01 THURMAN

Writer: Em Tobin

Photography: Maddy Strydom @strydomphotos

Above: 01 Thurman by Maddy Strydom

Stripped down, raw, reminiscent, 01 Thurman’s sound is an influential tell-all of grief, love, and the coming-of-age endlessly apparent to Australiana. A melody to the mundane, 01 Thurman carefully sculpts a timeline of lyricism in reference to authentic noise. The Brisbane group has developed a distinct sound across their consecutive annual three demo EPs. 

01 Thurman’s 2025 PSYOP EP became the soundtrack of a particularly slow, humid afternoon. As I drove into inner-city West End to speak to frontman Josh Barlett, I turned up the volume to a personal favourite track, AUDITION, and was confronted by an easy melancholy of summer sweat and shifting gears. 01 Thurman is Josh Barlett, Sarah Probets on bass, Ethan Paddison on guitar, and Johnny Cox on drums. 

Summer slinks like a stray dog at the back door of the season, and February blends with the shifting tides into the subtle evening. As I turn up from the hospital, the road rises with burnt tar, and the sky lingers in pastel blue hues. The clouds are little stringy things, strung up with the telephone wires, puppetering the closet the sun. Nothing cools off with the late afternoon; the streets are still so impossibly hot. 

Against the suburban tragedy of seasonal anguish, 01 Thurman’s music is the backing track. The group’s transcendence of lived experience and lyricism hallmarks the lives of distinct, inner-city existence. The Brisbane-based project ensures the listener grasps the shifting nature of the everyday fabric of navigating youth, relationships, and grief. 

I met Josh Barlett in the smoking section of a pub off Boundary Street, eager to talk 01 Thurman. 

Above: 01 Thurman

EM: Hey Josh, I loved watching you play live late last year at Goo Turns Two at Season Three. Have you got any upcoming shows you are excited for as we enter 2026?

JOSH: We’ve got a few shows coming up. We’ve run the circuit around Brisbane a decent amount now, last year we were hitting every show we could for exposure. We’ve done that enough, and now we can take a step back and be more selective with what we do, so that people don’t get sick of us. I love the community happening at all the local Brisbane venues. Seeing other people’s bands really brings the scene together, but I’d love to get out into the open and hit other venues.

EM: Ideally, where would you like 01 Thurman to tour this year?

JOSH: We’d love to tour down the East Coast and then head interstate. This year, we want to keep our shows interesting and further refine our sound to ensure that watching the band is special and gives people a reason to come to our shows. 

EM: 01’s music has a really stripped-down, heavy sound. When cooking up in the studio, how do you like to make your music?

JOSH: We work over Ableton, and love to play around with different things in there. I have a basic pedal board, and predominantly use distortions to make as much noise as possible. When I’m recording, I like to refine our sound and play around with different plug-ins. Everything I do is overdrive; I saturate the hell out of everything

just to strip it. The whole 01 Thurman project consists of redlining everything; it's a bit of a loop. 

EM: Off the most recent PSYOP EP, is there any particular song that you enjoy playing live, and why?

JOSH: There are bits and pieces, and the way live performances are fried into the 01 Thurman band is pretty different from the recorded versions, which is a lot of fun. I love working with the band. It’s rewarding to watch our tracks get refined as we get used to playing them to an audience. We can experiment onstage with our music more. I like to end our sets with ‘DUMMY’; we just go crazy on it. 

Above: 01 Thurman live

EM: I’ve seen you guys play ‘AUDITION’ as a final track quite a few times. Do you enjoy finishing sets with that song? 

JOSH: Yeah, sometimes we like to pull out ‘AUDITION’ as a slower song, so we can melt it down towards the end and fully strip back our sound. ‘AUDITION’ resonates with me as well. I try to write vaguely about life experiences, but when playing the song live, I like to keep it abstract, so that the feeling of the music is what resonates the most. 

EM: I love the lyricism in GARDEN, off your 2024 GRIEF ROCK EP. Can you talk me through the creative process and inspiration for writing that song?

JOSH: That whole EP came about after an experience with grief; it was some of the most personal songwriting I’ve tapped into. I think that was the most emotional lyricism, but it was the one that people resonated with the most, as opposed to SHIT HOT, where the writing was more vague. I came up with the songs and wrote the lyrics as an afterthought. 

