Interactions in Installments: Her Vanished Grace Part 3

In the final episode of Interaction in Installments, Charlie and I chat about how a propensity for shoegaze might be innate, the exhilaration that came with the creation of ‘Passenger’, and signs of shoegaze in hip-hop and classical music. Once again I get un peu carried away and interject with a story or two of my own

It’s Sunday evening here which means I still have a few precious hours before I really switch on work mode. I don’t like Sunday evenings, really. They are very broody and introspective and meaning-of-life-ish. They’ve always made me feel a bit sombre ever since I was in school. And maaaaan, catching a plane on a Sunday evening was one of the most inexplicably depressing moments of my life.

Anyway, back to the point. You know, I agree too – shoegaze is not, or at least is more than, a genre. I’ve always been a shoegazer, so to speak, I just never realised it. It’s more a style of sensibility. A kind of musical signature or flourish that I’ve always loved and sought out regardless of the ‘genre’ of music, or its age. There are even shoegaze sensibilities in classical music and hip hop. I’ve loved shoegaze before I knew shoegaze existed. I knew it as a style of music I liked so when I found out that there was an entire ‘genre’ devoted to this kind of music I was over the moon! I guess the scene (past and current) is essentially composed of a lot of people who liked certain sounds done a certain way and decided to make songs full of them.

What’s also good for you, and others like you is the fact that you have ‘real jobs’. Well, it’s both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a bad thing because obvs it takes time away from you that could be used to make music, but it’s a good thing because you aren’t dependent on it to keep you afloat so you can take more liberties with your time and your music, and not worry about driving your record label bankrupt while they wait.

It also applies to the not really speaking of your work outside of the music you make even though it may be related in that it’s still in music. It does run the risk of weakening the impact of the music you make for yourself, if it starts to be associated with the more professional aspect of your life. I don’t know if that makes sense, but what I mean is that maybe music tastes the best, and is heard as the musician wants it to be heard, if the irrelevant associations are kept to a minimum. Or so I theorise.

I actually got home from work a little early (3 AM) and I’ve been wasting time on the interwebs with the cats looking happy that I’m home. I’m having the same feeling about getting back to work. I’m making up for the time that i was recording and sorting through HVG tracks. So now I’m back at  work doing exta hours this week and I miss Nancy already. I honestly got into this exclusively to create my own music but discovered that I was simultaneously good at the technical stuff and good with people, which is what producing music is mainly about. It’s a lot of pressure sometimes and being the engineer, producer and writing with people can be a little much sometimes. It’s a lot of hats to fit in my big stupid head. I’m not complaining as much as confiding. In a music journalist.

I obviously have boundary issues.

Both Nancy and I have always thought Sundays were sad, especially Sunday nights. Ever since we were kids.

It is weird how familiar shoegaze, in my case Cocteau Twins, sounded when I first heard them in Tower Records in the mid ’80s. It was one of those moments where something outside of you just seems to line up with what’s on the inside in a sudden shocking rush. When I went upstairs to the little window where they displayed what was being played, I saw it was The Pink Opaque. It was instantly familiar and utterly alien. I never realized that I was a ‘gazer till then (of course the term didn’t exist yet but the music sure did).

I think Ligeti is my choice of shoegazing classical music. I’d like to hear what you describe as shoegazing hip hop.

I know of almost nobody doing music that isn’t struggling in some way with the real job issue. I’m actually lucky to be out of the office and/ or retail environment and actually making a living doing it. As I said, I learned my craft doing my own work and I always thought I didn’t have the brain or heart space to work on other people’s stuff. But when I really got going in the situation I’m in now, I realized that it actually made my desires to actualize my own imaginings that much keener. It’s such an intense need to hear these songs come to life that I’m, beyond all logic, still doing it even through confusion and exhaustion. To have a moment like the night I wrote ‘Passenger’, standing in my underwear the living room, listening to the the demo I just recorded with the now familiar glowing guitar strums, swirling melodies, and thumping grooves, going “Now this is……amaze!” and waving my arms around. It tasted delicious and all irrelevant associations were completely forgotten.

Man I wish I could name shoegaze hip hop off the top of my head. I was thinking of how EJ Hagen of Highspire had told me about Kevin Shields being influenced by hip hop beats and how Highspire had also allowed them to affect the percussion on Aquatic. However by shoegaze influences in hip hop I mean hiphop tracks that have some of the stylings that make shoegaze shoegaze. I don’t think there are many that make use of reverb and distortion but there should be a few – probably from the 80s and 90s – that make use of the voice-as-instrument tactic which is my favourite part of shoegaze. Reverb and distort are secondary. I’m not really a fan of shoegaze where the voice stands out against the music which acts as just a backdrop. I like everything turned up equally and all instruments and vocals weaving in and out and around of each other.

