Violent Soho

Ahead of a short run of local dates, Violent Soho’s Luke Boerdam talks to DARREN LEVIN about recording with Gil Norton in Wales, having a dartboard in common with Black Sabbath and their decision to relocate to the States.

Archived image 1 withheld pending rights reviewImage details are recorded in the restoration file. “We’re in no man’s land for Australia and New Zealand at the moment,” says Violent Soho singer Luke Boerdam, ironically, from back home in Brisbane. “But our plan for America is solid. We have a label, we have booking agents, a mixer and a release in February next year.”

The quartet – originally from Mansfield in Queensland’s “bible belt” – are currently in Australia for the launch of a 7” featuring covers of ‘Taskforce’ by Razar and ‘My Pal’ by God, and a short run of shows. They will then relocate to New York ahead of the release of their second album, the follow-up to the Dean Turner-recorded We Don’t Belong Here (2006), on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace imprint in early 2010.

The as-yet-untitled album was recorded by Gil Norton (Pixies, Triffids) at the historic Rockfield Studios in Wales where Queen, Black Sabbath and Oasis have cut several classics over the years. And while the band were very much aware of the studio’s place in rock’n’roll folkfore, it didn’t stop them from contemplating a nudie ran, as Boerdam reveals in a candid afternoon chat.

So home isn’t Masnfield anymore?
No no. James [Tidswell, vocals/guitar] and [Luke] Henery [bass] are in Mansfield. I’m here in the [Fortitude] Valley. I moved from the burbs a while ago.

To the uninitiated what’s Mansfield like?
It’s a suburban bible belt with a huge concentration of schools (Catholic schools, private schools), lots of industrial offices, Hillsong church. It’s your good solid Australian suburbia left over from the ’70s and the ’60s that’s now gone up in value. You know, upper-middle class families living there. Boring.

When did you get back to Brisbane?
Two weeks ago today. We’ve just come back from recording in Wales.

At Rockfield. What was it like?
It was quite incredible actually. It was probably the first time as a band where we were all together, all relaxed, all in the one spot, focusing completely on music. That alone was incredible, also the people we were working with. Gil [Norton] is probably the perfect producer for our music and we were working with great engineers. We all got to stay together in the same spot for five weeks. I think that was great for the band. It wasn’t like tour, where everyday you’re going somewhere, you’re worried about how you’re going to pay for petrol. It was the opposite. It was in the middle of the countryside, really quiet, 30 minutes walk from the nearest town. So really we got to focus on just doing the album, putting the songs to rest.

I’m guessing it would’ve been a very different experience to how you cut your first record.
It was the complete opposite. For one, we had enough time to work with some great guitar pedals. Gil has the whole Lovetone [analog] pedal range. They’re pedals from the UK that aren’t made anymore … I spent hours with them, experimenting with sounds. When we recorded the first album, there was no experimentation. It was plug in the two Marshall amps and go. We got to spend a little bit of time thinking about the songs at rehearsal, but it’s different when you have five amps, 12 awesome guitars to choose from and different types of pedals – 12 of which are different types of distortion. You’ve got such a range, such a big choice, that you have to play all of them. It’s the opposite of how we used to work. We’d go in, get in done as raw and live as possible. This time we stripped the songs back and worked on sounds.

Archived image 2 withheld pending rights reviewImage details are recorded in the restoration file. So there’s not as much of a live feel on the new record?
We were genuinely concerned about keeping that raw sound. With bands Gil’s worked with like Jimmy Eat World and The Foo Fighters, he pushed them to perfection. We wanted a bit of that – we wanted guitars that were in tune, we wanted vocals in tune … But we wanted to retain what makes us Violent Soho. We didn’t want it to be chopped together or pieced together from several performances.

We had only talked to Gil on the phone, so it was quite bizarre just hopping off the plane, going three hours straight from Heathrow … Whereas before, we knew Dean [Turner from Magic Dirt]. we had hung out with him on tour. And Gil was the same. He said he usually hangs out with the band before to make sure it’s going to work. But straight from the get-go we were confident, we trusted him. You can tell he always looks at projects for what it is, for what the band is. He walked in one night and we were playing this song really atrociously and he said, “Nah nah. That’s you guys. That’s your band. I don’t want to change it, I just want to make sure we capture the best versions of your songs.”

We had far more control than we though we would. We thought the label would be more involved, but they completely stayed out of it. Gil, although really controlling over things like guitars being in tune and vocals being recorded correctly, gave us a lot of control. And that’s what we wanted, that sense of creative control.

So Thurston didn’t pop his head in at any point?
No [laughs]. I’ve been doing interviews most of the day and everyone’s asking, “So, what’s it like having Thurston Moore as your boss?” We signed to that label because of the bands on there and the ethic. We fit in over there. The other great thing is that Universal are behind us as well. Thurston’s [still] our boss, but we got more money than an up-and-coming indie band to go touring with and to make a record with. However, we have this creative bubble of protection, so no-one tells us what to do in the studio … He [Thurston] will give us feedback and he has to approve anything. But in terms of actual contact with Thurston, it’s not an everyday thing.

“We’ll just keep taking as many opportunities as we can. Whether it’s posting on Facebook or in a van touring, it’s work work work.”

Was Gil Norton his suggestion?
Yeah. There were a couple producers on the table. There was Butch Vig [laughs], there was John Agnello, who’s done Sonic Youth. Thurston personally recommended him, but with John Agnello, he’s known for stepping out of the process … We wanted someone to be a bit pushy because otherwise we might as well re-record what we already had. Five songs on the album we’ve already released, so there needed to be some form of correction, of change, someone pushing the band in the studio … So Thurston called Gil, they had a big chat and he sent the songs to him. Gil heard it and he really liked it. He had to move bands around and organise a studio, Gil called in a lot of favours for us … It was refreshing that he wanted to do it because he just liked our songs.

