the AU interview at Culture Collide: Gold Fields (Australia)

Larry talked to Vin and Ryan of Gold Fields about their new album, Black Sun: why it had to be recorded three times, what it will sound like, and their touring to support it.

Welcome back to LA! You played your first show here at the Echoplex last night. I wasn’t there, but my writer was, and she had nothing but great things to say. How’d the show go? I heard there was a huge crowd.

It was good. It was our first real show in around two months, so there was a lot of dusting off the large show cobwebs. But the crowd was awesome, it was definitely our best LA crowd we’ve had. The production was bigger, and grander than what we’ve had in the past over here, in LA. So it felt like a bit of a step-up, which is good.

I know you played a little warm-up show in your hometown [Ballarat] last week.

Yeah, just to help us get back on the wagon before he headed off over here. It was a bit of a fundraiser as well – we made limited run t-shirts and everyone gave their support, and it gave us a little bit of pocket money.

What the music industry isn’t giving you millions of dollars?!

Unfortunately, no! We’ll have to do a show with Kid Rock.

You guys have good a few things coming up: you’ve got your tour around America, you’re going to a festival in Austin, Texas, you’re playing in Chicago. How’re you feeling about it?

We’re really excited. We bought a van last week, so we’re ready to hit the road on Tuesday. It’s very exciting that we’ll see all these cities in America, even though we won’t have that much time in them. Arrive, load in, play the show, go to sleep, drive to the next city… But it’s definitely something that we’re all looking forward too, even though it’s scary being in a van for 10 hours. With the same guys.

You might strangle each other before it’s through!

Yeah! Well, we’re used to it. In Australia you have to drive ten hours from Sydney to Melbourne to play a show at a decent venue, whereas over here, they’re only Melbourne-to-Ballarat distance away. So this will be a lot easier.

So hopefully this is the first major tour of many over here. There’s so much buzz about you on the streets, and at Culture Collide, and I’m looking forward to seeing you later today. When it comes to the album, we’ve all heard “Dark Again”, because it premiered the other day. How does that reflect what we’re going to be hearing on Black Sun?

We chose it as the first single because it is one of the more pop songs on the record, and because it works as a transition from the EP to the album. Some people know us for having brighter, more summer-y… tribal music. Whereas with the album, it’s in the same vein, but quite a bit darker, except for a few pop moments. We’re really excited for everyone to hear everything, because we’ve been working on it for so long. We recorded the album three times, so there’s been a lot of effort, but at the end of the day, we’re all really happy with what we ended up with.

I’m looking forward to hearing it! I imagine you’ve played little tastes of it at shows over the last few months?

We play two songs from the album in our current set.

Going back to the recorded-three-times thing, what was the distinguishing feature of the third process that made you say, ‘this is the one, this is what we’re using’?

The first time we recorded it was about this time last year, in LA. We were under the impression that we were coming to record just a few songs off the album, and we hadn’t met our record label [Capitol Records] yet… So we weren’t really in the mind frame of being a recording band. All we’d done was live shows. And we left a month later with something we weren’t really happy with, and that didn’t fit in with what the band wanted.

Then we spent another month in Sydney, trying to fix it, and adding more parts… basically, recorded it again. We were all a bit lost, because we were trying to fix what was broken. So we had to stop and really make the hard decisions in June this year, and we chose to record it again ourselves in Mark’s [vocalist] parent’s garage. I mean, the budget was completely exhausted. We had to really scape the bottom of the barrel to get the money to do this.

The hardest thing was to accept that what we’d all put in wasn’t right. That it didn’t sound good, even though, in LA, we’d worked in some of the best studios in the world, with some of the best producers, engineers, equipment, vintage guitars… that would work, in theory, but it didn’t. Once we’d accepted that it wasn’t right, it only took us three weeks to record it ourselves at home. We just got our friend, who helped us with our demos, to mix the record. He’s amazing. And we’ve got some really great friends in Ballarat who lent us their gear…

Wow. Well, I wish I was sitting with you, instead of using the phone, because you’re in the Capitol Tower right now. Is that your first time there?

No, actually. We spent a lot of time here when we were making the record the first time, and also when we played at South by Southwest. It’s really nice. Our A&R guy has an amazing office that looks right out at the HOLLYWOOD sign. It’s surreal. Walking past al the multiplatinum records on the walls… The last time we were here, when were in the studio and Mark was tracking vocals, he got told he couldn’t sit on this one chair because it was the one that Frank Sinatra tracked “New York, New York” on.

And now you’re a part of that history.

Not too sure about that! We feel like tourists when we come to these places. It’s funny when we rock up to the gates, and security are like, ‘who are you?’ and we’re like, ‘uh, we’re here for A&R…’ and we get a full security check.

Can’t help but feel that you’re not supposed to be there.

Yeah.

Well, it sounds like the show in Ballarat gave you guys a bit of a hero’s farewell, and I wish you guys the best of luck on the rest of the tour.

No worries mate! Come up after the show and we’ll have a drink or a couple.

Black Sun will be released in January 2013. Until then, you can download the new single, for free, at their website: http://goldfields.bandcamp.com/

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