EM: How did you find that process to be whilst creating from a personal space? 

JOSH: It was interesting to come across the music lyrics first. We had to drive the music from the meaning behind it. Seeing audiences enjoy ‘GARDEN’ ensured the track became more personal, and I found more people were able to connect with it. 

EM: Can you run me through the creative process of developing your lyricism and sound?

JOSH: I like to write interesting riffs, and believe I excel the most there, and in forming lyricism from pre-produced sounds. Being driven emotionally by sound and seeing how music can evoke a feeling in itself helps me to dig deep into that emotion. I don’t see myself as a writer, more as a musician, so it appears as an afterthought, but there are bits and pieces of lyricism in the 01 tracks that I really enjoy. 

Above: 01 Thurman

EM: As a Brisbane-based band, is there anything apparent in the city that has inspired your journey experimenting with sound? 

JOSH: I think everything that 01 Thurman does feeds off other bands in the local Brisbane scene. I’m heavily inspired by watching my mate’s sets, and going out and seeing friends’ bands play has driven me to get on their level. Everyone’s doing so many crazy projects, and it's interesting to watch and adapt. I’ve always been big on Special Features; they’re really good at tearing sound apart, and bands like Winona or Dirty Harry have been inspirational for me. I grew up listening to Good Boy. There’s so much good stuff happening here. Sweater Curse was huge for a minute. 

EM: Do you feel a sense of community when playing on Brisbane-based lineups?

JOSH: All the recent bands appearing in Brisbane feel like a new wave of the music community. Although I’m not inspired geographically, the sounds of the new outpour of local music have helped me be inspired by what people are figuring out here and reflecting on that. 

EM: Looking back on the previous three EPs, how would you reflect on 01’s maturation of sound and lyrics?

JOSH: We are definitely maturing as a band. We’re writing new stuff at the moment, and there’s definitely a shift in how that’s going. It’s been writing the songs, getting them done, and putting them out immediately. Our music is snapshots of each year as we’ve put stuff out. We’ve developed and reacted to our previous tracks. We did a lot of fuzzy stuff for ‘SHIT HOT’. The last one I wrote, ‘IDKY’, was really stripped out with the guitar tuning. It was a reaction to what came before it. All our tracks are demos, so it's an ongoing work in progress; it builds up and is informed by the progression of our music. 

EM: Does that resonate whilst playing live? 

JOSH: When playing live, we almost go deeper into our tracks and the chaos of performance. I feed off the other members of the band and love playing music with them, and create bigger sounds to go full blast. 

EM: Have you found that you have refined your on-stage chemistry and working with the band?

JOSH: I definitely see the recorded project of 01 Thurman as being a different entity from 01 Thurman the band. The energy that the band has feeds off my own, and I enjoy experiencing what each member brings.

EM: When watching 01 play, each member seems to have a distinct knowledge about how to support the band. How is it working with that energy live? 

JOSH: I’m super happy for the other members to take it and put their skin on it and make live performances a new thing. We are all improving and finding our place within the music. Some of our songs have completely different energy on-stage, and we’ve really found our footing with that as we progress. 

EM: What’s up next for 01 Thurman? Do you have any goals for playing shows, venues, or touring?

JOSH: We’re working on writing and producing at the moment, and I think after doing our trio of demo tapes, that chapter will close. I did all of the demos in my house, in my room, just tinkering. I think I’d love to consult others and see what producers can do with it. This time around, I’d like to go hands-off to see what other people can bring to the table and refine the sound. I want to write more and explore alternative sounds to put tracks together. I’d love to play more shows and tour interstate, but I need to step back and create a plan of attack. I’m excited to see how far we can get as a band this year. 

EM: Who would be your dream act to play alongside?

JOSH: I’m always looking for an excuse to get Good Boy to come back. Their show in 2021 at the Tivoli was one of the best sets I’ve seen; they’re full of energy. I’ve only seen them a handful of times. There are a lot of interesting people doing stuff, and I’ve been big on Djion, I think they’re exciting stuff. I’m interested in how they recontextualise sound and record music. I’d love the opportunity to redefine how we produce our own music. 

FIND 01 THURMAN HERE

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