On The Record: Luca Brasi
on August 6th, 2011The debut full length from Tasmania’s Luca Brasi is drawing closer with pre-orders of the CD via Broken Bones Music and a limited 12″ LP via Poison City Records set to begin any day now, we grabbed the band to tell us a little bit about this debut album ‘Extended Family‘ via our On The Record questions. Click below to expand this post and take a read of what they had to say, and keep your eyes on the Broken Bones & Poison City sites for pre-order info.
Tell us about the title…
The title “Extended Family” is something that Tyler came up with. A lot of the record is about having good friends by your side to get you through anything and to make the most of your days, even if you are spending them at work at Launceston, instead of the beach in Scamander. The title also refers to everyone that has helped out the band by coming to shows and being nice to us. This band and this record belongs to all of those people, not just the four of us, because if it wasn’t for our ‘extended family’ we would never of gotten this far with our music.
Tell us about the artwork…
The motif for the artwork is supposed to be like a family photo album/scrap book. The four of us and our friend Jesse Hunniford bounced ideas back and forth and this what we eventually settled on. The lyric booklet is filled with photos of all of our friends from shows and partys. Saxon and Jesse made each page by hand, arranging the photos, paper and other bits and pieces. Then Jesse took a photo of each page and put the lyrics in on the computer. We really wanted the artwork to be special and have all of our friends have their faces in it. It came out great!
Tell us about the studio and why you chose to record there…
We recorded it in Hobart. We did drums and guitars at Red Planet Studios, vocals at Pandemonium Studios and we did bass, backing vocals and a few extra guitar parts at Lincoln Le Fevre’s house. Our producers made the call as to where we record so it wasn’t up to us haha.
Tell us about the producer / engineer and why you chose to record with them…
Our record was produced by both Lincoln Le Fevre and Nic White. We chose to record with them because they are both really good friends of ours and they make great records. Nic plays in The Scandal and Linc produced their album ‘Never Hold To Shore’ which has the best bass, drum and guitar sounds I’ve ever heard on an Australian punk record. Nic also did ‘This Road Takes Me Home’ by our friends Your Demise which also kicks ass! Recording with them was heaps of fun and they are really enthusiastic and have great ideas. We never even considered recording with anyone else, we had to have those guys do it.
How long did it take to record?
We started halfway through December and recorded the last note the first weekend in June. We did the drums and guitars over 4 nights in December whilst Tyler was on holiday overseas. Everything else was just bashed out on random spare weekends we had.
Tell us a little about the recording process the band used..
We did the drums and guitars live with no click track. That worked really well for us. We weren’t going for that overly polished and perfect sound. We like how it has that kind of looseness to it. Once Tyler was back from his holiday he did his bass parts in one day if I remember correctly. Then we did vocals over a few different weekends. The backing vocals were done in one weekend, it was Tyler, Dobbo, Nic, our friend Pat and I all singing together and eating tim tams. It was great fun.
Any guests involved? if so, who.. and what did they do?
Nic did some backing vocals and Linc played some tambourine on one song. Our friend Pat Marshall sang backing vocals on every song. Pat is an old friend who grew up where we all did and went to the same school and stuff. Pat and Tyler were in a band together for years through out highschool and college so it was really cool to have him help us out. He can sing like a mother fucker, he nailed it. Our friend Isaac Bowen sang a line on ‘Theme Song From HQ’, that was awesome. And Merinda Sainty played strings on ‘Splitting Trees’.
Anything particular stuff outside your usual live gear used in the process?
Heaps of different guitar amps, we had about 9 heads to choose from. I think we used 7 of them through out. I use a Marshall JCM2000 live and Dobbo uses a JCM800. We mainly used a JCM800 and 900 as well as an Orange amp of somekind and I can not remember the rest of them, there were quite a few. As well as some really cool distortion pedals, a ‘super hard on’ which sounded great and one called a ‘hotcake’ which was cool. But my favourite was the ‘box of rock’ by vzex, it’s a marshall style distortion pedal with a boost chanel, it’s rich and chimey but still has plenty of balls to it. I liked it so much I went out bought one straight away. Lincoln also lent us some of his guitars, a Telecaster, and two different Les Pauls. It was guitar heaven.
Any memorable studio moments?
The only time that it was shit making our record was when it was the last night of tracking drums, we were listening to the first song we tracked on the first night and we realised it was played way too fast and that we had to start again. This was at about 12:30pm. We were really tired, but we got it done. The funniest part was when we were tracking backing vocals and Pat was trying his best to convince us to let him do some fart noises on a few songs. We would be listening to the tracks and each time there was a 2 beat pause or something, Pat would make a fart sound. It was ridiculous and hilarious.
Any additional tracks recorded that didn’t make the cut but may see the light of day sometime?
None. We recorded the songs in the order that they are on the finished album. We had our 10 best songs and we just went in bashed it out.
Now that it’s ready for release, what can fans expect of the album?
10 punk rock songs that we poured our hearts and souls into. Tyler really stepped up his singing, it’s a little sweeter than a few people will be expecting. And Dobbo and I worked really hard to make a really good, interesting and intricate guitar album.
How would you compare the album to previous releases?
Our only other release is our “Sleeps With The Fishes” demo. Let’s just say that on our new record you can actually hear the bass guitar, the guitars are bigger and brighter and the sound of the cymbals doesn’t make you want to die.
Any stand out track/s to you personally?
‘Southbound’ is one I really like, it’s a fast song with some guitar parts that are fun to play. I like the changes in time in ‘Guillotines In Arbour Park’. The song I’m most proud of is ‘Bright Eyed’. I spent ages writing the music to it. The guitarmony at the end was a nightmare to learn.
Anything else of note you want to say about the album?
We would all like to thank in advance everyone who takes the time to give it a listen. It means the world to us, love Luca x