My shoegazing classical music is a bit new – I was listening to it before I knew shoegaze though, but it’s the first instance of me being inexplicably drawn to a sound to the point that it broke my heart. Not because of the story behind it but because of just the way the music and vocals kept each other such equal company rising and falling and lifting each other up together. Gorecki is pretty mainstream by classical music standards I guess, but I remember it’s one of the few pieces of music my grandfather (a classical music buff) played when I was little that I just HAD to ask him about. I remember the conversation well.

Me: Nana, what is this music that’s playing?
Grandfather: It’s called ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’
Me: (remember I’m little here) She sounds so sad. Why is she singing such a sad song?
Grandfather: Because she’s about to die, wouldn’t you sing a sad song if you were about to die?

At the time this made perfect sense, and it never occurred to me to ask why I would sing any song at all if I was about to die.Anyway my grandfather didn’t play Gorecki for a while (not as legit as Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, etc.) and it gradually slipped my mind till a few years later I started having a craving for it. I couldn’t remember the melody, I just remembered how it felt and I wanted to feel it again. It was a legit craving. So I searched high and low – I could only remember ‘sad songs’ but Google was around and clever and when I searched for ‘symphony sad songs’ VOILA.

And that’s one of my first shoegaze stories You can see I tend to give away too much too.

That was a beautiful moment with your grandfather.

It’s fascinating how our love of music is connected to our memory. This Is Your Brain On Music has some very interesting insights on this. The music we love is constantly creating and violating our expectations as we perceive its slipping through time. Our delight at these moments imprints in various parts of our brains and can somehow reemerge after being long submerged.

My grandfather was a musician and I have many fond memories of him playing music. He showed me that the piano had a universe inside of it.

As I said, I really enjoy talking to you and I so value your interest and thoughtful approach. To be honest I’ve only really in the past year started engaging with people I’ve never met in person online so I get carried away easily in conversations sometimes.

I think you will enjoy several of our new tracks in which the vocals swim and frolic among the kaleidoscopic waves of noise.

Interactions In Installments: Her Vanished Grace Part 2

In the first part of this  interv interaction, you saw Charles and I chatting over metaphorical cookies and tea about work, songwriting and our preferred choices of cookies and tea. Using my birthday as an excuse Charlie seized the opportunity to reiterate that they’ve been making music for as long as I’ve been alive – a point worth repeating as it launches the second part of the trilogy. Here we chat about shoegazewaves, HVG’s relationship with the scene and how songs get their personalities.

Well trust in a relationship isn’t shocking (it’s expected, innit) but Nance and you function as a unit which I think is v. cool and much more rare.

Yes, I read in the WTSH interview that you’ve been doing this for 25 years which came as a surprise to me because I know you from the ‘new’ crop of shoegazers, and not so much from the oldies (who are having a bit of a resurgence themselves, aren’t they?). You also interact a lot with the newies – Drowner, The Foreign Resort, Sway and the labels and communities as well, so even if I did know you from then, you’d have thrown me. I think this is the third wave of shoegaze, in fact. Wave #2 was the APTBS, Airiel, Soundpool, Autolux etc. Slightly less known than the originals, but more concentrated in impact. Now the scene has become a lot more intimate and personal – sort of harking back to how it originally was I guess. Celebrating itself. Like how Andrew said today there’d be a new Sway album just for us. I kind of like it that way. Because if you’re not focused on sales, you’re not focused on appealing to a LOT of people and instead can choose to appeal to a few people who you really, really care about.

You know I just explained all this in my thesis today? Using sociological theories? Talk about relevant, eh?

Speaking of 25 years of music, if we bring the Blondie experience into the mix, it would seem you’re pretty understated… not one to toot your own horn much and instead just do the music for the music. Or you have really rubbish publicity skills. You’re doing a good job on Twitter, and within TSC on Facebook so I’d find that difficult to believe.

I think you make perfect sense about how you make music. Learning the instrument(s) is the biggest hurdle because you really need to master the skill before you can make honest music again. You have to be able to play by heart without thinking of the chords and then the untrained ear emerges again. It’s a bit of a risk too because if you don’t go far enough you might be stuck with a trained ear for life! No, I suppose you do reach a point where you can sort of communicate with music… like a medium.

