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Faker are rocking it out at the Brisbane Ekka in August so we chat about what to expect from this hot band! The lights of the city come on one by one, forging their defences against the encroaching darkness. There’s a killer on the loose tonight, but... more
Interview
Access All Areas.net.au: You guys have had a big year, playing the aussie festivals, the triple j one night stand & other things, how are you guys doing at the moment? Faker: Yeah its all good for us, we’ve had lots going on since the release of our record. It’s been really good for us we’ve been constantly busy, with little hometime, that is like only 2 nights at home in a week for the moment. We’ve been spending some time writing & demoing some new material as well which we’re having fun with.
Access All Areas.net.au: You have recently had the digital release of the single “are you magnetic” Can you tell me about this single? Faker: Ok, well this song is about the breakup of a relationship, it is like all these things which are involved between two people & everything that ends. The message I was looking to put comes through the verses & chorus I feel and its always good to look at yourself relating to issues like these which effect yourself in everyday life.
Access All Areas.net.au: Your new record, “Be The Twilight” has been successful in promoting the band into the mainstream markets through your popular singles. How do you feel the new record has contributed to the recent success of the band? Faker: Well you gotta think about that really, cause success is really something intangeable & something you can’t get caught up in. For us with success, its really just about people asking about our music & listening to it, also with our live shows, having a crowd of people singing along to the songs & having fun to our music, cause music is communication which binds us together. So that’s the kind of things we look at when you talk about success with regards to the record.
Access All Areas.net.au: Earlier this year the band had a sudden change of lineup through the departure of Paul Berryman in March this year to be replaced by Lucio Pedrazzi. Was this change beneficial to the band & how did Lucio come to join the band? Faker: Yeah with this its been really smooth and easy for us, with the replacement of Paul with Lucio. We found Lucio at one of our shows, which was actually Paul’s farewell show, so we met him & he auditioned for us & we liked what he did. We had about 10 or so other drummers audition for the spot, but what Lucio had really felt right & sat well with the rest of us. Lucio really fitted in well, but for him it really seemed abit daunting, coming from Italy & having english as a second language, to come from playing to 10 or 20 people to playing in front of 10000 people at the one night stand gig, so it’s been a transitional process, but its working well.
Access All Areas.net.au: Your single, “This Heart Attack” was the no. 5 song in this years Triple J Hottest 100 chart. Was this a surprise to you & how did you feel about where the song ranked? Faker: Oh yeah, of course we were surprised, the ranking certainly was more than we expected. You know we were there on the day as we had been contacted for an interview on the day & we were just there waiting & it got longer & longer & the countdown got on & we were kinda thinking they’d forgotten us or something. It turned out to be alright, well more than alright I guess, cause they called us up & yeah it was no. 5 for us. Its kinda a picture of where we were at, cause a couple years back we had our song “hurricanes” come in around 21 or so, so its an improvement & we can see ourselves getting better in the future.
Access All Areas.net.au: This year you have done such shows as the big day out & the triple j one night stand to name a couple, how were these shows for you to play & were there any memorable experiences? Faker: Well for us every show has a special or memorable moments, whether it’s the crowd or the way the set is, theres always something. Over summer the big day outs were great, with really big crowds for our sets & lots of people singing & dancing to our stuff, which was really cool. The one night stand in Colly for us was really great, the crowd was massive & to play over there with the response we got was just great, so our shows are going really good for us.
Access All Areas.net.au: On Saturday, August 16 you will be playing the Nova Live & Loud at the EKKA in Brisbane. How was it that Faker came about playing this show? Faker: Well basically, they just got in contact with our management & it got organised. When it was organised we were told about it & yeah its exciting, it should be a good time, there’s a bunch of great bands playing as well so it’ll be good and yeah, hopefully we get plenty of our fans coming along for a good time.
Access All Areas.net.au: With this show in Brisbane, you will be playing alongside Intercooler. Are you excited to be doing the show alongside these guys? Faker: Yeah we’re excited, intercooler are a great band doing good things. They’ve been around for a while & have been consistently producing great stuff, so it will be a good show to play with good bands & hopefully a good crowd.
Access All Areas.net.au: At the show, can the faker fans expect to see anything new or different from the faker live show, or just the same great live experience? Faker: Well we’re not going to put any pressure on ourselves to do anything new. We’ve got our 2 records & a couple other things, so theres plenty of material there. We’re probably going to be playing a bunch of songs from the new record we haven’t got to palying yet, so it will be different in the set but still the usual faker show.
