A Sound to Remember

Some more old news, but with a message to come

Hands up those who have heard of a band from Brisbane called A Year to Remember? For those who haven’t, a brief introduction: (and sorry to bore those who have, but you know how it goes in this business)

About two months ago, A Year to Remember became the first Australian band to be signed to Melbourne powerhouse label Boomtown Records (home of The Getaway Plan, Horsell Common, In Fiction and Elora Danan, among others) this year. The Brisbane four-piece play catchy pop-rock and have been likened to Jebediah, Lo-Tel, The Get Up Kids and Motion City Soundtrack; although I would prefer to liken their songs to packets of skittles – sweet, colourful and finished all too soon.

And while this is great news for the band and their fans (Boomtowns re-release of their first EP Targets in early July will allow those who couldn’t get their hands on the release the first time around to check out A Year to Remember in all their CD glory while simultaneously presenting the band to many new ears), this is where the message comes in.

My first memory of hearing A Year to Remember comes only a few months ago, when I heard that they had been signed to Boomtown (a record label that I am a huge fan of). I downloaded one of their songs, listened to it and loved it. You can only imagine my surprise, then, when a few days later I came across another of their songs in my computers music collection. Understandably perplexed, I took it upon myself to do a bit of web searching to try to find out where this song had come from and why I had no memory of it.

After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, I was able to surmise that I must have downloaded this track from their triplejunearthed.com profile sometime in late 2006/early 2007, listened to it once, twice or not at all, put it in my media player library because I like it, but untimately forgotten about it.

This got me to thinking… what if A Year to Remember hadn’t been signed to Boomtown? Would I have ever re-discovered this great band? Most likely not. How many other great bands have I missed out on because there’s just so much out there? More than I even want to think about.

So my message is this:

If you find a a great new band that you like, make as much noise about them as you can, for as long as you can, so that as many people as possible can hear you. Maybe one or two of them will remember it.

Hello Sane Age Sins

Forming in Brisbane in 2005, Adelle are quickly making a name for themselves. After independently releasing their debut EP “When Your Voices Aren’t Vices” in 2006 and touring extensively on the back of it throughout 2007, Adelle are back with “Hello Sane Age Sins.” Mission #1 caught up with Michael Parker, Vocialist and guitarist for this unique quartet.

How did the band form?

Adelle was formed in late 2005 during the moments of darkness that define the most interesting part of a solar eclipse. It was exhilarating but over much too soon, observers on the day used adjectives to the likes of captivating and mesmerizing when describing the unison. By late 2006 we had gathered enough intelligence and appropriate auditory material to reproduce discs in sizeable quantities. This first “hearing” was aptly named “When Your Vices Aren’t Vices” due to our large number of personal defects and an even more personal choice to disregard and ignore them. We toured compellingly on this release throughout 2007 assimilating fans in an assortment of environments and realities.

Is there much sadism in the Adelle camp?

Not really, we’re more about creeping you out. Inflicting pain or humiliation on someone is likely to trigger specific predictable reactions in return (namely fight or flight) and predictable equals boring. When threatened or engaged in conflict our actions are designed to induce that uncomfortable sinking feeling in the pits of our rivals stomachs. In fact the trick to this is sexual masochism.

How are you guys looking forward to the upcoming tour? Anything you’re particularly looking forward to or dreading?

The only thing we dread about touring is the fact that we can not log into Second Life every few hours to cause havoc on the B&D rooms with our clown hats and water pistols. Apart from that it is like a party 24/7. My average day on tour consists of waking up, drinks with lunch, chill, play a show, free drinks at venue, chill, party in the room, round of Ouija board then a cooked breakfast about 2-3am before bed. Please note, on travel days all of these event still occur to an absurd degree while in transit.

Tell me about recording Hello Sane Age Sins…

We recorded the tracks with Guy Cooper of Serotonin Productions [A Secret Death, The Combovers, Driven Fear]. After exhaustively doing all the production and recording on “Vices” ourselves this was a welcoming change. Working with talent like Guy and the new crew at Darther Music has not only made the whole project more professional but has given the rest of us a lot more time to lurk the Internet for things like the leaked Veronicas pictures. Words still out on whether they are real or not though. On the more professional note I mentioned above…

“Hello Sane Age Sins” LP is a rendering of raw sound with cunningly astute production, the songs have groove with thrashings of rock and moments of calm, the lyrics are clever yet sharp with shades of malevolence. To me this disc is an anti-movement, awe-inspiring insubordination, like dancing in the underworld, defiance personified.

What were some of the main ideas/themes/inspirations behind the album?

This CD is about doing whatever we feel like providing the vibe is right. However this is simply a reflection of how we write music. You get the feeling a lot of bands write songs and if they don’t turn out enough like their favourite songs at the time they scrap them. This results in a battering of standard sound upon my ear drums neither impressing nor upsetting me, just leaving me speculating about what it feels like to be a drone. In stark contrast to this we let everything fly in all areas of songwriting from pre to post production. Try everything, say anything; if you think it might work it probably will, if it doesn’t use a crazy effect and see where that leaves you. I guess if I had to cap it off it in a statement I’d say open your mind, awaken the senses, be well read and versed even better, don’t follow, thinking for yourself is a choice and you’d be sensible to make it sometime.

Tell me about the voice-overs you use in your songs…

I assume this question pertains to the “new” song on the myspace. Scott recorded this song titled “The Big Picture” using Reason and his laptop; essentially it is a bridging track for between now and when the album is released. It goes well with long winding roads at night or banned substances. The voice over your referring too is that of Edgar Mitchell who is an astronaut that walked on the moon. In this particular snippet he is discussing the occasions when he was briefed by NASA about the existence of extraterrestrials.

Plans for the rest of the year?

When we get home from tour we will be finishing up three new motion picture projections for the album with possibilities for a fourth somewhere in the stratosphere. There are tour follow up shows in NSW planned for October, a weekend up north in the works and a big 2 week tour in Nov/Dec right round to Adelaide. As far as SE QLD is concerned there is a whole stack of shows planned across the city and the coast when we are once again blips on the radar. On the song writing front we have started pre-production on the 3^rd album and are due to start recording later this year. Meanwhile we are shopping “Hello Sane Age Sins” LP to labels and promoters domestic and abroad before its release.

Anything else you’d like to talk about that I haven’t asked?

Sure, at our shows you can get free download cards. You receive a username and password off the card (emblazoned with the CD artwork) and are directed to www.thoughtcoercion.org where you can download 2 unreleased songs off the new album… You can also get them by becoming a field representative; contact us via myspace www.myspace.com/adellegroup for more information.

Adelle are on tour now, hitting Newcastle, Sydney, Canberra, the Central Coast and Brisbane. For more information hit up their myspace,   http://www.myspace.com/adellegroup