I think music wants to communicate with us. I always see songs as distinct entities from their instruments. Many songs are like people, they have a personality and a message and it’s up to the listener to work out what the song (not the singer or musicians) is trying to say. I think that’s why I tried out music writing, I wanted to see if I could understand what the songs were saying.

Somehow we’re both oldies and newies. Nancy and I were in our embryonic stages as a musical duo when Shoegaze was coined. Already full on C Twins fans, we listened to MBV Loveless, Curve, Lush and Slowdive as they all came out here in the US in 91-92. It felt then and still feels now to me like more than a genre, but actually a sensibility. I remember a music piece in Newsweek that year by Jon Pareles (I think) that heralded the new role of noise in music from Nirvana to MBV. I’ve continued to hear the duality of aggressive lushness ringing through pop music throughout the past two decades.

So I think that that our relationship to the shoegaze scene has been tangential because while it was surely an influence, HVG always explored whatever we felt like at the time. As we got going in our present form, we discovered the Loveless Music Group via MySpace in 2005 and became friends with other NYC bands like Dead Leaf Echo and Soundpool. We heard and got played alongside a lot of the “2nd Wave” bands on FastForwardReverse, Timmy G’s awesome show on East Village Radio. I think this gave us a feeling that we could go with our inner gazer and explore a little more the drenchy side of our post punk dreaminess. So our last 4 or 5 records since then have had more of that.

I feel we have always made a boutique style of style of personally cross pollinated music. I agree that you know it when you hear it and when something clearly wasn’t created just to reach the most number of people, it connects in a way the the big pop music never can. We always thought we could find an audience for our music this way but we’ve had varying degrees of success in that regard over the years. This has led to some ambivalence about publicizing ourselves in any traditional way. We’d stopped trying to seek out label attention long ago and that may have been a factor in our under the radar persona but we really only care about making music that makes us feel good.

I don’t always trumpet the Debbie Harry connection because, while she’s a great friend to Nancy and me, it just seems a little grandiose to always be mentioning it. We love her and love to talk about how great she is if you get us going on it though.

That’s a very perceptive take on the relationship between songs and artists. It aligns with my take on how the song seems to tell you what it wants. It’s very easy to snap into an automatic approach when you’re trying to bring them to life and kill what’s unique about the song you’re working on. It’s a constant struggle to listen and balance being playful and thoughtful. It’s never finished.

Interactions In Installments: Her Vanished Grace Part 1

It wasn’t too long ago that fellow gazers Amber and Danny of When The Sun Hits posted their nice, long, and insanely comprehensive interview with the very chilled Her Vanished Grace. V. Good interview, it tells you all you need to know about the band. but it also puts me in a bit of a pickle. What have I left to ask them about now? You don’t want to read answers to questions you already have the answers to and HVG certainly wouldn’t want to answer questions they just answered. I’d get those annoying ‘dreg’ responses you get from a band that’s given too many interviews and answered the same questions all too often. I admire stand up comics for their ability to tell the same joke a dozen or more times without ever losing the novelty or amazement of telling it the first time. It’s very considerate towards a new audience. But I am sensitive to the fact that shoegaze bands are not always stand-up comics. I’m also keenly aware that it’s a total waste of space to repeat whatever has already been established (except when writing a 40,000 word thesis when you reiterate till kingdom, or preferably word limit, come). So, I thought I’d turn this into an opportunity to have, like, a conversation. You can learn so much about someone with just a bit of a chat. I sent an email off to HVG HQ proposing my proposal and got a response back from the dynamic Charles Nieland in no time. What followed was a most enjoyable email exchange that is likely to continue well beyond this three-part interview. I hope you enjoy the read and gain a little bit more insight into the secret life of Her Vanished Grace.

Here’s the last line of the first email kicking things off:

If you’re up for it, Nance and Charles, let’s have a drink and a chat. What can I get you? Tea and ginger snaps? Coffee and biscotti? Wine and cheese?

We both love Earl Grey and Nancy happens to love a good Ginger Snap! She’s sleeping though. She a gardener/ curator at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and gets up at 5 AM EST. I’m a producer /engineer and I work 3 or 4 days a week from 6 PM til 4 AM, usually getting home in time to get her up and see her off. Tonight’s my last night of a break from my music production job (which I spent working on new HVG). How are you? Are you in India or did you go back to Australia? How was being with your family?

