STACK NZ Jul #64

EXTRAS

MUSIC

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Sitting down with FElix Bushe gengahr

Q1/ How does one pronounce the name of the band, and how did it come about? It's 'Geng-ar' – we basically stole it from Pokemon and changed the spelling. We were called 'Res' when we put our demos online. When they started to attract some heat, we got an email from a rapper called Res saying ‘oh, I see you have the same name as me?’ So we had to change it. We gave ourselves two days to come up with a new name. We figured all the cool names had been taken and it had gotten down to putting two cool words together. That sounded pretentious, so we just thought we’d go with something silly; we weren’t taking ourselves too seriously. Q2/ You were all at school together: what bands did you grow up listening to? We were just told we’ll be playing with The Strokes at Hyde Park: if you’d have told 18-year- old me that I’d be doing that, I never would have believed it. My taste is more varied: I was into punk and metal. You can shed your skin entirely, that’s the nature of being young and playing music. I now listen to an array of stuff – Ariel Pink, Connan Moccasin, Kurt Vile, Deerhunter is a favourite. You am I, Tame Impala... people who do interesting things with guitars. Q3/ So lots of Australian and NZ music? We weren’t listening to much UK music when we were writing this album, we were listening to lot more US and Australian and NZ music. Pavement, Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth were huge for us as well. We write pop, but it comes from a darker place. Q4/ You're all ex-art school mates, is that why the videos and artwork are so distinctive? We’ve got a strong handle on that side of things. It’s all meaningful. I work in a very visual way with the lyrics when I’m writing. It’s a privilege to make art and music at the same time. I’ve done the treatments for all our clips, except the first one that was done by a child. I just oversaw it. I met this smart kid Nico, at a summer camp where I was. I found his parents and asked if they'd let him make a video. He wrote the treatment out, cast all his friends, and shot it.

Avalanche City’s Dave Baxter on his much anticipated sophomore album. barker’s wild places

S econd albums can be daunting affairs for any artist. But when your debut included a Silver Scroll winning No.1 hit single, the weight of expectations are much bigger than usual. However, Dave Baxter – aka Avalanche City – sounds pretty relaxed about the release of his eagerly-awaited second album We Are For The Wild Places , the

As with his first, We Are For The Wild Places was written and recorded at the home studio he dubs ‘The Tree House. He also produces and plays most of the instruments himself, although some friends did help out on some of the tracks. However, when it came to mixing, he sought out the services of former Death Cab To Cutie guitarist Chris Walla.

follow-up to his top five 2011 debut Our New Life Above the Ground . The latter included the surprise smash Love Love Love , which spent 19 weeks – the first three at #1 – in the top 40 after being used as TV2’s signature theme tune.

“I sent over the tracks to him then I went over to Seattle, and we hung out while it was mixed. It was good to have him sit there

Having a different set of ears on the mix made me fall in love with the tracks all again

and try out different things, and get different

perspectives on the tracks. “I had spent so much time obsessing over the songs. You write it, you record it, you produce it, you think about every single aspect of it, and by the end of the process, you just end up hating the songs! So it was really, really good to have his outside opinion. Having a different set of ears on the mix made me fall in love with the tracks all again.”

However, he insists he hasn’t felt under any pressure to try and repeat the feat with his new record. “ Love Love Love was such a random thing to happen,” Baxter reflects.“I feel like it was only because of the TV2 thing that it went that big. So I try not to think about it too much – and you can’t approach songwriting from that perspective, otherwise it will mess with you. You could write the best song in the world but if it doesn’t make it, you will start wonder what is wrong with it.”

A Dream Outside by Gengahr is out now.

We Are For The Wild Places by Avalanche City is due out on July 3

JULY 2014 JB Hi-Fi www.jbhifi.co.nz

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