|
|
 |
The Nation Blue.
First and foremost, The Nation Blue are raw. Their music is confronting and urgent. Trying to capture those elements in a studio is notoriously difficult, so when I speak to bass player Matt Weston, I ask him how much of their new record 'Damnation' came out of just trying different things in the studio.
"We had 13 songs written, and 12 of those we had played live anywhere from back in 2001 up to about two months prior to the recording," he explains. "There was only one song, Blackout, which we hadn't played live and had written about a month before.There's nothing on the record that was made up in the studio. We had many thoughts and discussions before we went in for the final recording, even to the extent of discussing whether to put an acoustic guitar at a certain part of a certain song. It was all preconceived, but at the same time there were lots of ideas that we thought it would be nice to try. I guess that's one of the reasons we took so long."
One might expect this type of approach to be a recipe for a very clinical, planned sounding record - which is the exact opposite of what one finds on 'Damnation.' Weston has some thoughts on how they achieved such a raw, dynamic sound on their new record.
"I think it was the simple fact that we recorded it live," he says. "Every song was the three of us standing in the same room recording at the same time. For the really raw tracks we really needed that live feel and I think it worked for that reason.
"The noisy part of our music isn't a random thing - I think we go so far as to treat it as another instrument or another dynamic tool. We have the same kind of noise at the same part of each song. There's a trigger in the song and that tells us when we have to pull a certain sound out of our guitars. There's so many different ways to control the noise and the feedback based on what part of the guitar you're hitting or what part of the strings you're ripping. As random as that can look, there is also a lot of control required otherwise it can sound like the offensive noise that it can so often become."
There are many elements that blend into The Nation Blue's sound, and one can hear them all through 'Damnation.' Noise: check. Yelling: naturally. John Farnham: what? As Weston explains to me, the band chose to record in the same studio that Johnny recorded 'Whispering Jack' and 'Age Of Reason.' I was keen to know how they found this experience and how it compared to their previous recording experiences.
"The studio was totally and utterly positive and inspirational space," Weston declared. "Especially taking into account that the record we'd done prior was recorded in the music room of a university in the middle of winter, the gear was shit and the room sounded crap. Everything about that experience sucked, beside the fact that we got to record our first record. It wasn't a fun place to be, the second your parts were recorded you wanted to get the fuck out of there," he laughs. "This time, straight when you walked inside the studio door you were confronted with Daryl Braithwaite's gold records, pictures of Diesel, records like 'Let Love In' and the soundtrack to Mad Max - as well as the entire Australian Crawl back catalogue. I guess it was not only that they were some of our favourite records from a production and an interest level, but it was also kind of historical feeling, like you might be the next chapter of the cool things that came out of studio. The bar was definitely raised. It was a really fun environment to be in."
Sam Vinall
 |
The Nation Blue's 'Damnation' is out now through Casadeldisco.
|
|
|
The latest issue
available now!
|