Access All Areas.net.au: After this appearance, what are the plans of the band, are there tour plans or anything in the works for the band? Faker: Yes, we will be touring through september, being supported by Sydney’s Sparcadia, they are a really good indie rock act & they will be great as supports, so we are excited about the tour. The tour will be at places like the tiviloi in brisbane & the metro in sydney etc, so good venues for our style of music.
Access All Areas.net.au: Well I’d like to thank you for your time, I would just like to ask if you have anything final you would like to say? Faker: No, that’s it, thankyou for the interview time.
Faker play the Brisbane Ekka Nova Live and Loud on Saturday August 16 supported by Intercooler
Interview by Ben Coby
Interview - 15th August 2007 Faker: Hey Dave, how you doin?
Access All Areas.net.au: Good thanks mate, yourself? Faker: I’m good, good-good.
Access All Areas.net.au: You guys have been out of the scene for quite some time now, what have you been up to? Faker: Yea, I just got back on Friday night after 2 and a half months in Los Angeles making a record. Kind of made an album, which is our second record and it’s due out later this year.
Access All Areas.net.au: Have you got a name for it yet? Faker: Yea, it’s called ‘Be the twilight’.
Access All Areas.net.au: Catchy name, how’d you come up with it? Faker: Umm... it kind of relates to what the record is about and where it’s set.
Access All Areas.net.au: How long did you spend making the album? Faker: We did 2 weeks pre-production and 5 to 6 weeks tracking. We worked with a guy called Paul Fox who’s made a bunch of records, one by The Sugarcubes called ‘stick around for joy’, a record by XTC called ‘relations in moments; and a whole bunch more. It was kind of very intensive, the 4 of us went over and we were hauled up in the studio for a fair chunk of time. We tracked a lot of the record live
Access All Areas.net.au: How much material did you have before going into recording? Faker: We demoed like 45 songs and got them down to 12 songs then worked on tracking them over time. We wrote a few new parts over there and kind of developed the songs a bit more. It was good to go to a place that’s away from everything that you know and kind of reassess what you’ve been working on and try to make it make sense in that space.
Access All Areas.net.au: How does the new album differ from your last? Faker: I guess the last album was about being nostalgic and pining for stuff and this record is a bit more in the moment about stuff that’s happing at the time. Like being in situations that you might have to change and working out when you need to find time for yourself. There’s a song called ‘Killer on the loose’ which is really essential to the record which is kind of a metaphore for maybe being destructive in relationships and stuff like that you know.
Access All Areas.net.au: Have you got a song set to be the first single off the record? Faker: Yea the first song is a song called ‘This heart attack’ which is about how people can make themselves crazy over being in a relationship with someone, or you know any kind of situation and cause yourself undue stress when you don’t really need to. It’s about kind of getting away from that I guess.
Access All Areas.net.au: What was it like to record an album in Los Angeles? Faker: Umm... it was pretty exciting you know. I hadn’t been to L.A. as an adult you know and we set up a life over there. We rented a 2 bedroom flat in a place called Silverlake and lived there you know, It was pretty full-on but, yea it was good.
Access All Areas.net.au: Did you get much time to run-a-muck amongst L.A? Faker: Yea-yea, it was pretty intensive most of the time, kind of recording 6 days a week, 14 hours a day for most of it. But yea, we had our occasional nights out.
Access All Areas.net.au: Have you got any crazy stories? Faker: Umm, nothing off the top of my head…You know, the Hollywood parties and L.A. parties and bars kind of closing at the end of it. Borrowing push bikes and taking a night ride around Griffith Park and ride through the Terminator 2 tunnel and lots of stuff you know.
Access All Areas.net.au: Sounds like you had a ball… Did you get to see any gigs while you were over there? Faker: Yea, I went to see Marcey play at the Hollywood ball, I saw Sonicyouth play day ‘dream nation’ in its entirety, which was awesome, I saw the Smashing Pumpkins play in San Fransico that was pretty hot. I saw LCD SoundSystem and yea I got to see a little bit here and there, it was really good.
Access All Areas.net.au: You guys have got a few gigs lined up later this month? Faker: Yea, we’ve got 3 gigs planned later this month in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Just to kind of get that phase in order after being away. We’ve got to spend a few weeks working out how to play the new stuff live.
Access All Areas.net.au: Have you got any plans for a national tour? Faker: We’ll definitely be on a national tour sooner or later, we’re just playing a few smaller shows to work out how we’re going to play the new stuff live. We just need to give people a bit of time to hear the new stuff so we can kind of play the new stuff to people and have it be exciting for us and for them.
