Sky Between Leaves no originário através de uma historinha contada por Jarvis Cocker, e que se prepara para lançar seu debute com um time de produtores de primeira grandeza, leia-se Pat Collier (J&MC, Primal Scream) e Brett Shaw (Daughter & Swim Deep) além dos dois pés fincado no Paisley Underground e na psicodelia pos punk de Echo & The Bunnymen e no lirismo do House of Love, simplesmente os londrinos cativaram de imediato este que vos escreve.
O.B.E. (Out of Body Experience) é uma das músicas perfeitas, pra ouvir, ouvir de novo e assim diversas vezes.
Fiquem espertos.....
***** Interview with Sky Between Leaves *****
Q. When did SBL starts? Tell us about the history.
SBL started out essentially as a bedroom project. I guess it's a generational thing. That's the way most of my favourite bands at the moment (Deerhunter, War on Drugs) started as well. You see, technology isolates us from each other but at the same time gives us the opportunity to make and record music very easily, holed away at home.
After a while the project had a shape, an idea, but was still lacking a name. Then I watched an interview with Jarvis Cocker. He was narrating an episode of his childhood, about how meningitis left him seriously myopic and turned the world into a blur. And then, he told, he was given his first pair of glasses. He immediately looked up at the treetops and finally realised that what he thought to be holes in the trees were actually the sky between leaves! Suddenly that sentence tied it all in. Except that instead of a pair of glasses, music was my way out of darkness.
But it would all have gone awry if I hadn't met Julie and Brenno. Expanding into a proper band transformed our sound. It became more organic and rounded. They are not only good musicians, but multi instrumentalists (Brenno plays bass and synths; Julie plays drums, percussion and piano). That makes all the difference. We always have people saying how massive we sound for a three piece band.
Q: Who are your influences?
We are heavily influenced by Neo Psychedelia and Paisley Underground. We own a lot of course to 1960s psychedelia and krautrock, but in a more abstract way. I'd say The Church, House Of Love, Echo And The Bunnymen, Neu!, Psychic TV, Love and Rockets and Jesus and Mary Chain are very present in our sound.
Q. Make a list of 5 albums of all time
House Of Love - House Of Love (Butterfly)
The Church -Starfish
Rain Parade- Explosions in the Glass
Palace Del-Byzanteens - Lies to Live By
Spiritualized- Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
You won't be necessarily listening to those influences on SBL's songs all the time, but those albums are a constant source of motivation, a reminder of why we wanted to be in a band in the first place.
Q. How do you feel playing live?
Playing live is a wonderful and weird thing. Time spent on stage is impossible to be counted in minutes or hours. It's a time dilation_as if we were at a different pace to reality. And something pretty special happens when we turn our Dreamachine on. We put this flickering device on stage and the combination of sound and light is hypnotising. We feel it and the audience feels it too. At that moment they're not spectators, they're part of an experience.
Q. How do you describe SBL sounds?
It's dynamic and hypnotic, the musical analogue of a Dreamachine. It's a lucid dream, an out of body experience.
Q: Tell us about the process of recording the songs
It starts out as an amalgam of home recorded guitar pedals and electronic drums which we then play thoroughly in our rehearsal studio. The next step is substituting those pre-recorded drums for real ones. We love recording drums with this guy, Brett Shaw, from Miloco Studios because he really knows how to convey a robust and natural ambience. He combines a very interesting acoustic technique with an adjustable ceiling drop which do wonders for reverberation.
We also had the privilege of recording some songs with producer Pat Collier. I've always been fascinated by the sound and mood of early Creation Records captured by Pat and also his work with Robyn Hitchcock and The Soft Boys in the late 70s. I wanted that sort of shine that he extracted from Terry Bicker's guitars. Bicker is my guitar hero.
Q. Which new bands do you recommend?
Vaadat Charigim, Yppah, Pure X , Lumerians, Posse, Weed, Tripwires, The Men, King Dude. Let me stop here, otherwise the list would be too long.
Q: Which bands you would love to make a cover version?
On our first gig we played "I wanna destroy you" by The Soft Boys. At the moment our cover versions are restricted to our spare time in our rehearsal room. Sometimes we toy around with songs we really like. We have a floaty version of Husker Du's Green Eyes. Today by Ride is another favourite. One of them could make its way onto our setlist sometime.
Q: What are the plans for future?
We're now preparing the release of our new single, called Klein Blues. It's inspired by French artist and leading Nouveau Realism figure Yves Klein who first developed a particular shade of blue. It was produced by Pat Collier (JAMC/ HOL/ Primal Scream) and Brett Shaw (Daughter/ Viv Albertine). We should get back on the road by the end of October.
Q: Any parting words?
Nietzsche wrote:“Without music, life would be a mistake.” And you know? Thank him for that!
These days we see the recurrence of extremist ideals and the radicalisation of opinions all over the world. It's happening in Europe, Middle East and certainly in Brazil as well. Apparently the more we conquer in terms of tolerance, the greater the backlash.
But even in this mad world_ as Nietzsche pointed_ music matters. It matters exactly because it is universal and inclusive. That is, at least, what we hope to achieve when we're making music.
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Thanks guys
Thanks guys