It must be kind of surreal, as someone that grew up in the ’90s, to talk about Gil Norton and Thurston Moore, not as mythical figures, but people that you know and work with.
It’s funny, we’ve gotten used to it now … Now and again though, we do sit back and reflect. Like, “Fuck, that was Thurston Moore.” [Laughs] Gil would tell us these crazy stories about when he recorded with Charles [Thompson aka the Pixies’ Black Francis] and they would end up being about some of the best Pixies songs you’ve ever heard [laughs]. Sometimes it was like, “What the hell am I doing here?” There was one night – I think it was the first night in the studio when I just met Gil – when I went back to the room, opened the window and these horses galloped by. They looked like they were jumping over the hills. It was absolutely surreal … After a while you get over it and get on with it. You don’t have enough time to sit back and say, “Shit, this is awesome. I should really take some photos.” [Laughs]

Were you in Freddie Mercury’s room at the time?
[Laughs] I don’t know. We all had our own rooms. There was a really big apartment at the studio. I remember one night I was lying in bed and was thinking about Robert Plant, Joe Strummer, Freddie Mercury and all the people that worked at the studio. And I just thought about how many people would’ve been there with them. I started thinking, “Wow, this bed looks old. Oh God, I wonder what would’ve happened on this bed.” [Laughs] I also remember us obsessing over this dartboard. We had been playing on this dartboard for three weeks – we created our own little competitions and everything – and then we read that Black Sabbath religiously played darts on the very same dartboard. Not Queen or Oasis, but Black Sabbath playing on this dartboard.

The studios were incredible, but I don’t know if we actually slept on Freddie Mercury’s bed. Although we did hear an Oasis recording of Liam and Noel Gallagher arguing in the studio about rock stars acting out of control. Liam was trying to get Noel to throw a guitar out the window … He was like [in a British accent], “I’m not about that.” And Liam was like, “Just fucking do it. You’re a rock star.”

Archived image 3 withheld pending rights reviewImage details are recorded in the restoration file. So I take it there were no rock star antics then?
[Laughs] No. The owner gave us this story about how the recording industry isn’t doing well at the moment. And while this studio was doing well, lots of others were closing down … Gil also managed to get us a reduced rate for the accommodation, so once we found that out we were actually quite polite. We made sure we took care of our plates.

Guess you didn’t want to band that burns Rockfield down.
[Laughs] No. We really wanted to do a nudie run through, because they have coach tours for people who wanted to stay in the same room as Robert Plant. It’s kind of sad really that they have to support the studio like that. Anyway, we were so close to doing a nudie run, because all these 40-year-old ladies had come up for a hen’s night. But then we started thinking, “What if they don’t pay?”

Moving on, you guys are relocating to New York? Is it an open-ended ticket?
Violent Soho will be living and touring in New York for about a year: six months before the release and a few months after. After that we need to work out what we want to do. Do we stay here if the album is working? Do we go back home, or do we do another short tour of America? If the album’s a complete failure and we’re dropped from the label, I don’t know [laughs]. We’re not permanently relocating, it’s just a 10-month to one-year stint of touring. Even though we’re located in New York, we’ll barely be there because we’ll be touring a lot.

Does the album come out internationally before it comes out here?
To be honest, we don’t know what the plan is for Australia, because next year is all about America. We’ve left the New Zealand/Australia part of the plan open because we haven’t found a label. We had an offer but we didn’t take it. We just didn’t feel comfortable. We didn’t know what we wanted as a band or how much work we had to do … That was a couple years ago and we haven’t been able to find anything [since].

Archived image 4 withheld pending rights reviewImage details are recorded in the restoration file. Ideally, we want to find someone like Ecstatic Peace, who we’re really comfortable working with: we know they’re going to market this album the right way, they’re not going to make us do anything lame and that they’re going to work their butts off. We haven’t found anyone like that [in Australia] yet, but maybe that will come. We don’t have a mix of the album yet, so it’s not like anyone’s knocking on our door, trying to sign us in Australia. For all they know, the album could be shit. But [not having a label] enables us to come back to Australia, put out the vinyl and tour with an awesome band of our choosing [Talons]. We don’t have a label to kind of say, “You know what, we need you to sell 10,000 records, so we need you to do this.”

Do you think your music is more conducive to an American market?
Yeah, to be honest … Obviously, we have a lot of American influences … We want to be as fucking relentless as Black Flag on stage and they [American audiences] really love it. Americans know why you’re doing it, they know where you’re coming from. They can see a difference between a band like us and Nickleback … We’re going there with the mindset of giving people an alternative to bands like that.

So many Australian bands have gone over to the US and the UK early on, built up a following, and imported some of that success back. It usually doesn’t happen the other way.
Yeah, that’s true. But we’ve never thought about it as a choice, that we’ll tour America first and then Australia. We’ll just take whatever we can get [laughs]. If you look back at our touring history, we’ve even toured with Faker. If you get offered a tour that you’re going to get paid enough to cover the whole thing and you can get in front of 14 venues in two weeks, do it. Who cares who it’s with? Playing in front of 15-year-old kids who’ve never heard distorted guitars in their lives is better than staying at home doing nothing … We’ll just keep taking as many opportunities as we can. Whether it’s posting on Facebook or in a van touring, it’s work work work.

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Tour dates here.