Access All Areas.net.au: Thanks for your time Nathan, it’s been good chatting to you and good luck with the new album. Faker: No problem… Thanks Dave, take care.
Interview by Dave Phillips
Interview: January 2007
Access All Areas.net.au: Firstly congratulations on your nomination for the Triple J Best Australian release of the year… you must be pretty excited? Faker: Yeah it’s fantastic… we’re all very excited!
Access All Areas.net.au: ‘Hurricane’ is the title of your new single; can you tell us a bit about it? Faker: Yeah well its called ‘Hurricane’ and its about a kid who I guess doesn’t fit in and it’s about kind of dealing with I guess, fitting in with society and maybe you have to learn to accept the fact that you don’t fit in and then maybe that’s ok.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’re video clip for ‘Hurricane’ was filmed at the Library, why was the decision made to shoot this video in a library? Faker: Well… because it was a fantastic location. There was a few locations suggested and I thought that place…. Coincidently one of my friends said that he had to take me there to look at this kind of amazing room and he took me there and there’s this enormous space and it’s got a dome and looks really dramatic and as you’ve probably seen in the video, there’s eight corridors and our Director who we’ve worked with before said he’d love to shoot the video as a performance based clip and that he’d like to shoot it in that exact library room and we went with that.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’ve spent a good part of this year warming up the stages for artists such as The Bravery and more recently the Hot Hot Heat tour, what’s it like to get back on the road with your own headlining tour? Faker: It’s, as you say, the last few months all the shows have been support shows and they’ve been heaps of fun and always great playing on bigger stages and playing with international acts which is fantastic but there’s always something, it takes the stakes higher when you’re doing a headlining show and it’s more exciting because of that. There’s more time to do sound checks and it’s all about you so I think that it makes it a bit easier in that respect and we’re really looking forward to it. We’re always wanting to do our own shows and we’re really excited to be getting back out there.
Access All Areas.net.au: It’s a well known fact that Faker put on a killer live show, so for those who haven’t experienced one of your shows yet, can you tell us what fans can expect from a Faker show? Faker: Ummm, oh crickey… hopefully a really exciting show… I mean we hope that we take the songs on the album and give them a new life or even a life of their own when we do them live. Once we arranged the songs and decide what to play the hardest thing is getting a bunch of songs record on an album and translate that emotion that you focused so much on in a studio and communicating that to the audience and we try and make that as exciting as we can.
Access All Areas.net.au: I know there’s the saying what goes on the road stays on the road but cmon can you tell us any stand out roadie stories? Faker: I don’t know – our last show we played at the Hot Hot Heat tour, we were flying from Melbourne to Brisbane and we had a big night the night before and we only just made it to the airport fifteen minutes before the flight left and we had four tones of gear that we had to check in and as we were waiting to check in we noticed that we had actually lined up in the Virgin Blue line and we were flying with Qantas…. So we missed that flight and booked on the next flight out and then we realized that we had to go and get some bags that we left so Paul and I went and got them and the two of us had just missed that second flight… we booked on the next flight which was the last one out that day and luckily there was two spots left on it and we literally got in to Brisbane about 20 minutes before going on stage… we jumped in to a cab and kind of just walked straight on stage. It was actually a really exciting day… so much went wrong and yet it all came together still and I think that was one of the best shows we played.
Access All Areas.net.au: You guys are heading overseas for the first time in November – to the UK… what is it that you’ll be doing there? Faker: We’re not going over there to release the album yet, but to do some shows over there… whatever shows we can find we’ll do and we’ll do small showcases as well. We’re playing in Perth at the end of October I think it is and that night of the last show at 2am we fly to the UK and 8 hours after we are in the UK we do our first show. It will be kind of interesting to see what the UK thinks of us.
Access All Areas.net.au: Are there plans to release an album over there? Faker: Yeah – as soon as someone will release it… we’ll go over there and see how it pans out and hope that people like it and get some interest and stuff. I mean if someone says to me tomorrow that they’re going to release our album there then that will be fantastic news but it’s really not up to us.
Access All Areas.net.au: So what are your plans after this single and tour? Faker: Definitely another album is in the works… we’ve got lots of material that we have been working on over the last few months so it will be great to spend some time developing them but it’s not urgent so whenever it happens it happens but its definitely on the books for next year and definitely more touring and muster up more shows!
Biography
Faker are rocking it out at the Brisbane Ekka in August so we chat about what to expect from this hot band!
