Track By Track: Wizard Oz

RICHIE SHILTON and SAM “RUSTY” CROCKET of Peking Tapes made their self-titled new album as Wizard Oz while split between Italy and Melbourne. They recorded it over a mutated version of an older song of theirs, letting the two facets bleed together.

This album was a little different for us to make as Richie moved to Italy for a few years and Rusty is still in Melbourne, so the whole thing was recorded by sending files back and forth and adding bits and pieces over late 2012 and early 2013. It was nice to wake up every few days and see how the songs had developed over the other side of the world. Quite a different process to our other albums, which were all made while living together in a sharehouse.

We decided to use this as an excuse to try something we’d been talking about for a few years, which was to record the whole album over the top of a slowed-down, pitch-corrected and stretched-out version of an old song (which incidentally was ‘Horse Tails’, a three-minute track taken from Flower Days). The idea was to have the album songs coming in and out and kind of blending with the background drone which was doing its own thing, similar to what we do live with tapes. I guess it’s the final take on the idea that started with the track ‘Jungle/Fantasy’, also from ‘Flower Days’, which was instead based on the Jungle Fantasy level of Donkey Kong Country 2.

‘These Days’

We used to do a early version of this track at shows before Richie left for Italy but at that time it was really just a slimy halftime chorus looped over and over. We wanted the album to have a balance between the backing drone and more pop oriented song structures, so we reworked the track and added some form to it. Originally this was track two, but on advice from just about everyone we played the album to we rearranged everything so it could kick off the album.

We made a video to go with ‘These Days’, which we developed in a similar way to the tracks. We had a folder on the internet where we both put short videos of whatever we were up to over the time we were making the album. Then we messed with it a bit until it’s what you see now.

‘I Knew’

This album relied much more on digital recording techniques than any of our previous albums (which we would normally recorded back and forth to cassettes). We’ve always felt like digital recordings can sound precise and cold so we deliberately tried to play with that sound for these songs. All of the drums on this album were recorded at almost double the speed and then slowed down and pitch-corrected. This helped the sounds to blend more with the backing drone but also created this cool effect where the sound of the drums gets distorted by the process in a digital-sounding way. You can hear that effect really clearly on the snare sound on this song.

‘Hold On’

This is the first song we wrote for the album and it became the sonic template for the other tracks. When Richie left for Italy, we had a Dropbox file containing the slowed-down track drone which was cut up into different approximate time lengths according to how long we anticipated we would want each song to go for.

Rusty: I woke up one day and saw that Rich had added these slowed-down drums and underwater-sounding keys to the track and we just built it up from there. It was pretty exciting to see it take shape and realise that collaborating from other sides of the world was going to actually work.

Richie: Yeah, for a while we had the drone just sitting there on the internet, but soon after starting this track I guess you could say we entered a fertile patch where most mornings there was something new – some small change or addition, or the start of a new song – to listen to on at least one of the tracks. Was a really fun time and a strange way to develop an album.

‘Black Bag’

Rusty: I wrote the lyrics to this song after sitting beside my father while he got his first chemotherapy treatment. Having a sick parent is such a strange and difficult feeling. Dad was pretty positive throughout the whole thing but I think at the time I was still coming to terms with it. He’s in remission now, which is a huge relief.

‘Where I Am’ (feat. Ashley Bundang)

We’re both big Zone Out fans and it was so great to have Ashley sing on the album. She has such a natural and unaffected-sounding voice and it totally makes the song.

‘Day by Day’

For a few months this track was just the drums and keys. We really liked them but were at a loss as to how to actually finish it. We kept adding bits and pieces to it for a long time in between working on the other tracks, until finally we wrote the vocal melodies for it and it became a song. Like a lot of this album, the final track is really different to the original components and ideas that kicked it off, but we’re really happy with how it evolved.

Richie: I listened to the final edit of this track for the first time on a long train trip, and it was a perfect moment. So I recorded it as I saw it.

‘Press Closer’

This song was made with simple repetitive loops, a vocoder and a broken tape player with the intention of letting the background drone drift in and out and take the focus in places. We gave this track to Dave [Freudenstein] (Zombie Psychologist) as a bit of a formless base and he made it more of a song when mixing it. Dave generated the metallic sounds by affecting samples from the background drone, layering them back over the song. We love those bits (and we love Dave).

‘Your Side’ (feat. Ashley Bundang)

The blend between the drone and the music on this track is really nice; you can really hear the changes in the drone influencing the whole song.

Richie: I listened to this track one day and Rusty had replaced one of my terrible late-night vocal takes with Ashley. It sounds so much better.

‘One Night’

This song is essentially about girls and death and how short life is.

‘Emptiness and Everything’ (feat. Cam Hassard and Dave Freudenstein)

Rusty: Cam and I have played together for years in different bands. At the moment we’re both playing in Big Tobacco but he also plays sax in about five bands. I had the idea of getting him to improvise over this really cold-sounding drone. He played over it three times without listening to the other takes. The sax lines sync up but it is just a happy coincidence – I think it works really well.

After Cam did his thing I added the drums, Dave anchored it with his bass part and Richie added Space Invaders sounds. It has always felt like a nice way to end the album – the song has a lot of space in it.

Richie: This track was a total surprise one morning; Cam is a genius. He also wrote one of my favourite songs.

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‘Wizard Oz’ is out now digitally for any price via Bandcamp and on cassette through Beko Disques.