then I will do my real thing later.' I'd say
75% of his playing was just right, and that
we never did the real thing later because
what came out was the melodic transcription for a lot of the music on the record. Ian
was coming as a fan of the band, and we
went thru the songs, and as we finished the
first sessions we told him 'oh yeah, that's
good and yeah, we just made it and that's it
(laughs)!' Ian brought space to this record,
which gave us a bit more room to maneuver.
IE: What was the recording process like?
Tim: We finished the band tracking on the
record around March or February and then
Steve and I worked on vocals and stuff like
that and then we did mixing, which was
fairly slow. However, we made that actual
bounds of the record really quickly and
that's why we were just so elated with it.
That early tracking was pretty cool. We
booked a five day block and a three day
block, at a bigger studio than mine. We had
to change the physical and emotional head
space we were in because of all the things
that have gone down between us all over
the last two years. Working in my studio
(Spacejunk III) like we had for the last few
records would not have worked
We wanted a fresh thing, so we used the
same engineer Ted Howard, that we had
used for the last two acoustic records
(Uninvited, Like the Clouds, El Momento
Descuidado) that we made. He one of the best
14 illinoisentertainer.com march 2015
engineers in Australia, certainly the best I've
ever worked with. He's worked with everyone from Black Sabbath to the Black Eyed
Peas). The studio (Rancom) is owned by
Garth Porter, a really fantastic guy and a
member of this legendary '70s Australian
03•2015
pop band called Sherbert. Any way, this studio had a great vibe, kind of an Abbey Road
vibe to it.
In those first five days we wrote eighteen
tracks actually but actually, we didn't finish
them all and we blew them out in the next
three days we actually thought we could get
five or three since we were common, but we
ended up with twenty six songs.
IE: Right, So you can make another album
now if you need it (laughs)?
Tim: Ahhh, No.
IE: Im kidding (laughs)?
Tim: (Laughs) I know. It's okay. I'm not biting on that on it because people have kept
saying 'give us some outtakes!' And I'm like
'naw, the stuff is not good enough.' We do
have an extra track coming on a vinyl compilation though, so that's something to look
out for.
I'm supposed to be mixing that for Anton
Newcombe of Brian Jones Massacre who has
his own boutique vinyl label.
IE: So how will the live show break out?
The Church 1986, L to R: Kilbey, Richard Ploog, Wilson-Piper, Koppes
Will you be mixing up new songs from the
album with the old Church stuff?
Tim: Yea, we'll be actually playing two sets.
I think we have to play to sets - because we
are intense live and we do like to play long
songs and what we've found is that if we
take a break we can stay energized.
IE: Did Ian get to pick a few songs from the
catalog? I'd imagine he can pick out a few
gems.
Tim: It's funny you mention that. Yeah, Ian
did pick some songs, interestly that's a laugh
because he's such a fan, when he just first
came in with his song choices it was just
about sixty songs long, and it was just about
every song that we‘ve never heard of you
know (laughs) yeah, it was great but some of
them were just too obscure to play on this
tour. We're lucky with our fan base, there'
such a great connection. We don't really feel
pressure to do anything conventional, so
what's comes out is – there is nothing premeditated about our music. And the whole
musical world is just full of premeditated contrivance these days, it's just rolling right
now. And that's not us, fortunately.
John Vernon