 |
|
Sydney band The Holidays
craft upbeat, groove based indie pop with an experimental edge and a
DIY approach. They’re currently busy self producing their first full
length LP, having already topped the Triple J playlist with lead single
Moonlight Hours. I caught up with Simon Jones, the band’s multi-talented
singer, guitarist, keys player, engineer and producer to talk about
the process of recording and producing their upcoming debut, changing
approaches to making records in the 21st century, the band’s
musical progression and their recent tour with Australian radio heavyweights
Bluejuice.
You guys are working on your debut
album at the moment, which you’re recording and self producing at
home. Why did you decide to do it this way rather than record in a studio,
and how did you learn to do it?
Well, I guess we spent a bit of time
in studios when we first started the band, doing demos. We did 2 EPs
in all different studios. I kind of got a little bit frustrated with
the process of paying for studio time and paying for a producer and
then feeling really pressured to come up with something immediately,
or have it all ready and just record it. We really liked the idea of
recording as the idea happens. I think it’s much more fruitful doing
it that way.
I taught myself. I’d been kind of
learning along the way but I basically just tried to teach myself the
basics of producing, and learned the computer side of it and the hardware
side of it, and eventually just said to our record label [Liberation],
“look, we want to do it ourselves”, and they were really good about
it, they said “Ok, if you think you can do it, we’ll buy you the
equipment you need” or whatever. Eventually we built up this mobile
bunch of stuff that we recorded on, and it ended up, because we did
it over quite a long period, we ended up recording in a lot of different
places. Like, a lot of times in studios, sometimes at home, various
people’s houses and stuff. Which was quite an interesting way to do
it, and I quite like it because you know, the environment was always
changing, there wasn’t any pressure to perform in like, that instant.
Also I guess you could get different
sounds from the different rooms?
That’s right, it’s a bit of
a mish-mash in terms of the rooms used. You know, vocals have been done
in about 6 different rooms, which is, you know... It’s pretty imperceptible
the changes, but our mixing guy noticed. [Laughs]
The tracks you’ve released so
far sound quite cohesive though
Yeah, I think those two tracks in particular
were kind of, done earlier in the piece. We were really kind of experimenting
with different sounds, and as we went on the experiment basically got
even more drastic and stuff, because we were figuring out new tricks
and learning new ways to do things. So it was pretty fun, the learning
curve of things as well.
Has recording at home allowed you
a greater degree of artistic freedom?
Yeah, I think so definitely. I always
feel kind of oppressed in studios because you’d always have this producer
who would have a preconceived idea of what should be on there, and if
you suggested something else quite often it would just get turned down.
Like, there’s really no boundaries when you’re doing it yourself,
because you can try things out instantly and if it doesn’t work, it
doesn’t work but in a studio it always takes so long to set things
up and you’re just wasting time trying things.
Time is money in a studio hey?
Oh yeah, majorly. And even though we’ve
got a record company and they pay for it it’s still kind of in the
back of your mind that everyone around you is working to the clock kind
of thing, and it’s not a great vibe for me personally anyway.
For the aspiring home recording
artists out there, what techniques are you using to achieve these sounds?
Is there a lot of sampling happening to get
the percussion and drum sounds? What software are you using, etc?
I guess a big part of the sound in
any recording is the drums obviously, so we’ve done a mix really.
We’ve done a lot of sampling, from both sampling our drums to you
know, getting DJ Premiere Hip Hop samples off the net or whatever. We’ve
done lots of different sampling stuff. But we also did a couple of days
in the studio recording drum tracks as well, so we have kind of the
option of live or sampled, and we can use it at our discretion.
As far as drum sounds go it’s kind
of interesting, because you know, there’s a lot of purists out there
that will always want to get this really live drum sound. It obviously
depends what sort of music you’re making, but we’ve got some pretty
good results out of sampling and sequencing. We’ve gotten quite good
at you know, making sequenced drums sounds live, sound like realistic
and alive. There’s ways you can do that but it’s kind of a practice
of, you know, putting accents on things and panning things. There’s
a lot of tricks you can do to make it sound cool.
It seems like a lot of artists are
recording at home these days, and the results can be just as good as
something produced in a studio if the
people involved are knowledgeable enough and invest enough time. Do
you think that people’s ideas are changing about how to make music
and produce records these days without the bloated budgets of yesteryear?
Yeah well, I think it’s a natural
thing because everything is really getting cheaper and more accessible.
So it’s natural that people, when they’re in bands, I suppose it’s
mainly like newer bands we’re talking about, that may not want to
spend money on a producer and put your life in someone else’s hands,
when you can go out and buy this program and do it electronically yourself.
