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ON THE RECORD :: |
 The name of our record is Edges / Seasickness How did the name come about? It’s just the titles of the two songs on the record. We wanted people to know that we think both songs are as good as each other so that’s why we didn’t choose just one. It will be released on May 18 2009 through Disconnect Records and Poison City Records. We recorded it at a nice little studio in the middle of downtown Hobart called Red Planet. Tell us a bit about the studio and why you chose to record there? It’s a rad little studio, it’s comfy and it’s got some amazing gear. We really wanted to use their old amps and cabinets and they’ve got every mic you could ever imagine needing. Plus it’s right next to all the best restaurants in town so it was a no-brainer to record there. We recorded it with Linc le Fevre. We worked with him on our 2006 record 'Never Hold To Shore' and he was awesome. Tell us a bit about the engineer / producer and why you chose to record with them? We like to think we know lots about recording so he’ll patiently hear us out whenever we have stupid ideas and he is always happy to give it a whirl which is why we like to work with him. He’s also really easy to communicate ideas to which means we spend less time explaining and more time trying interesting things and playing the songs. Tell us about the writing / pre-production process, how long did it take and how did you go about it? Writing these songs took ages, pretty much because we can never make up our minds with anything. Every time we come back to a song we write, re-write, tear apart and write each part over and over again. The good thing at the end of that is that we have something that everyone in the band is really excited about. Unfortunately that means it takes forever too. Because we like to record things too we made a demo version of the record before we went to the studio, just as dry run to make sure we knew where we were going with it. It’s good to do just to get all your major mistakes out of the way on the demo and hopefully you don’t make the same mistakes again on the record. It took us three evenings to record it, which might seem like a really long time for 2 songs but we spent a lot of time getting things sounding right before we started tracking. Tell us a bit about the recording process the band used? For the first time in ages we decided to track everything live together playing at the same time. The songs we wrote for the record were all really loose with tempos and based around small and gradual changes in intensity and speed so we thought the best way to do it was to not map it out and to just play the songs until we got something that felt right. I think it worked pretty well. The record basically sounds like us playing live together in a nice sounding room. Gear wise, was there anything outside your usual live equipment used? For recording in the past we’ve borrowed piles of amps and guitars and basses and drums but this time around we went with our own gear. The only stuff we used that we don’t use live was the ‘70s Marshall JMP amp in the studio and a Super-Hard-On pedal for guitar. Liam liked them both so much that he bought one of each and now it is what we use live! If you want to get nerdy we used vintage Marshalls, modern Maton, modern Ampeg, vintage Ibanez & Mapex with a variety of cymbals, through assorted preamps including some out of an old Studer tape machine. Any memorable moments during the process that stood out? Not really, we’re pretty boring; we’re really nerds at heart. Other bands might be doing bong hits in their cars while the engineer sets up microphones but we’re in there picking the mics we want and helping put them up so we can spend more time auditioning preamps. I wish we were more rock ’n’ roll. Who took care of the artwork and why you chose to use them? We wanted to concentrate on the music for this release so we asked the photographer / designer team of Sean Fennessy and Jessica Lillico to do our artwork. On the back cover we’re playing pirates in a wading pool in my backyard and Jess loved that photo so she took the idea of the cardboard pirate ship and ran with that. In the end she made the band name out of cardboard. I think she’s really into creating type so that’s the front cover. They did a brief interview with us for their Tasmanian arts and culture magazine Paperpeople and that whole thing looked awesome so that’s why we asked them to get involved and they’re super fun so that’s a bonus. Now that it's ready for release, what can we expect from the final package? Well it’s a limited edition vinyl EP and the artwork is really cool so it’s going to look great. We’re really proud of the way it sounds as well. The mastering was done by Chad Clark who has done Fugazi and Jawbox releases and he’s got it sounding really organic so I think you can expect to hear a band playing tight and playing really hard but it sounds real without any of that super compressed lifelessness which is prevalent in a lot of records today. The songs are rhythmic and relentless but there are only two tracks so it’s still got the same old Scandal ‘get in. play hard, fuck off’ thing happening. Do you have a favourite track on the EP? We worked really hard on the lyrics to the song 'Seasickness', it’s basically a story told in parallel metaphors and it references a song I love by the Sydney band Lungs. I guess I’m pretty proud of that lyrically. I’m also really excited every time we get to play 'Edges', because I really like the riffs from that song so I’m going to have to say no clear winner there. How would you compare the EP to your previous recordings? This EP sounds much more like we sound live, it’s got that live intensity and it sounds more natural. The songs are a little slower this time around too and that’s good for a change. Playing at 220bpm is fun but we wanted to have these songs be a bit more restrained, grinding and intense. Hopefully that comes across as you listen.
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