Excellent, I have some tea right here and I’ll save some up for Nance when she’s up and back from work. Ginger snaps are my favourite cookie so I’m glad someone else likes them as well. I am back in Melbourne after a lovely visit home (it’s the perfect weather for tea there, actually) wrapping up this thesis of mine on online music journalism. I have high hopes for it. Though, It’s the reason I’m slack on the actual online music journalism. When it’s done I hope to be a lot more vigilant, and so new HVG will get more special treatment than you’ve received so far.

So let me see if I understand – you get to work on HVG stuff while at work as a music producer? What a great job… how did you land it?

I also have to ask – who am I speaking to at any given time on twitter? ONE of you has adopted ZOMG as daily lingo, but I don’t know which one. (zomg)

Z.O.M.G. that was me! I got it simultaneously from you and Anna Bouchard!

I’m the main purveyor of HVG in the cyber world. Nance has occasionally looked over my shoulder at Twitter and sometimes shares garden photos with her work friends on our Facebook profile but leaves the online Her Vanished Grace ambassadorship to me.

I am part of a production team called Super Buddha (http://www.superbuddhamusic.com/) with Barb Morrison. I also serve as the engineer. Our best known client is Debbie Harry. We produced her 2007 album Necessary Evil and 3 songs that we wrote with her appeared on Blondie‘s 2011 album The Panic of Girls. But we produce and write with of artists of all kinds. Some of it is a labor of love and some of it is a job. But it’s always intense and a challenge and I’ve done more music in the past 8 years than I ever thought I could wrap my brain around.

Her Vanished Grace is completely separate, although when Super Buddha is on break I get to use the studio that we rent for HVG’s music. So it’s usually for a few weeks in August and then around this time of year. We’re not finished with a few of the new songs so we’ll be back on some Saturdays to record vocals when we’re ready with our lyrics. I’m poring over drum tracks, guitar overdubs and bass parts that we recorded over the past two weeks. My eyes are tired. I did upload some clips to our YouTube channel, if you saw them, of each of us recording our instruments.

So no I don’t get to work on HVG while I’m doing Super Buddha. I really enjoy the time I get to work with my lovely band mates and especially with Nancy. It’s such a pleasure…

It’s nice to have that cleared up i.e. who is behind HVG, because that’s not you on the Twitter avi, but it’s not Nance doing the tweeting, so you can imagine how I might get confused. I am very impressed by your unity, the two of you. I think your online identities show the trust between you, and – I don’t know – but I don’t imagine your personalities are very dissimilar… I might be wrong, but you’ll tell me if I am.

I didn’t know about Super Buddha or your involvement with it… how did you come to work with Debbie Harry, or rather how did Debbie Harry hear of you?

I also think it’s very inspirational and encouraging to know you’ve done so much of what you love in such a short time. I turn 25 tomorrow and I already feel like there’s not enough time to do all that I want to do with myself, though I am doing all I can possibly fit into all the time I can find. Do you take breaks? I ask because I find they make me lose my momentum. At the same time, it’s probably good to stop and refuel from time-to-time, so I don’t know…

I saw a couple of the vids you speak of on youtube – they were shared all over the various gaze communities. I find them fascinating – it’s like science, yahknow? Putting together the organs that make up a song. A bit like playing god. I never had the courage to do it myself, I prefer to listen with my ‘untutored ear’ because it sounds feel different than to a trained one, as I found out when I first tried learning chords on a guitar. I have a quote that explains it… hang on, I’ll find it.

Here it is, I saved it up: http://mindthewires.tumblr.com/post/2195152786/the-untutored-man-is-able-without-an-effort 

I should probably change the Twitter photo. Anna B said the same thing to me as we started chatting. It’s too small to get a band photo in there and I just went with Nancy’s face. But I did start our Facebook and Twitter accounts to promote our band and I’ve always felt comfortable submerging my identity into our music I guess. At first Nancy wasn’t interested in Facebook at all, but then she discovered that all her garden friends had profiles so she started using it to talk to them. So we have this Facebook profile that we both use and it thinks our first name is Her. lol.

Anyway, but yeah we do trust each other and share email accounts, bank accounts, songwriting credits, etc. But I change the cat litter.

Debbie was a close friend of one of our artists Miss Guy (who just released an EP that we produced: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/dumb-blonde-ep/id493589423). He brought her in to sing on one of his songs back in 2005 (that was a nerve wracking day). Then she came back the next spring asking us to redo some Blondie tunes in a modern way so she could do a club date. One of these turned up as the remix version of ‘In The Flesh’ on a Blondie Greatest Hits Collection called Sight and Sound (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blondie-Greatest-Hits-Sight-Sound/dp/B000BIOGV0) that went gold on the UK, so that was fun. She then started booking us just to write songs on and off until she built up a bunch of material. Then her management suddenly got interested. We finished it up and it became Necessary Evil. She’s a great person and fascinating to work with. It’s amaze to do music with someone so seasoned that they can write a lyric about what you were talking about at dinner.