I think that there is a definite argument for the knowledge and abilities
of a producer. We’ve worked with people along the way on this record
who’ve added this and that to it that we couldn’t have done without,
but I think in general people, you know, it’s so much more accessible
these days that people are going to do it themselves.
Do you think it’s a good thing
that some people are shifting towards home recording these days?
I think it is. Well, it is and isn’t.
It’s kind of like the internet isn’t it? Like, you know the way
music has become so much more accessible now via Myspace or whatever,
but it’s almost like there can be too much of something like that,
and if everyone’s recording themselves then it’s kind of hard to
separate and I think the general quality could get lower. It’s hard
to know, like, if you can do it well, yeah I think it’s great.
It’s weird to think of the recording
industry, like the actual recording of it, as a kind of dying breed.
I don’t know if it is or not, but the music industry in general probably...
The record sales industry is dying anyway.
There’s always going to be room
for skilled producers and engineers that can record
Yeah, I think so. There’s definite
things that experience gives you. A really good thing is to find a producer
that works well with you and they can have a definite impact on the
sound of the song and that, they’ll get really involved in it. It
was kind of like flying solo for us without having a producer, [without]
getting an outside member of the team with an objective point of view.
So are you
the one that does all the technical, hands-on production and mixing?
Yeah, I’ve done the engineering and
the producing which is something that I probably wouldn’t do again.
I’d probably want to get an engineer next time cos that’s where
it really becomes important to get someone that knows how to set up
the chain and mic placement and how to record things.
The tracks you’ve released so
far have quite an uplifting, international tropical pop feel to them,
are you guys always aiming to make positive affirming music, or are
there more sounds on the record?
Yeah, it’s strange... I’d say the
mood of the record in general is probably more on the optimistic side.
There is a few more introspective kind of songs. The two singles that
have come out so far are probably the most kind of up-beat tracks on
the album, just as it happened, but I think generally I write the kind
of music that puts you in a better mood, not a worse mood... well I
try to anyway. It’s kind of strange cos I quite like listening to
some more downbeat music, but just by default I kind of try to go for
something a bit more uplifting.
Tell me about the progression of
your band, where you started and how you ended up where you are now
musically?
Well, when we started we were really
into the guitar as an instrument, we were basically a real guitar band.
Every song we wrote was based around the guitar lines and all that sort
of stuff. And then as times progressed we’ve become a lot more about
the drums I suppose. Not so much the instrument the drums themselves
but we’ve become a lot more groove based and a lot more interested
in the rhythm of things.
There’s a lot of percussive touches
on your current tracks, like the bongos etc
Yeah, we’ve used various different
percussive sounds on the album to make the groove more of a force, more
so than we’ve used guitars to take the front kind of thing. There’s
still a lot of guitars on the record but it’s generally not the main
sound that would stick out to you.
The Jonathon
Boulet remix of Moonlight Hours is excellent. How did you hook up with
him?
Well I think our record label, it was
their idea to get Jonathon to do it. I remember he did it in like 2
days and we got the thing back and we all really loved it instantly.
I thought it was so cool, it reminded me of DJ Shadow or something,
with a really kind of trip hop vibe. And just you know, just the delays
on the beat it was just really cool and trippy and I really liked the
vibe. It was pretty much perfectly what we said to him. We had 2 words
for him that was our brief of what we wanted it to sound like. I think
it was like, we wanted it to sound epic and trippy or something and
I think he did both those things pretty good.
He’s a really nice guy, he was very
humble about it. We said “oh thank you, we really like the single”
and he was like “oh yeah no worries, whatever, any time.” He was
really low key about it all.
You guys
have just completed a tour with Bluejuice. I’ve heard they’re pretty
into partying and so on, any tour stories or disasters you want to share?
We just finished the tour on Saturday
actually. Yeah I don’t know, Bluejuice seemed to think that we were
bigger on partying, but I don’t know, we kind of thought they were.
The last night of the tour on Saturday
night in Perth both bands got kicked out of the venue which was pretty
good. Directly after the show, kicked out of the dressing rooms just
because Jake, the singer of Bluejuice, had a bit of an altercation with
a security guard. [Laughs]
...didn’t have many good things to
say about his haircut, so it got a bit wild. Luckily no one got kick
boxed or anything. That was a fun way to end the tour, we ended up just
walking down the street trying to set up an after party somewhere else...
That was pretty much a theme of the
tour; altercations with security guards.
You can catch The Holidays
at their Golden Sky single launch; May 27 at Oxford Arts Factory in
Sydney, 4 June at The Cubby Hole in Brisbane or 12 June at The John
Curtain Bandroom in Melbourne.
http://www.myspace.com/
