Music
Flyying Colours and the state of Mindfullness
Catching up with the Melbourne shoegaze outfit ahead of their forthcoming debut album.
Flyying Colours
© Bianca Milani
It’s been a big year so far for Flyying Colours, arguably one of the best contemporary shoegaze inspired bands in Australia. The time has been split between finishing up their recording commitments and drip-feeding fans a wide variety of new singles. With two stellar EPs out and a solid forthcoming debut LP just around the corner, Red Bull Music catches up with guitarist and singer, Brodie Brümmer, to talk their recording process, the state of mindfulness, and his interpretation of his own mind-bending lyrics.
'Mindfullness' is your debut album and first release through Island Records Australia. Was it any different going into studio to record this compared to your two previous EPs?
It was very different. Especially because we had new members and we were doing it with our manager - but we were quite hands on as well. It was very different in the way we approached it recording-wise. As for the songs, we hadn’t really played them much before we went into the studio and that’s the way we’ve done a lot of our stuff.
How did your manager come into the picture in terms of recording?
He’s a producer himself and has a studio in Coburg which is close to where I live. We did a lot of the mixing in his studio and in my home. It was just very different to being in a set time studio environment. We made our own time frames and probably spent a bit longer on different things because we could.
How long have these tracks been floating around?
All of the songs from both EPs and this record come from the same period. They’re part of a pool of twenty or so… probably more songs that we were kind of working at. It was just a matter of working out which worked best together.
When you started showcasing these new tracks live in the first half of the year, they sounded very different than to the finalised studio versions you've released so far. Is It an awkward process teething out a new song live?
Yeah very much so. We don’t really practice that much, if at all. It makes it really crazy, and almost difficult, but exciting to try and do these things live. A lot of the time we kind of work it out in the studio then go from there. Every track has a completely different vibe when we play it live. It’s just the way these things go. We can’t have a billion layers of feedback and 82 different guitar tracks in a live setting.
Have these tracks evolved since you first came up with the original twenty or so?
100%. They’ve changed more in the time they were in the studio then they ever have before. The ideas between them and structuring lots of different parts…that’s when it all falls into place. It’s like building a house for the song to live in, that’s what the recording process is and that’s where the song lives now forever. You put it together and once it’s done in the studio that’s the way it is. Before that it could be anything, you now what I mean?
Definitely. Are there any subtle influences in these tracks that most people wouldn’t be able to pick out, omitting the shoegaze/noise-rock influences that appear on the surface. Is there something people should keep an ear out for?
Everybody in the band loves different stuff. I grew up listening to The Beatles and Nirvana, also for me it’s always tied in with shoegaze. I wouldn’t ask anyone to listen out for anything in particular but you might hear different things. When it comes to writing a song you don’t really think about that stuff.
Flyying Colours have well established themselves as having powerhouse live performances especially with favourites 'Wavygravy' and 'Not Today'. Are there any songs that come across subtler live?
There’s a couple more chilled out songs. One called 'Mellow', it’s more of a soundscape track and not a verse chorus thing. The song 'Morning Stoner', that’s kind of chill. There’s a few on the record that are a lot more relaxed and I think that’s because when we’re putting together an EP, it’s only five tracks long and there is an immediacy to it. You try to make a point with every song you’ve got. When you put a record together, it’s almost like you’re telling a bit more of a story so that’s how we ended up with the more chilled tracks being on the album, rather than the EP.
How does the album flow with the various intensities? You’ve put out tracks like It’s Tomorrow Now which are loud noise-rock/shoegaze heavy hitters, but then you’ve got Mellow which when we heard it at the single launch at Newtown Social Club recently, sounded like an ode to Slowdive. It was a lush piece of dream-pop.
It starts with 'It’s Tomorrow Now' and then moves on quite a bit. It chills out in the middle section - it’s an odd one. It starts at its peak; it’s split like a vinyl to be honest. The first half if the best half and the second half starts with 'Mellow'. The tracks all really flow into one and other with the fades, then the last track is a real downer. It’s a weird way to end it but it's the way we always wanted to do it. That was the plan before we even put out 'Wavygravy' (the bands first ever single), we decided we wanted to end our first album like that. I think it worked out.