The lights of the city come on one by one, forging their defences against the encroaching darkness. There’s a killer on the loose tonight, but it’s no werewolf - this time, what you fear is human. It might even be you.
To a band that studies the sinister side of human experience, the twilight, that moment of suspension between light and dark, holds endless fascination. Singer, songwriter, and founding member of Faker, Nathan Hudson, admits that it’s always been one of his nightmares. “I’ve had a fear of twilight ever since I was a kid,” he says. “Anything could happen.”
There comes a time when fears must be faced, sacrifices made, choices stated, hands forced. And for Hudson, that’s what the new record addresses. “The last record was caught in a place of nostalgia… essentially this record is about change - and making it happen.”
Faker is a band which knows how to make it happen. If any restraining influences were detectable on 2005’s runaway success Addicted Romantic, they have vanished into the night on this, Faker’s second full-length album. It’s up-front, fierce, and in the moment, but without being studied or overly aggressive. It moves in that suspended light where possibilities seem to multiply. It’s a startling achievement which Hudson credits to the closeness of the members.
“Six to nine months before we made the record we had to figure out how to communicate again,” says Hudson. This was the moment of departure of Phil Downing on guitar, a close friend of Nathan’s who left to pursue other projects. With the tighter team of Hudson, Nic Munnings on bass, Paul Berryman on drums, and Stefan Gregory on guitar, Faker is closing in on its vision like a serial killer.
“The arrangements are more stripped back because we’re playing as a four piece and centralising one guitar,” he says. “Simplifying the roles allowed us to take more creative leaps in other ways.” And it has certainly allowed the band to face their demons.
Single, This Heart Attack, with its precarious intensity, (”I’m about to flat-line”) is a song about escaping dangerous situations – “acknowledging that your head’s about to explode,” as Hudson puts it. And then there’s Sleepwalking, a habit for which Hudson is infamous. This track is about “being on autopilot, feeling like you’re not in control… fighting relationships that don’t evolve.”
Voodoo Economics, with its anthem of “I want danger” is the cure for those horrors, and Hudson pinpoints it as a song about risk-taking, telling us “not to be scared of… real life,” despite the climate of fear in which we live.
Faker have learned that once their fears are faced, the possibilities are endless - which is why, perhaps, BE THE TWILIGHT comes across as such a decisive statement. For all its fascination with the dark side of the human psyche, this record has a maturity and cohesiveness that are rare in the hedonistic world of rock n roll.
But don’t expect too much seriousness. Fans of Faker’s eclectic, chaotic danceability, which mixes 80s influences with the raw mania of twenty-first century life, won’t be disappointed. Killer On The Loose is a fine example of the driving post-pop rhythms that can drag you onto the dance floor like a thing possessed.
Hudson describes the manic excitement of Death Beach Party as “the most fun you can have leaving a trail of bodies on the beach.” It’s also “a location point for the record,” he explains. “It’s set at that time of day when it could be an ordinary night, or it could turn into insanity.” Which is usually about five minutes before Faker take the stage.
BE THE TWILIGHT is produced by Paul Fox, who has recorded such diverse bands as The Sugarcubes and They Might Be Giants. Hudson describes him as “a great equaliser” who facilitated the band’s vision rather than imposing his own. Fox has captured the essence of the Faker live experience, which often teeters on the brink of chaos. “Paul made a point of tracking everything as live as possible and you can feel that energy of the whole band interacting.”
This is particularly true of the plaintive Kid, Please Try Harder, a song that’s vocals were recorded in a single take. The theme of falling apart provides what Hudson describes as “the point of emotional crisis” on the record - but he is quick to point out that “the record gets through that.”
Dumb Mistakes, written while Hudson was travelling in Cambodia, is “a friendship love song” and the warmth of this track exemplifies the emotional maturity of this release.
Mixed by Mark Needham and engineered by Curt Schneider, the magic took place in Curt’s Garage in the heart of Los Angeles - an intense experience. “The studio itself is relatively small - it’s strange to be surrounded by a city where everything’s so huge and to be in a tiny box. But it kept the record intimate and kept us all close,” he says.
“We came over here with the idea of embracing a Barton Fink, film noir thing - this city has so much potential for destruction, things going wrong - or even right sometimes,” he adds wryly.
“The city has aspects of something bubbling under the surface, or something masked - and I think we landed on the good side of it.”
If the dark side has a good side, BE THE TWILIGHT is the soundtrack to finding it.
