“Essentially, it sounds like it’s a long time between records, but it’s not really,” says guitarist Ben Andrews. “There was a lot of touring after Little Joy, then we released the Wrapped Coast single with the remixes, then we did the Sub Pop thing, then we did some more touring.
“We started off writing with programmed drums on Macs, then we recorded around five or six tracks with Cornel [Wilczek, producer], but it wasn’t really My Disco. The writing process wasn’t as fluid or quick, it was really laborious. We scrapped all that, had a bit of a break, then started again in around April last year. We went back to basics, going back to barebones but still utilising different ideas and directions musically. I think we wrote Severe in a matter of months, maybe ten weeks or so, then had a break from it as we’re all living separately in different countries. Then we got to recording it with Cornel, and the mixing.
“It wasn’t all that long if you count the days, just spread out. That’s better for us, it creates the whole synthesis of sounding like an album rather than a collection of songs written over a long period of time.”
While the tyranny of distance has been fatal for some bands, the tyranny of proximity has been just as terminal for others. “I think it’s really healthy if you’ve been a band for more than ten years to sit back and take stock of where you’re at, because it can begin to feel a bit boring, like a job, if you’re constantly jamming for the sake of it,” Andrews says. “I think we worked it quite well with having a break and geographical boundaries, or limitations, because we would get excited saying, ‘OK, we’re recording in six months time’, or touring, or writing. It made it more of an event than an everyday thing. It did make things more expensive and took longer to do in the end, but who’s to say it wouldn’t take that long if we were all living in Melbourne. It’s worked out in our favour and gives everyone space personally. You can see bands that form, play a lot, then get a bit stuck.”
While Wrapped Coast and its remixes compounded a sense of cross-pollination from deep electronic side project Kangaroo Skull (originally a pursuit for Andrews and drummer Rohan Rebeiro, now Rebeiro’s solo project), Severe features next to zero of those stylistic touchstones.
“Consciously we wanted to make something heavier, something sparse and bleak. To do that, we had to slow it right down. You’ll notice that the tempos on Severe are really slow. It is hard to write slow music without it being boring, sounding like a mindless stoner jam or something. It’s still concise with a lot of action in there, but it’s not as four-to-the-floor as Wrapped Coast. Because we wrote it in a short amount of time, it hasn’t got this glaze about it, [which] we’re really happy with. It’s ominous sounding, it’s dark. The title sums it up, I suppose. The intention was to do something bleak, not really focusing on what we’ve done before – what’s worked or not worked. We’re about the process of moving forward.”
Concurrent with their beat-driven flirtations, the My Disco live show evolved into a smoke machine-drenched affair, laden with strobe lighting for full sensory overload – an aesthetic that may not necessarily gel with Severe.
“I think we’re changing it up to have no smoke machine at all, and no lights, just these huge projections a friend of ours has made that’s fully audio interactive. The imagery moves to the way we play and perform. It might not work for every venue, that’s the challenge, but on the right size stage it will look pretty interesting – very minimal lights, having us in darkness, with the focus on projections. That’s the new thing we’re doing.”
While no one would be expecting a greatest hits style show from My Disco, the current setlist draws exclusively from the latest LP. “We just play Severe now, it’s too different. It’s what we always like to do. It can feel mismatched. We’re not the kind of band that can play the whole catalogue, because it’s so different. And I would need another four guitars to remember the tuning and all sorts of stuff. It always seems like a thing where we focus on the project at hand and play that out. There have been some interim times where we have played parts of Paradise, parts of Little Joy, and parts of new stuff. This set is really solid, still incorporating elements of previous years, AKA drum solos, but it’s basically an extended version of the album.”
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