Happy Birthday! well tomorrow. I know you read the WTSH interview so you know that Nance and I have been doing our music for 25 years. I’d been a musician for like 10 years before that. So I have been doing music for awhile but, yes, I’ve been actually working much more intensively on music since 2004, when Super Buddha started working out of a studio and this incarnation of HVG got started.

I know what you mean about momentum. We make an HVG album, we play shows and try to get it out there in the world, real and cyber. Then Nancy and I start feeling that we could do something a little better or different and boom we’re starting to work on a new thing. It’s voracious. It has an appetite and it wants to be fed. And it gets hungrier the more you feed it. I get exhausted and confused sometimes but something about our life together and our music always straightens me out and leads me back to this thing.

I will need to stop and refuel a little more at some point though.

It’s funny I don’t feel like the god in the songwriting situation. You’ve probably heard artists say this before, but it feels like they come through us. And the only way to honor the moment is to use my “untutored ear” or what’s left of it. Really the vast majority of what I do from writing, to playing to engineering and producing is self taught. Nance totally learned how to play guitar on my watch (she could always sing beautifully IMHO ). I try to get into a place where I know what the chords are but I’ve completely forgotten what the chords are. lol. That’s when it’s good! The song tells me what it wants. It’s about standing still enough to hear it and stay out of it’s way.

Incoming: Her Vanished Grace

 

I had the good fortune to have a lovely long email conversation with Charlie of Her Vanished Grace this week. I am going to disguise it as an insightful interview. When I say ‘long’ I do mean LONG, so prepare your eyes for AE’s very first Interactions in Installments!!!

Yeah, I just made that up.

Stick around…

 

Gig Guide 2011 #1: Spiritualized

Well duh.

I apologise if this seems like an all too obvious choice for gig of the year but, EXCUSE ME, we are talking about SPIRITUALIZED at the SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE playing LADIES AND GENTLEMEN WE ARE FLOATING IN SPACE in its ENTIRETY with THIRTY MUSICIANS including an ORCHESTRA and a TEN PIECE GOSPEL CHOIR what do you EXPECT?

“Don’t talk to me during the show!” I had warned weeks before. This was in the wake of the Primal Scream tragedy and of course, as you can tell if you’ve read the last paragraph, an even bigger deal.

Well that worked. All that happened was that they held my paw when I teared up, as I knew I would, for ‘L & G’ and for ‘Broken Heart’. The sniffles caught me off guard during ‘Cool Waves’ and ‘Stay With Me’ as well. Yes, no, it’s not surprising at all that blending a string section, a gospel choir, and a Jason Pierce, elicits emoshunz, but jeez now EVERYONE knows I am a big softie.

Lame.

For some reason, however, the lights people thought it would be a good idea to strobe it up during ‘Electricity’ and ‘Cop Shoot Cop’. I suppose the intent was to amp up the “effects” of the songs, which I appreciate, sure, but unfortunately, not only was it unnecessary, but it seemed to distract. Alors, no harm done, just a minor niggle. We don’t need to have our eyes open for ‘Electricity’ anyway.

I managed to get rid of the tearcrust (lo-fi gazebands might want that as a name) and croak my guess for the encore. Well, seeing all the strings, musicians and singers we had at our disposal, I ventured that it would likely be something off Let It Come Down.

Yup:

 

Lucky me!

 

Image nicked from FasterLouder 

Gig Guide 2011: Honourable Mentions

1. Dean and Britta playing the songs of Galaxie 500

I’m not the biggest Galaxie 500 fan, I think it’s because I don’t understand why they’re categorised as shoegaze when I can clearly make out all the lyrics. Also, Dean’s voice sounds a bit off key to me, but no one else seems to notice so I wonder if I’m just imagining it. That hasn’t stopped me from enjoying their albums, however. Except I don’t enjoy them for the reasons I enjoy shoegaze. So you see they perplex my simple mind a great deal, and as a result I feel a bit guilty, somewhat fraudulent for not appreciating them as much as I ought to. Nonetheless, Dean and Britta put on an excellent show when they played. It was the sort of gig you step out of feeling satisfied. They played the right songs, the right mix of old/new, the vocals were just right, the sound quality was perfect, and we were just the right distance from the stage. A nice, refreshing, fulfilling show.

