over the USA, we tour 17 countries in Europe, now we're starting to tour Latin America, and we tour all kind of countries in the Far East. It's a lot of ground to cover, and we're not crazy prolific in the studio, so when we release a record we usually end up touring for like two years straight, just going round playing all these different places where we've made contact."

Then Picciotto allays what is definitely Fugazi's most salient ideal: "As a band we've always felt a responsibility to play all-ages so everyone can come and see us, and also to play as many different venues and cities as possible." This is not a strain of thought that was immediately embraced down here, either. "It's an amazing thing that all-ages has caught on as well is it has in Australia, because when we first tried to come out there wasn't a promoter that wanted to touch us, they were like: "you're crazy, there's no such thing here". We were really, really discouraged, and we really had to hold out until we found promoters that wanted to work with us. And now, the last couple of times we've been back, it seems like the all-ages thing is really established now in Australia, which is just a real positive."

Fugazi's apparent lack of scheduling is never more apparent than in their touring situation. Their last record Red Medicine is on two years old. This is where the live aesthetic of Fugazi derails the normal ideal that tour= promotional tool. "The way we work live is: we know every song that we've ever written. On stage we don't have a set-list, we just basically play the songs, work off each other, build up a feel as we go. It's always really interesting, because you're never really sure which way the show -- the song -- is going to go. And when you come and see us on more than one night you're guaranteed to get a completely different show."

"It saves us a lot of shit. Having played for as long as we have it just keeps us really fresh. There's just a lot of freedom, we tend to segue into other songs. And it is kind of a way of testing each other: someone'll go into a song and itís almost like they're provoking you. There's always this sense of a tightrope -- keeping us on our toes, and keeping us focused."

Some of the live set to be profiled previews action from the forthcoming new record, which is a role reversal, as previous Fugazi songs have been toured before recording. "We're almost finished, we've recorded like 13, 14, 17 songs. We weren't able to finish the mixing before we start this tour, but we're going to finish it in July." Picciotto offers: "I think it'll be interesting, because we've never had such a long period of time to work on a record... The only production concept on the album was time, spending more time on it."

The album was once again an insular effort, and the muse behind the record is one that draws a bead from the live direction: intuitive and improvised. "The studio's a laboratory, an incredibly sterile space. When we play live it's really like our environment, the stage's where we belong. And we've always felt like when we get in the studio there is this real kind of antiseptic that we have to work around."

"Want we wanted to do was make a record that sounded looser, much more open and spontaneous. I think our records in the past have been... I don't know if self-conscious is the term, but the songs were already really taught, really sculptured, we'd already played them a lot live. A lot of these newer songs were ones that we hadn't played live before. Some of the songs definitely originated from us just fooling around more. But you know what? I think when people hear the record they'll make up their own minds. I think for us in the band, we spend so much time talking about the record, but we're so close to it it's almost like impossible to see."

Fugazi have also spent their time spreading their talents: MacKaye stepping up production duties on a slew of records, notable of recent the Warmers; Picciotto recording the Make Up's first record, the classic Destination: Love; Live! At Cold Rice., and Brendan Canty playing guitar on the last two Lois records. They are also looking to represent in a different medium: film.

"We've been working off and on for the past several years with an independent filmmaker from New York, Jem Cohen. He's got all this footage of the band. And we're looking to put together almost like a film documentary, something that we've been working on as band. There's some stuff of us in the studio, but it's mostly live footage, though a lot of it is on super 8 and it doesn't have any sound. We're writing soundtrack material that's going to go on top of a lot of the silence. If we could get that thing finished it'd be real cool, because we've been working on it for such a long time."

Picciotto states the band are "looking to get a film print done, that can be shown at festivals, then release it as a video." This ambitious project never had a starting point, he explains, MacKaye and Cohen were merely old friends, and after some early collaborations, it just kinda happened. "Every time we played either here (in DC) or in New York where he lives, he'd kind of tag along and film, in all kinds of different mediums, 35 millimetre or 8 mil. So we've just amassed these huge libraries of material. He has this really unique style which he shoots mostly in super 8, so I think it could be a really beautiful film. The bitch of it is editing the thing, the mountains and mountains of footage. And it really drives us crazy, because nothing is really more fucked up than having to look at yourselves over and over and over again." (MAY 97)

DISCHORD RECORDS (3819 Beecher St NW, Washington, DC, 20007)