Chromatic cowpoke Cong Josie chats his raw and raucous debut album, Cong!

Naarm/Melbourne based artist Nic Oogjes is a man of many talents. Most well known as the bandleader of heat beat band NO ZU, his latest identity, Cong Josie, wipes that slate clean and covers it in neon and leon, manifesting the deepest depths of Oogjes psyche. His debut album Cong! traverses a hyperreal world of romance and contorted machismo – sleazy, smoky and viscerally pulsing.

Genre bending, tongue in cheek, delightfully camp and wonderfully charismatic, the record features noir sonic narratives bump against Cong/Nic’s personal confessions. It’s a wild synth-pop pastiche that mutates from grimy post-punk club sounds to electrified 50’s rock ‘n’ roll ballads.

RTRFM’s music director Matt Perrett jumped on the phone to chat to Nic about his endless sources inspirations, when Cong (both the persona and the album) came to be and, of course, cowboy hats.

Check out the interview below along with the music video to Cong Josie’s ‘Leather Whip.’