2. Primal Scream playing Screamadelica (support: Underground Lovers)

I had been looking forward to this show for months! Underground Lovers AND Primal Scream? Talk about two dreams coming true at once! 2.5 if you make the JAMC connection, but we won’t. Unfortunately, we all know what happens when you look forward to something too much. Something goes wrong. In this case, it was a poorly timed comment after I had bounced my feet off to Underground Lovers and was buzzing with anticipation for the next. I pushed to the front so Bobby Gillespie would be able to sing to me more effectively (I don’t do this standing middle-of-the-crowd thing). “Why?” I was asked “you don’t even like them that much!”.

Fizzle.

Sigh.

It was a great gig though – everyone in top form, and the wispy Gillespie weaving some sort of spell over the audience, well aware of his charisma. It didn’t make the top owing to the rapid sap of adrenaline, but hey! I am a delicate petal, what of it? Oh you agree, do you? Well why don’t you come over here and say that, eh?

Also a buzzkill: the encore was ‘Rocks’ and the crowd that had been so shockingly listless through all of Screamadelica, exploded. Jumping up and down, pushing their way forward, stomping on my delicate petal foot. More exitement for ‘Rocks’ than ‘Loaded’?! Damn lamestreamers.

 

Image nicked from Faster Louder

Gig Guide 2011 #2: Alcest

I knew I had to go, but I was complacent – no one knows Alcest here. I’ll get tickets by-and-by.

The first show sold out.

Sheet.

Panic.

Second show announced.

It seems I had underestimated the number of attentive shoegazers in Melbourne. Needless to say, I booked my tickets at the speed of light.

I left beloved boyfriend’s birthday dinner early so I could get a spot near the front. This is the boyfriend who was going to be accompanying me to the same show, but I refused to wait for dessert (“Gaze Over Guys”, that’s my motto).

The doors opened later than they should’ve so by the time sweet-imbibing bf showed up the first band had only just started. Can I just reiterate that I gave up dessert for a band that wasn’t going to hit the stage for another two hours and can I also state that I have never sacrificed dessert for a human being in my entire life. I only do these crazy things for music. There should be an award for such heroism.

While milling about waiting for the first band to go up, I worked out why those tickets had sold out so fast. I was the lone shoegazer in a sea of metalheads. And Melbourne’s gotta lotta metalheads.

There were going to be two support acts before Alcest went up, so the show was in three stages. Each stage was marked by a smell.

The first band was a local metal group called Encircling Sea. I dug them, so I am assuming they were good. I hardly have the authority to comment, but I got into it, so did the people around me so there y’go. Unfortunately, this phase of the show smelled of Not Enough Deodorant. No fault of the chaps on stage, it was lurking somewhere within the audience.

All was saved when the second band took the stage. A local post-rock outfit called Heirs with a girl bassist. This is an important point to make because, as you might already know, girls like nice-smelling things. She placed an electric incense diffuser right at the foot of the stage where it sat quietly radiating a lovely, delicate scent as Heirs played some exceptional post-rock.Very tight, very pro, I don’t know why I hadn’t heard of them before (probably because I am not terribly cool)

But enough of that. Now it’s time for Alcest. I heard someone cry out “NEEJ!” as the band crept onstage and I did not cringe (so I get another award).

The sound was a bit shaky at first. We can’t hear you, Neige! we moaned after they’d opened with ‘Le Secret’. Neige kindly asked the sound guy to crank up his vox. What’s that… They’re maxed out? Nothing to do but shrug and carry on. Neige and crew played ‘Souvenirs’, ‘Printemps’ and ‘Iris’ off Souvenirs. From Ecailles, they played ‘Ecailles 1 & 2′ and gave me a pleasant shock when they also played ‘Solar Song’ – the song from my Least Likely List. They played a new song, and there were also one or two others in there that I can’t recall anymore. They mostly pandered to the metalheads and as the gig progressed I gradually accepted that seeing ‘Ciel Errant’ live would remain a dream as of course, the shoegazers were the less valuable faction of the audience. A justifiable situation as there are fewer of them. The crowd screamed for ‘Elevation’ as the encore which left me disappointed because – don’t get me wrong, ‘Elevation’ is a great song – it just doesn’t feel like Alcest – it doesn’t have the heart that Souvenirs does. Nonetheless, the inclusion of ‘Solar Song’ makes up for the absence of ‘Ciel Errant’ and I think of it as a little treat just for the gazers in the crowd.

This phase of the show smelled of David Jones.

Who?

