quarta-feira, 9 de março de 2016

Broke Generation with Breve - An Interview


Dougal Shaw, Toby Fitzgerald e Billy Dowle formam o experimental, freak, viajante por vezes sombrio, em outras multicolorido, munidos de inúmeras facetas onde todos os caminhos sonoros chegam sempre ao mesmo ponto, a psicodelio com trejeitos soturnos, este é o trio australiano Breve.

Escolha sua iniciação na obra deles, seja pelo primeiro EP "Broke Generation" de 2014 ou pelo mais recente single "Introverse/Movement" do ano passado, não vai haver diferenças, porque a viagem estará garantida e apenas no começo.

***** Interview with Breve *****



Q. When did BREVE start? tell us about the history...
Early 2013. Toby and I moved to Melbourne into a share house, we kept a room spare and set it up as a jam space. It was there that our pedal obsession flourished and it was there that we deconstructed our former ideas of songwriting and started putting together something we thought to be fresh and interesting. We started playing shows, put out a record and toured the East Coast of Australia in 2014. We played live for about a year with our former drummer Thom before he left, making way for Mathias. Mathias is an octopus, he has 8 limbs, so having him on board once again opened up our possibilities. Pushing the boundary’s of what can be constructed, and played live, with the limitation of just 2 humans and an octopus. 2015 saw us put out a 7”, play some festivals, tour more of Australia and record our debut album.

Q: Who are your influences?
My Dad played guitar and sang in a post-punk band in the 80’s but as I was growing up he was always picking away at heavenly melodies on the acoustic. I didn’t pick up a guitar until my late teens and I never learned any covers, other than songs of Dads. That was a big influence on my style of playing. These days I incorporate that nice melodic sort of picking style with harsher and heavier playing which I suppose is influenced by guys like Rowland S Howard.

Q. Make a list of 5 albums of all time…
Oh man these things are tough. These are 5 albums that, when I discovered them, marked a turning point in my musical approach or my outlook on what was/is possible to do with music.

Portishead – Dummy
Pixies – Doolittle
The Drones – Gala Mill
rian Eno – Ambient 1: Music For Airports
Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon

Q. How do you feel playing live?
It’s like taking DMT. I go to another world when I’m playing live. It’s my favourite place to be. Sharing the performance space with friends is a very special thing. At that moment, nothing else in the world is of any importance. It is raw energy and love and anger and all these things being projected out of you. I love finishing a set and coming out of that state and saying hi to the boys in the band and giving them a high five. It’s like I haven’t seen them in a lifetime, I just went off to fuckin’ Mars for a while. https://youtu.be/nO_jKZNaQUQ

Q. How do you describe BREVE sounds?
It’s really broad to be honest. It’s sometimes pretty and dreamy, lots of ambient guitar and synths, looped vocals. Sometimes it’s extremely loud, crunchy guitars, busy drums. A lot of the time that all happens in the space of one track. We try not to follow any formulas or trends. It’s hard because sometimes you’re like oh god this is tough, we should just cave and make something radio friendly and maybe have a lot more opportunities thrown at us. But then you’re just feeding regurgitated worms to flightless birds, when really you prefer nice fresh worms from the compost. I guess I’m saying you can’t be afraid to be weird. You’ll be broke but you’ll have a nice bucket of homegrown compost worms if the birds ever come looking.

Q: Tell us about the process of recording the songs ?
We have a studio out in an industrial area of Melbourne. We recorded our album out there a few months back. We had been playing all the songs live for a few months, playing shows a couple of times a week, so they were fairly tight by the time we got into the studio. We wanted to be pushed for time, we really wanted to capture the raw nature of our live show. We spent 4 days and nights out there, recording all through the night and into the early hours of the morning before curling up on the studio floor for a couple of hours rest. I remember recording the vocals for Movement at around 7am one morning before going to bed. I was a little bit fried by that stage, the voice was raw, but I thought that’s what the song needed.


Q. Which new bands do you recommended?
Man, Melbourne is actually ridiculous. Gold Class have come out of nowhere and are killing it, dark post-punk tunes. Masco Sound System, more funky, danceable tunes. Full Flower Moon Band are doing some really interesting, abstract stuff. Lalic are incredible and their latest track won’t get out of my head. “I’m seeearching for Zeeeniiiiith”.

Q: Which band would you love to made a cover version of?
It’s a life long dream to do a cover album of the Willy Wonka soundtrack. It was my favourite film as a kid, I used to come home every afternoon and put the VHS on. I knew all the words. I’m sure I still do, they’re up there somewhere.

Q: What are your plans for the future?
I’ve just completed mixing the album and Simon Lam is mastering it. After that’s out we are doing some touring. We’re currently planning a trip to Europe/UK for the second half of this year. If you’re reading this and you live in Europe/UK, hit us up with some suggestions for venues/bands/festivals. We want to see you!

Q: Any parting words?
Thanks for getting in touch with us. Apologies for the horrible analogies.
Love Dougal/BREVE.
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Thanks

https://breveband.bandcamp.com/
http://www.breve-band.com/