We chat to the emerging Melbourne band before they release their new album, Moth Fire Fantasy.
Melbourne duo Red Worm are perhaps the only local band to cite The Beatles, Aphex Twin, Chopin and the Dandenongs’ R.J. Hamer Arboretum among their primary influences. But this motley inventory is a good indication of what can be expected from the studio-savvy pairing of David Gayfer and Richard Buchanan.
Both Gayfer and Buchanan are deft multi-instrumentalists, but their roles within Red Worm are distinguished by Gayfer’s handling of lead vocals and lyrics and Buchanan’s place as the band’s recording engineer and producer.
Red Worm are gearing up for the release of the album, Moth Fire Fantasy, which follows their 2018 EP, The Midnight Tulips. The first track lifted from the release is ‘Broken Times’, a psychedelic pop song that lets out a sigh in response to the world’s prevailing downward spiral.
“‘Broken Times’ started from just repeating a two chord progression and humming a melody over the chords until the right one appeared and felt at home,” says Gayfer. “Most of the songs we write use that same process – repeat a chord progression and melody-hum. I’ve found that if you sit and do this for long enough, the melody you’re looking for in the end finds you.
“Yeah,” says Buchanan. “For some reason, through repetition the notes seem to start coagulating together with your feelings and then the song seems to write itself.”
‘Broken Times’ is rooted in the repeated hook, “These are broken times”, around which the duo incorporates layers of atmospheric instrumental decoration. Buchanan wanted the production to take listeners on a journey into the depths of the audio spectrum, using different effects and sounds to fill in empty spaces in the frequency range.
“We use a plethora of effects to achieve this sound such as the Evil Filter, Fuzz Wars and Reverberation Machine by Death By Audio and the Janus pedal by Walrus Audio,” he says. “Everything is recorded in Logic Pro and then mixed accordingly with vintage type plugins, like the Abbey Road Waves pack and others similar to this.”
As for Gayfer’s lyrics, ‘Broken Times’ begins with the lines, “Woke up dreaming about tomorrow/Everybody’s caught the sorrow/These are broken times.” It could easily be about the coronavirus crisis and the general shitstorm that is 2020, but Gayfer keeps it ambiguous enough to be applicable to any sort of existential dread.
“The song was written on the day of the Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne,” says Gayfer. “I did not attend the protest – instead I stayed at home and wrote ‘Broken Times’. So with the protest in mind, with the riots in America, with my own struggles, and with the virus floating through the streets of Melbourne, ‘Broken Times’ was born.
“The lyrics were written about coronavirus, however it’s also about how humans have this thing within us that pushes us to want to destroy, to hate, and to hurt ourselves and the people we love.”
Despite the tumult at its core, the song doesn’t sound hopeless or stubborn. In a sense, it’s an act of empathy, with the band acknowledging to its audience that we’re going through something dire together.
“The hook, ‘These are broken times’, is meant to represent a sort of broken record kind of movement, simply just telling the listener that it was written during a challenging period,” Gayfer says. “Though I do believe that it could be listened to at any point in time and still be relevant.”
The second single from Moth Fire Fantasy is ‘Lost On The Telephone’, which takes a pointed swipe at another contemporary epidemic: smart phone addiction.
“‘Lost On The Telephone’ was inspired by all of the times I would sit down with a group of people and everyone would have their necks bent downwards, nose to their screens, flicking their thumbs up and down, disconnected and preoccupied. It seemed to happen everywhere I’d go,” Gayfer says.
But Gayfer isn’t singing from the perspective of someone who’s above all of this thumb-flicking. “I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to phone usage,” he says. “I see the song not just solely being about somebody else’s smart phone addiction, but my own addiction as well.”
The full-length Moth Fire Fantasy is due for release this month and sees the band dive deep into their curious collection of influences.
“‘Moth Fire Fantasy’ begins with a lot of energy and moves in a playful motion,” says Gayfer. “When Red Worm throws a party this is what it sounds like. As the night moves forward, things start to get a bit blurry and that’s when ‘Trace the Oceans Darling’ steps in. It’s kind of a psychedelic epic posing as a message to my fictitious daughter.
“Shortly after, things slip into more of a political comment with ‘In the Waves’. This song is about living in a capitalist society and what it does to the human spirit.”
The album was largely created via correspondence as Buchanan and Gayfer were unable to visit one another during Melbourne’s stage four lockdown. But despite this, Buchanan says they were able to stay true to their creative principles.
“I find the best music comes from being in the moment and shutting off your internal monologue to allow the music to surface from the depths of your mind. I don’t think theory should ever be used to write music. It should be an expression of feeling, not a mathematical equation.”
Red Worm’s new single ‘Lost On The Telephone’ is out now on Spotify and their new album Moth Fire Fantasy is set for release this month.
For more on the band, check out their Facebook and Instagram.
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