If you walk down Bourke Street in Melbourne, you’ll find a department store called David Jones between Swanston and Elizabeth Streets. The perfume department looks out onto the street. I walk past it en route to my tram and whenever I do I am hit by a blast of warmed up, muddled up, designer (?) fragrances.  I was taken aback when Alcest turned on and this lovely, if somewhat overpowering, scent wafted through the air. Where was it coming from, though I, turning my head left and right in desperate search of the source.

Turns out these metal kids take serious care of their hair. It was a headbanger getting his whiplash on just a row ahead of me. That’s got to be some mean conditioner.

Image Source: Robotichead (all rights reserved )

Gig Guide 2011 #3: Mono

Part of the Melbourne Festival. Mono played with a 23-piece orchestra (the Holy Ground orchestra, to be precise) putting on an unsurprisingly spectacular performance. The sound was, not just enormous, but majestic. It was royalty. It was ruined by the jerks at a table over from us who mistook the gig for a social occasion, and Mono for the “live band” that plays languidly in the background while you and your friends toss your head back and laugh over a tinkling glasses of booze. The blame for the misfortune of having such individuals in the audience is twofold (not counting the people themselves). 1. The choice of venue: there are booths, the booths have tables, the tables hold drinks and the seats that wrap around the table hold people. This is v. likely to result in the illusion that the show is, in fact, a an excuse for a social outing and it is thus acceptable to yap away cheerily as the band plays on. The likely culprit for this aggravating situation is 2. the price of tickets – a mere 35 quid. How it hurts us to admit this but perhaps a higher price would have meant only those who really loved the music turned up.

But, let’s not forget, this is Mono, and they don’t need us to shoot glares at noisy fellow patrons. Mono can look after themselves. Mono know how to fill a hall, even one as expansive as the Forum, with weighty vibrations so all waggling tongues are crushed under their weight if they so much as quiver when they ought not to.

Shockingly, my own favourite aspect of the show was the between-acts music. Mono must have done the choosing because I wouldn’t expect Gorecki to be an Australian decision. Less so would I imagine anyone but the band giving Symphony No. 3 the respect due to it by playing it – all three parts of it – in its entirety, fade in to fade out. Sure, people tried to talk over this too, but Symphony #3 is sorcery which is why by the time it hit the coda, the room was stunned, struck dumb.

Thus Mono come in at #3 foiled by their own, perfect, choice of filler music.

Image Source: The AU Review

Incoming: Gig Guide 2011

I saw my last gig of the year a couple of weeks ago. 2011 has been good for gigs. It put up an admirable fight with APTBS- and SSPU-infused 2010. I thought I’d take the time out and document my most memorable. The ones that only a few years ago, I had accepted I would never see in my life. Wa-hey, dreams come true, who knew?

Up next, a bit about my top 3 shows of 2011.

Pic of Mono’s setup from Mess & Noise

Interview: Meet Drowner.

They’re a new band, but my gosh they’ve got some PR skillz behind them. Only a day or two after I received word of Drowner‘s existence (it’s called a Press Release), they were all over the place! And by ‘all over the place’ I mean ‘all over Facebook’ with links to their songs being posted left, right and centre by the Shoegaze Elite.

Ye gads! Who is this mysterious band?! Before I’d even heard the EP I’d made a list of all the questions I wanted to ask (you’ll notice we get into the swing of things quite rapidly). Anyway, there’s not much for me to comment on regarding Drowner and its components, since they’ll do most of the talking in a moment. I’m just going to take a minute to tell you about the music.

Drowner remind me a lot of this other band I wrote about a couple of years ago called The Vacant Lots. Both bands seem to have received some sort of specialist training in the finer aspects of Gestalt theory. The reason my first question is what it is is because I was hesitant to assume Drowner was a duo owing to their ability to generate a sound that was larger than themselves. I’ve asked then about equipment in case you, like me, were left a bit dumbfounded as to how they achieved such an enormous sound, and hopefully it helps out the more techy, geeky, musiciany among you. I’ve even asked them if it’s just them on the album! Subtlety be thy name. Their EP which is titled … *drumroll* … Drowner EP is out now on iTunes and elsewhere. If you click on its name you’ll be able to get it. Wow, modern technology, new media, virtualisation, marvellous. Now, not to detract attention from the peeps themselves, here’s your Guide to Drowner:

Hello there! I’m going to start with the most important question in the world: Who are you?

