Interview: Architecture In Helsinki
I wanted to start by asking you about the music video you’ve made for [lead single] Contact High. I’m really into what [filmmakers] Krozm are doing down in Melbourne. What was it like working with those guys?
They’re great! They’ve made a couple of videos for us, and this one was equally exciting. We worked with them closely on the concept for the video and they filmed it in Paris. We weren’t there during the filming, and that was the first time that’s ever happened to us. But we did our part in Melbourne and they stuck us in during post-production.
We stayed in contact during the entire casting process for the video – Krozm are great at working as a part of a team. The guy we ended up casting as the lead is the most incredible looking man I’ve ever seen. We were given three people to choose from, and he was the hands down choice.
Whose brilliant idea was it to get the guy to make out with the tree at the end of the video?
It wasn’t one of us! Honest! I’m assuming it was Lachie from Krozm.
How do you bring that up with the actor?
They just did such a good job with that one. It was actually my idea to time it with the guitar solo.
It’s of course the first single from a wonderful album; it debuted at number 12 on the ARIA charts and you’ve just had a J award nomination. How does it feel to have had an album be that warmly received four years after you released your last album?
It’s incredible! We definitely take time to celebrate the position that we’re in, it’s very fortuitous. So it feels really good, thanks!
It sounds to me like an album that you really went over with a fine toothcomb. Did you approach the record with a meticulous mindset?
We did! It was something that we didn’t set out to do, but that kind of attitude really developed over the course of the album as we were arranging and re-arranging the songs. It seemed that the more finely we went over it, the better. It’s a record that has definitely benefited from the luxury of time. It’s also actually really satisfying – I know to a lot of people it would seem like the most boring, tedious kind of work – but we love programming and production and all of that meticulous work, because you know every tiny brush-stroke is a part of a bigger picture. And we wanted to walk away knowing the album was everything we wanted it to be.
What I’ve always wondered is where these dense, heavily layered songs begin. Does it all start with a guitar?
Each song is different. For something like SKP, we were in the middle of recording a different song, and Cameron [Bird, songwriter] was like: ‘oh, just scrap it. I don’t want to do it anymore!’ so we stopped. And then he just made this beat with his mouth, and we loved it and decided to program drums around it to match. The other guys came into the studio, and all of a sudden Jamie [Mildren] was playing the guitar chords and Cameron was on the bass synth, and it all just happened really really quickly. We came in the next day and produced it until it was finished.
Other songs take time. Cameron always begins the songs and that’s something that really works for the rest of us as co-writers or producers. So he’ll come in with an idea that he may have recorded on his phone and it will go from there. Most of the time, songs are written outside of the studio and then dropped into the recording room, and everything in the recording room sort of just shapes the song.
Tell me about the benefit of having that recording room all to yourselves for such a long period of time.
Initally, when we were writing and choosing the songs for the album, we had the studio set up so that all of the instruments were there and plugged into the desk – ready to record. That way if someone was going to play something along with somebody else we could just record it and go from there. Having the space really meant that the songs could take shape more quickly than they could have. We created an environment and we wanted to fill it with music; it was a very inspiring place to be.
Was that instantaneous approach to recording something new for you?
Yeah. We tried a lot of different things, actually. That was one. We also set hours, where we said we would work at certain times of the day just to see how that would go.
What worked best?
There wasn’t one thing in particular that worked. All of the things that we tried, at the end of the day, worked when we put them together. We didn’t find one thing that we wanted to stick with. Everything just lasted a little while.
You must be the proudest person in the world considering how well the album has come up.
I think that it’s a really good time for us to look back on everything that we’ve done as a band. I definitely feel like this album is the next step – all of the albums seem to be stepping toward the unknown and improving upon the last. I think that’s been our only objective as a band ever since we started.
How do you deal with people who perhaps don’t see it the same was as you do? I was reading a review in Slant Magazine, and the reviewer said something to the effect of: ‘I can’t tell whether this is an intentionally bad record, or just a bad record’.
That’s awesome! A lot of people loved our first or second album more than number three or number four – but there’s a really fine juggling act to be had between what you want to do creatively as an artist and what you want to give to the people who enjoy your music and what you want to give the world. Sometimes it’s necessary to close everything off and not do anything that anyone is telling you to do; to make sure that this right for you personally. And then you put it out into the world and it’s up to them what they want to do with it.
I think it’s quite a defined pop record. And that seems to be a dirty word for a lot of those publications.
It’s definitely a pop album. I totally agree with that. It’s pop music that rewards second and third listens. That was exactly the intention: we wanted music to be able to come out of a speaker and for people to connect to it on that level of it being right there with you, but then we also wanted for the audience to experience it in a deeper way and peel back the emotional layers that it has. It’s not a vacuous and bubbly pop album because for me, it’s layered with emotional content. And then we also really wanted people to experience it live – it’s a big part of the process for us to create an event and experience when you’re there with us. We can’t wait to be on the road!