Now, APES have finally released the eagerly awaited Stranger Than Strangers, and it seems this is just the beginning for the band.
The album displays a matured sound that showcases the group’s growth throughout the extended recording period. “Originally we had an eight to 12-month plan with writing a record,” says vocalist and guitarist Ben Dowd. “We kept writing stuff and we saw the sound was changing as we were starting to write more as a group, so we started to explore that and see where that took us. We felt it was a better representation of what the band really was than what we wrote previously.”
The album involves the creative input of numerous big names, with audio engineers such as Mark Rankin, Bill Skibbe, and Malcolm Besley all collaborating with APES in the studio at different points across the recording process. “Having all those people’s own interpretations of certain songs put into the record gave it a different kind of sound,” says Dowd.
He also attributes the timeframe spent creating Stranger Than Strangers to the evolution of APES’ sound. “You can definitely hear that sort of process come through,” he says. “We recorded at so many different places like homes, Red Door in Collingwood and Sing Sing down on Chapel Street. It gives a lot of different textures to the record, I find. I don’t know if it’s an approach we’d be able to do again but it definitely gives it an interesting sound.
“As far as our EP Helluva, we wrote different songs, just rock songs because when we started out that’s what we wanted to be. Michael Belso, who produced the record, saw a different side in our playing and really encouraged us to explore that.
“I think that’s what lead to us all writing together a lot more, which also feeds into taking four years to make a record. You get too much rope,” laughs Dowd. “We haven’t really thought about an approach for the second record yet or how we’re going to go about that or who we’re going to work with, so it could be a totally different experience.”
There is no method or formula to APES’ writing process, according to Dowd, an approach which is undoubtedly reflected in the effortlessly cool nature of Stranger Than Strangers. “Me and James live together and we’ve got a home studio that we’ve built, so we do a lot of writing together in our own time,” he says. “When we can get something going, we take it to the rest of the guys and jam on it. Even then, I’d still write a song then go to James and then we’d work on it and then go write with the rest of the guys, it gets filtered like three times.
“Without being corny, we’re really trying to draw inspiration from ourselves. Trying not to hold anything back and put ourselves on the line a bit. We weren’t really trying to sound like anything – we didn’t even think of that kind of stuff. That was the biggest inspiration, just to write music for the sake of writing music.”
Dowd is excited for what’s ahead, with the band having already accrued a selection of tour dates to celebrate the album launch, including a handful of support slots for San Cisco alongside Thelma Plum. “We want to start playing live as much as we can because that’s what we love doing, we put so much into our live shows,” he says.
“We really want to start touring this album and travel, try to take it on the road nationally and maybe do some overseas stuff. It’s all in the works at the moment but we’re trying not to think too far ahead.
