IN a house, on a farm, in rural Pukekohe, the brothers Bloomfield wrote and recorded some songs.
Now, some 20 years later — in a house, overlooking the river, in suburban Gisborne — the brothers Bloomfield are working on taking them to the world.
“We always thought they were pretty good but then time passed, we fought (as brothers do) and the songs were lost . . . we had nothing,” says Robbie Bloomfield of the recordings he made with big bro’ Tomas (Bloomfield) Henry, guitarist Rhys Nicholas and, for some of them, bassist Matty Brightwell.
Geographical distance didn’t help with efficient archiving, either.
Bloomfield had gone first to Wellington then to Melbourne with his band Wretched Skinny (evolved from Flat Hamster Man, which had been founded by Henry) and later Dr Invisiablo. Meanwhile Henry stayed in the Auckland region to work with his new band, Indicator Dogs.
Then, the brothers Bloomfield were reunited back in their hometown of Gisborne — Bloom-field arriving in 2007 with a bad case of burn-out, Henry a year later with some health issues to address.
And just last year, miracle of miracles, brother-in-law Craig Bond found — squirrelled away under his bed — cassette copies of the original recordings.
“We had been talking about those songs and wanted to do something with them but the prospect of dragging them out of our heads after all this time was a bit daunting,” Bloomfield says.
Listening to the nearly 30 songs brought it all back — the intense acoustic guitar, the relentless percussion, the fantastical mixes of everything from spooky psychedelic folk to pre-grunge alt-rock and cowboyesque yippee-ki-yay.
Being copied on “old-skool” cassette, though, meant the quality was dubious. So a couple of months ago the brothers brought in their mate, guitarist and “computer whizz” Brendan “Zombie” Crennell, who set to work.
The result was twofold: First, the aim of getting the recordings cleaned-up to demo quality was achieved. Second, Crennell agreed to join the brothers B in delivering the songs to a new audience and a new ensemble, Chalk Insect, was formed.
The trio is serious, Bloomfield says: “This is not something we might do or are thinking about doing . . . we’re committed to giving the songs a second chance and everything is pretty much in place.”
So they have been busy.
In the house, overlooking the river, in suburban Gisborne the band members have already launched into pre-production for the fresh new recordings they plan to make of the original songs.
Tapping into the contacts Henry has made via Indicator Dogs’ various successes, Insect has a manager — music promoter Michelle Bakker, who has moved from Auckland to the United States to be their woman-on-the-ground.
And they are working out the finer details of a deal with United States outfit RadioStar Studios where they will be recorded by resident producer Sylvia Massy, who has produced tracks for bands from Green Jello and Tool to Skunk Anasie, Love & Rockets and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
For their part, the brothers B were pleased to get Massey’s feedback on whether the cache of songs was still current, or whether they had dated in the years since they had been recorded. For hers, Massey told The Guide she was looking forward to working with Chalk Insect “real soon”.
“I find Tomas Henry’s writing and performances to be bold and honest,” she said from RadioStar HQ, located in the somewhat amusingly named town of Weed, California.
“The music is adventurous, and has a sound and feeling that is hard to compare with anything else out there these days,” Massey added. “I expect that our collaboration will yield a colourful collection of songs that listeners will be able to immerse themselves into, for a while losing touch with the hard, cold world.”
So the trio has the drive, the contacts and the contracts . . .
all they need do now is sort out the timing as to when they can travel to the US to record at RadioStar.
It’s all a matter of making sure certain ducks are obe-diently in line, most significantly the schedule of Indicator Dogs, which has rebooted with the “punk-infused heavy rock” album In The Face Of Disagreement (recorded in Los Angeles by vocalist Henry, founding members Val Hunting and Dan Young, and Grammy-nominated US drummer Aaron Rossi).
That could be tricky — Henry recently returned from the US where the Dogs were booked in for a North American tour with art-rock icons Killing Joke.
That tour was canned due to ill-health in the Killing Joke camp, but will next March resume in the UK and Europe. Meanwhile, stickman-for-hire Rossi has a range of commitments that need to be considered, among them gigs with industrial metal six-piece, Ministry.
So if they don’t go soon they may have to wait until after March, which may not be a bad thing given they have appli-cations slowly going through the grants machine.
But Henry says that, whenever it is, they’ll be ready.
“That’s just the nature of the music business,” he says. “No matter how hard you work, it might seem like things are never going to happen. Then, bam!, it all happens at once and you have to be good to go.”
No comments:
Post a Comment