Glasfrosch released a typically enigmatically titled debut album, If You Go Far Enough Into the Sky, You’ll Come Out Underwater in mid 2011. October 2013 sees the follow-up finally emerge, and founding member, singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Justin Ashworth joined us recently to tell us all about the journey he and the band have been on to create Aubades.
“Some of the songs on this album, we’ve [had] the ideas for, and even in the live set, for a while,” he tells us. “This year, we went into the studio, it was time to get them down. It’s taken most of this year to produce it. We tracked all the drums and guitars and stuff, I’ve done all the production and recording myself. That was a bit of an epic learning curve, but that’s been good. I mixed it myself, and it’s going to be mastered this week.”
Whilst the first album was more of a ‘project’ than a full band production, sketches and ideas pieced together, Aubades has been far more of a collaborative effort on the part of the three members, and designed to play in a live setting. Justin is happy to tell us about this, and what he feels are some of the other key differences between the two recordings.
“I guess the first album was a collection of ideas and a lot of experiments,” he recalls, “Every song was born out of one or two strange, weird experiments until they built into songs. Almost like study pieces in a way, like ‘let’s find a way to use this gear, and these influences, and see what comes of it.’ And so much was rejected in that process, or refined into something. And so much of it was just learning.
“A lot of this new stuff has been written with a live band sound in mind,” he continues his explanation, “arranged to work onstage and then kind of documented in the studio in a different way. And yeah, it’s just more of a focused band sound this time. And we made a conscious effort to ‘theme’ the record. Last time, the theme sort of grew into it, post production, this time we kind of let the cat out of the bag.”
So what is the meaning or thinking behind the title Aubades? “This is part one of a two part record,” he explains. “The contrast between the parts is that one is morning and one is night, and this is the morning edition, so to speak. It’s called Aubades, and aubades is a French word for, like a morning poem. Sort of like a serenade, but it’s for the morning instead of the evening, and it’s sort of usually about lovers parting at dawn or something like that.
“So then you’ll have the night time equivalent some time next year,” he continues, “part two, and we’ll put them out as a double record.”
Part one is to be released digitally this coming weekend, and to be launched on the same day in a live sense as well. Part two will follow at some stage next year. “Yep, it’s coming out on October 27,” he says. “We’re just releasing it online, on our Bandcamp which is Glasfrosch.com, you can download it there. And we’ll re-package it next year when we do part two. And we’re doing our album launch the same night, at The Evelyn,” he continues. “That should be lots of fun.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
