Luckily for us, Dr Cosmo's Tape Lab's Joe Kane and Stu Kidd haven't wasted any time over the last nine months, instead they've been honing the craft of writing the perfect pop song, taking in the best influences of the last 50 years of pop music and producing what I'm declaring as the album of the year. That's two years running now!
Like all genius songwriters, Kane and Kidd are pushing the envelope of pop and with 'Beyond The Silver Sea' they've courageously explored territories where many if not most, have failed miserably. Yep, I'm talking about the concept album, complete with spoken word interludes! Their bravery has paid off and all of a sudden concept albums seem like the coolest thing in the world.
'Beyond The Silver Sea' is twelve songs of Sci-fi Psychedelic Baroque Power Pop with the emphasis on POP and a further twelve tracks of Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy-esque dialogue courtesy of Adam Smith. The album tells the story of 'Sense Factory' worker Max, troubled by a recurring dream that inspires him to think and look different to everyone else.The songs on the album neatly reinforce the story and will satisfy fans of Nilsson, The Beatles, The Small Faces, Todd Rundgren, Electric Light Orchestra, Super Furry Animals, The Beta Band and even Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds.
'Beyond The Silver Sea' is released on the always outstanding Sugarbush Records on limited silver vinyl on 30th March 2015.
You guys are roughly the same age as me. Am I right in thinking that your parents' record collections were a big influence on you when growing up?
I can't speak for Stu but I got myself into all the music that I listen to and it all stemmed from seeing the opening credits of the movie 'Help' when I was ill on the couch aged 12. My mum and dad weren't massive music fans but they always made sure I had a stereo and whatever tapes I wanted as a kid. My dad liked music but nothing that particularly took my fancy at that age though he had some cool looking records in a bag in a cupboard. He did however buy me Led Zeppelin IV on cassette because I really, really liked the Rolf Harris version and he also took me out and bought me my first electric guitar which was a red Hohner Strat copy.
I was already a big fan of Stuart's work with the Wellgreen and BMX Bandits and have only recently discovered the Owsley Sunshine who are also great. Any more music projects that we need to know about?
I've been involved in various friends bands fleetingly and in a non-writing capacity such as The Fast Camels and The Martial Arts (check 'em out!) but only because I really liked their music and the opportunity came along to join and not have the pressure of co-writing and recording all the stuff. That side of things really took its toll while I was working on the original Owsley Sunshine albums, all my own fault of course. Nic Denholm (my OS writing and production partner) now lives in LA although we have accumulated an impressive collection of transatlantic collaborations we hope to release in the not too distant future.
Off the back of the three Owsley albums I jumped in to making two home recorded solo efforts (Only Joe Kane, Some Soon Time After) just to see if I could do it all myself. They're alright but I find it hard to listen to stuff if I know it's me doing everything on it. I also really enjoy recording and producing for other people and I've worked with quite a few really good acts from around Glasgow such as The Hidden Masters, The Trembling Bells and most recently the wonderful Duglas T. Stewart from BMX Bandits (bringing Norman Blake round to my house for a session one afternoon!) Stu and myself have been working on a bunch of new stuff with Duglas which we hope will end up as part of a very fine pop album at some point in the next year.
Your first album 'Ever Evolving Lounge', which I love by the way, came out less than a year ago and here you are with a brand new album and one without the slightest dip in quality. Have you guys always been this prolific?
We started recording 'Beyond The Silver Sea' directly after we'd done our first song 'Pin The Tail' so it was pretty much straight in and "baws oot" from the start. That was in the period of July 2013 up until maybe December so we got a lot done. We worked mainly on a Monday afternoon every week and initially we were writing and recording two songs a day with maybe an extra day here and there for "sweetening" sessions. We had a few periods of maybe 2 or 3 weeks at a time where we weren't working on stuff because either Stu or myself would be away on tour but we'd be in contact discussing where to go with it and coming up with either more plot elements or discussing songs we thought it would be fun to rip off. We brought Adam in towards the end to flesh out the story we'd created and help join the dots a bit in his inimitable style. He's got a fantastic grasp of obscure sci-fi elements as well as a talent for narrative stemming from his comic book work.
We decided to hold back 'BTSS' and record 'Ever Evolving Lounge' in early 2014 as we thought it would be cool to release a more immediate pop album for our first LP release. We wrote and recorded that album in just over two months in my new flat (where I am now) so we didn't really stop for breath.
Where did you record 'Beyond The Silver Sea'?
'Beyond the Silver Sea' was recorded entirely in my old bedroom in a flat I shared with two other musical friends. We used a Tascam 424 mkIII cassette four track and not a lot of mic's really. We were using (at first) a NADY ribbon mic over the drums which were this weird kids drum set with a military marching drum from 1967 as a floor tom. We used one of those fat Shure bass mic's for the bass drum and a Shure Unidyne III 545 for all the vocals. I bought a couple of cheap old compressor rack units and started putting stuff through them too as we progressed so the sound really changes throughout the album.
The sound changes a lot on the record because we were just trying everything and anything out to facilitate whatever style we were writing in and I think that makes for an interesting and fun listen. We would try and record two live instruments together on a track so there's a lot of tracks with drums and piano or bass and shaker on them (which made things interesting for me at the mix-down stage!)
Making the album was really therapeutic for me as I'd been a bit burnt out for a while and not really doing a lot of my own music before I started working with Stu. It had been nearly five years since I'd worked on anything substantial and I was only tinkering with recording at home in that period so I had to kinda relearn things a bit and experiment again to find my feet. I was on some mad stuff to sort my head out a bit when we were making it and I think subconsciously a lot of the things that had been on my mind for a while fed in to my lyric suggestions but it never felt like it was an outpouring of any sort. It really is a 50/50 collaborative process so you can't afford to get too self indulgent or confessional without sounding like a twat.
I'm not on any drugs and the story makes perfect sense to me. It's a very tight little metaphysical pop-odyssey with a sprinkling of silliness for good measure. (Anyone who wants my convoluted run down of what exactly is going on then feel free to drop me an email.)
I read somewhere that you had to trim down the album to make it fit on to vinyl. How much was left over from the sessions and are they lined up for future releases?
We cut two tracks to meet the running time of two sides of vinyl, 'Girl In Winter' and 'The Clone And I', which are now both available as the "b-sides" of singles. Maybe someone will join the dots and make a version of the album with those two tracks reinstated! We have additional narration from Adam recorded too that filled out the story between those two songs.
What bands new and old are you enjoying at the moment?
We've been listening to a lot of Brian Eno as well as other electronic and weird-noisy stuff in the last year and that's been feeding in to our latest recordings I think. I've also been obsessed with the two incredible Country Funk compilations released in the last few years so I'm always trying to cop one of those grooves. We're just putting the finishing touches to our third album which is called 'Cosmic Tone' and we hope to find someone to release that within the year. It's a step forward for us and covers a lot of new territory- not least a 22 minute long song suite about a boy who buys a pair of haunted pyjamas from a charity shop!
I'm glad 'Beyond The Silver Sea' is being released on vinyl. What's your opinions on the Vinyl comeback?
Getting 'Beyond The Silver Sea' out on vinyl is truly a dream come true for us and to be doing it with someone like Markus at Sugarbush Records is a perfect situation for us. To find someone with such a bang-on, no nonsense approach to releasing records these days as well as a sympathetic ear for classic pop songs is rare. When we were making the album we knew in a silly way that vinyl was the only medium for it but we never dreamed we'd find someone crazy enough to release it! ;)
