Having released on of our favourite albums of 2014 so far, Eschaton, we’re incredibly excited to see the band live this week at ArcTanGent festival. We had a quick catch up with James from the band to find out a bit more about their fantastic album and what we can expect from their ArcTanGent performance. They play the PX3 stage on Saturday. You’d be pretty damn foolish to miss out!
You recently released your debut album, Eschaton, through Robot Needs Home – you’ve released a fair few EPs over the last few years, was there much difference in the process, recording a full length?
Yes, in fact. It was more or less completely different. Before we just sort of haphazardly wrote music, and eventually we’d have enough songs for a release so would go into the studio and record an EP, often in a disorganised massive rush. Around two years ago we decided to be much more focused- there wasn’t a unifying concept per se, more we were more comfortable with what our sound was and started thinking about what an album would sound like, and eventually it morphed into what it is now. The actual recording process was also simultaneously more fun, rewarding and stressful than anything we’d done before- fortunately Jamie Ward (who produced Eschaton) has the patience of a saint and helped us through the whole thing.
There’s a lot going on when listening to the record, how do you go about writing such songs – do you start with a base and then build them up or do you have a strong idea how you want it to sound to begin with?
Base and build, base and build. Normally it’s just some kind of initial idea, often a bass riff or guitar loop, and also lately we’ve been using electronic samples more. Then we just sort of jam from there and eventually something decent will emerge and it just sort of naturally evolves, along with much debate, into a cohesive piece of music. Sometimes people come with ideas for other parts, but often it’s just “I’ve got this riff” and we see what happens. An example would be Incandenza– that whole song literally just started with the glitchy sample thing, and eventually it was 9 minutes long or whatever once we’d stuffed a bunch of different ideas into it and taken it to its conclusion.
There must be some challenges in recreating your sound for a live performance, how do you overcome these?
Yes, sometimes, but to be honest most of the stuff is written live first – or at least live in the practice room – so it’s really more the other way round in that the record comes afterwards. There are some things we had to work on like Alex having to play to clicks when we use samples, but in general we try and keep a good balance between the very live “guitar, bass and drums” sound and the more textured, varied instrumentation you can hear in places on Eschaton.
You put out your album through Robot Needs Home, how did that come about?
Well we’ve been friends with the guys from Maybeshewill since a gig they played with us in Southampton, and John from the band runs Robot Needs Home. It was kind of a natural partnership with Jamie producing the record, so John offered to put it out, and has been a brilliant source of help and advice throughout the process. So er, thanks John!
ArcTanGent strikes me as the perfect festival for yourselves to perform at – how does it feel to be part of such a bill?
Yeah, pretty damn awesome. If you were to write down a collective list of Waking Aida influences/bands we love, you’d basically have the Arctangent lineup. Bands like ASIWYFA, Alarmist, El Ten Eleven…we’ve been listening to these guys for a while and they really do shape our sound in a big way (hopefully not a derivative way!). So to play on the same bill is amazing, and I honestly can’t praise ATG as a festival highly enough, in all aspects- punters, organisation and above all music.
For people who haven’t seen you before (like myself, sadly), what can they expect from your ATG performance?
Well we’ll be pretty nervous…so be nice! But in general we try and put on a lively show and keep it fun, not too much shoegazing, that kind of thing. It will be a completely new experience for us as well, we’ve never really had an opportunity to play to such a large a captive audience of like-minded fans, so hopefully that shared introduction we’ll have to each other will be a beautiful thing.
After the festival you’ve got a big show with Maybeshewill coming up in October, as well as a tour – what are you most looking forward to in the future?
Ooh tricky one. ATG and the Maybeshewill show are obviously big shorter term highlights. I guess longer term I’m personally looking forward to pushing ourselves musically and seeing what we can produce with album two and how we can evolve as a band. We’d also love to a European tour at some point, so we’re looking into that.
Have you already started working on more material or will you be concentrating on touring Eschaton for a while now?
Yes, we have started writing new material, and I’d expect some of it to be making a live debut in October. We’ll still be playing a fair bit of Eschaton on that tour I’d imagine, but one must always look to the future and all that.
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