Darren: I’m Darren Emanuel. I mainly play guitar in the band and, for now, some of the other instruments as well. I was most recently in Swimming In and released a shoegaze/trip hop collaboration last year called Apples to Earth. I had written some of the Drowner songs by last year and worked on them with a couple of different vocalists, but nothing really gelled. I happened to mention this to Anna Bouchard, and she composed some lyrics and immediately brought a new depth and lyricism to the songs that turned out to be exactly right for the project.
Anna: Hi, I’m Anna Bouchard, and I am the vocalist for Drowner.

Have you been around long? How did you meet?

Anna: We’ve known each other for a long time but only last year did we talk about collaborating on a music project together.

Your songs sound very elaborate and professional. Is it only the two of you on all your recordings, or do you have friends or extra personnel show up now and then?

Darren: It is only the two of us right now. I enjoy playing a lot of instruments, but it will be nice to get input from someone who really knows what they are doing on drums and bass. We are talking about adding more people to the lineup, possibly by the time we get to the second E.P.
Anna: To Darren’s credit, we sound like a much bigger band than we are.
Darren: And Anna sings a great deal as well, sometimes contributing up to 35 vocal lines to one song.

There must be some fellow musicians and/or music geeks among us – can you tell me about your instruments and, if applicable, hardware and software of choice?

Darren: I use a great 8 bus mixer by Topaz made in the UK for all of the tracking, along with a Tascam 8 channel tape machine from the early 80′s. We make extensive use of the Roland Space Echo while tracking and even for reverb when we mix. It’s so much fun to use and always surprises us. We use a Fender guitar, a Wurlitzer 200A piano — Anna plays a bit of Moog synth on “Wildflowers” — a Fender cabinet on guitar and piano, and we use an obscure guitar amp called an ASI 125. It’s the only one I’ve ever seen, but I loved the way it sounded the first time I heard it. If anyone knows anything about it, let me know. I can’t even get a Google hit about it!
This is the first record I’ve done where I didn’t use Pro Tools or Cubase, but rather did all the tracking and mixing in Ableton Live. For mixing I use a Universal Audio DSP card with the Fairchild, 1176, LA2A, EMT, CL-1 and Pultec plugins.

What’s the story with you label Two Words Records? How did it come to be?

Darren: Tim Black and I started Two Words Records back in 2001 to release some downtempo electronic stuff. We eventually moved from CDs to digital downloads over the years and right now the label is mostly dormant with the exception of helping out a bit with Drowner’s release.

Have you performed live much? What are your favourite venues/haunts?

Darren: We are really focused on our sound and songwriting right now.

The shoegaze scene at the moment is pretty tight, I think; I doubt there’s more than 2 degrees of separation within it. Do you have any fellow shoegaze bandfriends? Do we know them?

Darren: We’ve made a lot of friends in the shoegaze scene since we released the record, and it’s been a very warm reception, but that’s a better question for Anna…
Anna: Well, I don’t know if I can call them friends in the traditional sense of the word, but I have had some great interactions online with some outstanding musicians in the shoegaze scene: Mikkel Borbjerg Jakobsen of The Foreign Resort, Matt Etherton of Presents for Sally, Andrew Saks of Sway, Paul Lopez of Spell 336, Perry Pelonero and Kim Welch of Morpheme and bliss.city.east, Francois de Benedetti of Data Unit, Danny Lackey and Barbie Watkins of Deepfieldview, Cory Osborne of Lightfoils, and, of course, Danny Panjwaneey of //orangenoise.

Album? Tour? Christmas Single?

Darren: We are mixing a new single for release later this summer and we’re very excited about it. We also have a video for “Written” that should be out in the next few weeks.
Anna: The single is just incredible! Can’t wait to release it.

Any favourite second-wave shoegaze bands?

Darren: The scene right now is just fantastic! So much talent. I’ve been listening a lot to Crocodiles, Daysleepers, Malory and Hammock, but my favorite second wave is The Sleepover Disaster. They really write great songs and have a big sound. I think they have a new record coming out soon, so I’m looking forward to that.
Anna: Besides some of the bands I mentioned previously — I second Darren’s choice of Hammock and Malory, and I also love moonbell, The Fauns, Slowness, Auburn Lull and port-royal.

Message for your fans? Have you noticed that you have QUITE A FEW?

Darren: Thanks for supporting what we do and keep in touch, there’s a lot more coming up.
Anna: Love to you guys! The energy we’ve been feeling from you is what keeps us going, day and night. You’re the best.

Disclaimer: No band names were edited for spelling, Anna just knows how //orangenoise and port-royal their name to be presented. #props

Reminder: In case you missed it the first time, Drowner EP can be picked up here.