So this has all been in the planning phase for quite some time?
Some elements, particularly…maybe only that one [laughs]. There are little bits and pieces but we never really know what we are doing until its done. Then you go ‘ok, that’s what it is now’.
Is there a narrative that the album follows with this flow you’ve described, or does every track have its own story?
It’s like two sides of the things that you might… [sighs] How do I express this? There are these things in life that you try not think of or not give too much conscious thought too because they might be too overwhelming or too difficult to deal with. This is kind of those things coming out when you’re writing a song. The whole 'Mindfulness' thing is because we were touring for a very long time before we got to make this record and we all had very different things in our head, like how we were going to record it and all of our individual parts. We just really needed to get in the studio and record it. That’s where we got this word (Mindfulness) because it was really hard to be in the moment in the studio because you had all these different ideas flowing around in our head.
On the name Mindfulness, you said you just wanted to get all of this out in the moment when you record the album. Is the state of mindfulness something you as a songwriter always strive to be in?
Yeah, I don’t ever sit down and say I’m going to write a song, it just kind of happens. I try to do it other ways but they are always shitty songs. I guess that’s what the play on words is about. When we’re in the studio, personally I found my self to be a bit overwhelmed but we worked it out.
You’ve had quite a few big support slots under your belt, the main takeaways being Johnny Marr, A Place To Bury Strangers and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Is there any other sort of ‘dream supports’ you’d love to do?
I’d love to play with A Place To Bury Strangers again, definitely. They were awesome, they’re the best people and just the best live band. It’s so fucking intense. It’s hard to say but I’d definitely want to play with them again.
Are there any immediate touring plans for 'Mindfullness' when it drops?
We’re going to Europe in two weeks then we’ll be doing the UK then come home and do the Australian tour in all the usual cities.
You mentioned in a recent interview that you cut your tongue open while on a European tour. Are you going to be very cautious of the sandwiches once you hit the Czech Republic?
Oh fuck yeah, man that was dark. I ate the rest of that sandwich too later on, I was so pissed. I was so drunk and I didn’t even realise.
It seems like a pretty big thing to overlook.
Trust me, I was confused at the time. I never found the piece of glass either, I don’t even know if it was glass. That’s just what everybody said and that’s what I rolled with.
Who’s the artist behind the album artwork?
My girlfriend Rachelle Eves did it. She’s a total superstar. She just did a bunch of water colour, we just got the vinyl packaging back the other day and I’m stoked on it, it’s really cool. It was cool to go a completely different vibe with a strong image of the falcon. The way it stares you down makes me think of the way the record plays in a weird way.
Was it a design you pitched or did she just come up with it herself?
We were talking about it and she asked me what ideas I had for it and I didn’t give her anything. A lot of the time we just opt for a crazy, colourful thing and go ‘sweet.’ This time it's a whole lot of water colour designs and we were loving the colours of those. She showed me the falcon one day and I said that’s got to be it.
You’ve retained a lot of the previous vibe in the artwork too with the very recognisable dream-pop and shoegaze colours with the hazy blue and pink.
That was totally the idea, to retain that vibe and bring something different to it I always love that sort of soft pastel colour and it’s so weird. That’s one of the things with a lot of the covers for shoegaze. The covers - most of the things about it, the music, it feels to easy to…
It can be a very disarming genre.
Yeah.
Is that continuity of theme and artwork something you want to bring to the live setting as well?
We’ve had different live projections done before and we have a lot of crazy visuals. It’s something that we’re definitely going to be doing for our shows on this tour.
Your latest single 'Long Holiday' has a lyrical theme that seems almost unique to Australian artists in the execution of it. The line “ I feel good about getting old” fits in with an thematic indifference that many bands from here seem to convey. What is the lyrical inspiration behind this track?
It ties back to what I was saying about our subconscious mind not wanting to think about certain things and maybe writing music is the outlet for that. This came out organically, sort of like answering someone’s question. It’s not so much the indifference, it’s a question almost. That line, I’ve thought about it a lot and it’s very much like that, so slacker. I guess for me it’s about talking and thinking about those things, like is it true? I don’t know [laughs]. Maybe it just is that and there is no way of wording it.
It’s open to interpretation.