STACK NZ Jul #64

12 / 57

JULY 2014 JB Hi-Fi
12
visit
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.
“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
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.”
We Are For The Wild Places by Avalanche
City is due out on July 3
Avalanche City’s Dave Baxter on his much anticipated sophomore album.
barker’s wild places
Having a different
set of ears on the mix made
me fall in love with the
tracks all again
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.
A Dream Outside by
Gengahr is out now.
Second 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
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.
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.”
MUSIC EXTRAS