Thousand Needles In Red

The brand new single from Queensland alternative heavy rock band Thousand Needles In Red, the epic Into Eternity has special significance – both for vocalist (and also Butterfly Effect frontman) Clint Boge, and especially for guitarist and founding member Tristan ‘Triz’ Bouillaut, whose father passed away when Tristan was young. His father became the subject for what is a very powerful and emotive song, lyrically and musically, and it’s a very chatty Clint Boge who is happy to explain the meaning behind the tune, and the song’s evolution, from his home in Brisbane.

"Triz’s dad passed away really quite tragically when Triz was just a little kid," Clint explains, "to an illness they still don’t have a name for. They couldn’t tell the family what it was… so he flew to France – because his dad is French and that’s where they’re from. They thought they might have a better chance of having access to a lot of doctors from Europe. With Australia being down the bottom of the world, they didn’t have access to the best treatment, and with technology the way it was back then, there wasn’t even a mobile phone around. But in his final hours he was telling a story to Triz’s Godfather, about how ripped off he felt that he wasn’t going to spend his life, and watch his sons grow.

"And so Boris (Triz’s Godfather) relayed the story back to Triz," he continues, "and Triz told me [about the story] not long after Triz sent me the music for this song. The lyrics just really came about, just fell into my head and fell out of me.

"I called Triz and I said ‘Look man, this song’s really about your dad, and are you cool with me writing this song for you?’ And he said ‘man I wouldn’t have anyone else do it’," he nods.

"So I thought ‘fuck, I really have to get this right. ‘Cos this really has a lot of significance’," Clint concedes. "I sent back the rough draft and Triz said ‘You’ve got it, that’s awesome‘. And it was almost like Triz’s dad was sitting with me when I wrote it… I was in the car driving along, listening to the track on my iPod," he recalls of how he managed to write the lyrics in one seeming burst of inspirations, "and I had to keep singing the same lyrics over and over again, so I could remember them.

"Obviously I couldn’t really stop on the highway and jot them down, or whatever! So that was the trickiest part, remembering the lyrics. What you’re hearing is pretty much the first draft of the lyrics."

With the strong and emotional meaning behind the lyrics, the music needed an earthy production and vibe to match the words, which is exactly what the band have achieved with Into Eternity. Basically what you hear when you listen to the track are about as close as you can get to the raw sounds and performances that the band produced originally, with minimal influence of studio trickery. "Doing Into Eternity, the best word I can use to describe it was ‘fluid’," Clint recalls. "It was really good, the song came together and it was organic, the way the lyrics came about, the way it went down, recording it in the studio. It was just ridiculous; I’ve felt like that’s just the way that songs should be made," he figures.

"We used an all-natural drum sound," he explains further, "and we tweaked a couple of things here and there, but there was no sound-replacing done on any of the tracks. A tiny little bit of auto-tuning done on a couple of my vocal lines. We got the right take, the vibe was right, but there was one of my notes I just trimmed the top off and just went a little bit flat. But for me that’s totally cool. When the performance was right, the delivery was correct.

"But yeah," he smiles, "we’re into organic sounds, man. That’s something we want to bring back to the album. We want big drum sounds, the best way I can describe it is like John Bonham! Old Led ‘Zep sound, mixed with a Papa Roach guitar sound, with a clean glassy vocal, with just a real thick fuckin’ Sevendust bass sound. So there you go, they’re the sounds we’re hunting," he laughs.

The debut full length album from Thousand Needles In Red is not far away, with many tracks written, recording time booked and a release date slated for later on in 2011. "We have a recording date," Clint reveals. "We’re in at the start of May. And we’ll be finished the last week of June. And then, we’re tentatively looking around September for the release of the album. Which is great, it’ll be here before we know it," he chuckles.

"We’ve got 16 tracks that we’ve put together," Clint goes on, "which is an amazing luxury to have. The only thing we’ve got to do now is just decide which ten tracks are going to be used. We pretty much get to tailor the album to pretty much how we want it to sound. Making sure there’s continuity from song to song, and taking into account if we want to throw a curve ball at the listener we can.

"But it’s awesome man; I’m just stoked about this whole process."

In the meantime, Thousand Needles In Red fans can satiate their hunger for the band on their upcoming Into Eternity tour, which pulls into Melbourne and Victoria mid-to-late March.

THOUSAND NEEDLES IN RED’s Into Eternity tour rolls into Victoria at The Bended Elbow Geelong on Thursday March 17, The Espy Gershwin Room, St Kilda on Friday March 18, The Ferntree Gully Hotel on Saturday March 19 and Karova Lounge, Ballarat on Wednesday, March 23. Info and tickets from myspace.com/thousandneedlesinred.