STACK #140 Jun 2016

MUSIC NEWS

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window; there’s not much more than that. You get to a point where you hear that squeal of brakes and feel the train slowing down, and then you see a wooden hut or something, and it feels like the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to you. I just love that thing where your brain really starts escaping from all that nonsense that you throw at it every day.

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INTERVIEW

J amie Hince is remarkably buoyant for a professional guitarist who almost lost a finger to gangrene. “It went really dark red,” the sweet Brit explains to us. “The weird thing was there was just no definition on my finger. There were no knuckles or anything, and it just became this cylindrical, painful, throbbing thing.” Although he’s recovered from the deep infection that “rotted [his] whole tendon” (the result of a cortisone injection into a badly broken bone), he can’t play guitar – at least not like he did on The Kills’ previous albums. But that’s OK. “Something like this makes you really stop and re-think everything,” he muses. “I was at a point where I was a bit disillusioned with guitar music. I felt like it was so referential and not doing anything new. I decided I was going to spend more time being a producer, so I put a studio together.” Inspired by the dub methods of iconoclastic Jamaican producers Lee “Scratch” Perry and King Tubby, Hince bought a 1968 mixing desk with "old JAMIE HINCE THE KILLS

You’re just there on your own with a newborn brain, with nothing going on in it, and you start thinking about bizarre things.” That intensive writing time and Hince’s new studio have given Ash & Ice a powerful, reverberant feel which the musician credits to some kind of consistent thread that’s knotted around himself and his partner-in-musical-arms. “I just love that about programming and drum machines; that no matter how lug-headed your guitar sounds, you can make your music sound like anything. One record I wanted it to sound like The Cramps, the next record Cabaret Voltaire, and then I wanted it to sound like Massive Attack. I always wanted that for my band, to be able to make totally different music that somehow is held together by me and Alison. Even if the song is like a string quartet, it still sounds like The Kills.”

Ash & Ice by The Kills is out June 10 via Domino. They're on tour next month; go to thekills.tv for details.

compressors and echo chambers and reverbs", and started experimenting. But writing the songs for Ash & Ice – his fifth record with bandmate and vocalist Alison Mosshart – occurred far away from that environment. A fan of Russian art and literature (shout-out to Bulgakov!), Hince spent two weeks penning ideas in a carriage on the notoriously barren, almost 10,000 km-long Trans-Siberian Railway, which traverses the entirety of Russia from Moscow in the west to Vladivostok in the east. “You’re so starved of anything f-cking interesting,” he presses. “Really, it’s just silver birch trees out the

MUSIC

INTERVIEW

click of the drumsticks as they’re laid down at the end of the heartbreaking belter If You Could See Me Now . “I love it when you can hear Neil Young cough in On The Beach . I love it when John Lennon says ‘cookie’ in Hold On . I love it when Cat Power’s voice breaks in a lot of her early stuff,” Russack says. “It’s like a tiny window into what’s happening in the studio and an insight into what the artist is experiencing – and the artist’s imperfections.” In A New State ends up an utterly entrancing piece of art, which allows your own imagination to meander through its tracks. “I never like to over- do things, and I appreciate and have been inspired by artists who follow the same philosophy,” Russack explains. “I like lyrics [and guitar solos] that give the bare minimum, but in doing so, leave the listener wondering.”

T he “partly instinctual and partly intentional” sense of space amid Emma Russack’s slow, salt-flecked and honeyed In A New State puts the Narooma-born musician’s tracks in their own spot, right at the top of the 'soft-breathed singer- songwriter' pile; little electronic touches span what is essentially a really anaglogue, elemental-sounding album, which Russack created with the support of producer John Lee. “John helped me to see that I was totally capable of it,” she says of the ethereal melodies she plays on electric guitar. “When I was a teenager I would record songs to GarageBand and play all these gnarly guitar solos with some seriously sweet effects. This album felt like a return to that time.” Along with Lee’s Kawai organ, Liam “jazzhead” Halliwell’s intricate basslines, Lee’s 200-year-old Collard & Collard piano, and lofty, uncluttered drums, all the little signs of life are preserved right down to the EMMA RUSSACK

In A New State by

Emma Russack is out June 10 via Spunk.

JUNE 2016

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