What Type Of Music Is Glass Animals

British indie rock band Glass Animals were just getting going on the tour to support their Dreamland album when the pandemic hit and closed everything down. The group, especially songwriter Dave Bayley, were devastated, concerned that the record wasn't going to go the gamble it deserves.

Only this is a new world and, afterward a moment of reflection, they rolled upwardly their sleeves and got on with the job of promoting Dreamland using whatever methods they could. That decision resulted in a hit album, the "Oestrus Waves" unmarried going triple platinum, and the band getting nominated for All-time New Artist at the GRAMMY Awards.

Knock on wood, but it feels like things are going to be getting improve as the year rolls along. The effectiveness of the vaccinations against the Omicron means that venues are returning to something resembling normal, and Glass Animals are ready to go out there. We spoke to Bayley about all of this and more.

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Music Connection: A flake of background first—how and when did the band class? What was the mission?

Dave Bayley: We've been friends since we were 12 years old; then, for a long, long time. Really, it started then. A long time ago. The outset fourth dimension we e'er played together, we joined forces. I was asked by a to play at his 16th birthday political party and the other three guys in the ring were the just musical people that I knew. And so, I asked them if they'd play some covers with me, and they said yes. I didn't actually sing then. Drew [MacFarlane], who's our guitarist now, was singing. I think nosotros played some Strokes songs, and a Libertines song as well. Nosotros only fucked around for 20 minutes. That was the starting time time we were an actual band.

The mission at that point was only to play some covers, but really when we started we didn't have our optics attack stardom or anything. We just wanted to accept fun making music. It was an alibi to get together and we were all-time friends. We were looking for a way to spend some time together and thought it would be fun to do more shows.

MC: How speedily did you realize yous would be singing?

Bayley: It happened only because, later on that operation when we were sixteen, zip happened for, like, four years. Nosotros all went to higher or university, and it was in that time that I basically started writing songs. I was actually a DJ, and I would come up back from doing DJ sets really buzzing on adrenaline and Cherry-red Balderdash at 3 a.thou. I started making songs with a little synth and an old estimator. I started singing over the top. That was it. I was too shy to sing, I actually didn't want to. I really spent the offset EP, recording the vocals sitting under a blanket. Information technology happened slowly but it happened.

MC: And all of this was in Oxford, England?

Bayley: This was actually in London. We grew up near Oxford as piffling kids, just then I moved at college age to a place called Peckham in London. I was 18 when I moved out of Oxford, and xiii when I moved at that place.

MC: What is the music scene like in Oxford (manifestly a higher town)? I know of the Zodiac venue, which is very cool…

Bayley: I was always going to the Zodiac! That was why nosotros became friends, when nosotros were 13. Those guys were the offset people I met at school. Drew, our guitarist, was the first person I met because he was the other American at school. Then, I remember on my beginning day, I was introduced to Drew by one of the teachers saying that he was the other American, and nosotros ended upward beingness mates. We started going to see music together at the Zodiac. We'd sneak out of schoolhouse and go to in-stores at HMV [a record/CD store in the U.Chiliad.]. We'd bunk off early on.

MC: Describe your sound. How has it evolved since the Zaba debut album in 2014?

Bayley: I'm the worst person to try and describe the audio. It's like trying to describe your ain personality. Ask 1 of my mates. But the beginning album was definitely quite abstract and ethereal, and the vocals are really low in the mix. Some of the songs are ix minutes long. It sounded a fleck shy, and I was a bit shy. Like I said, I was singing with a blanket over my caput so nobody could picket. For the second album, nosotros'd been out touring for quite some fourth dimension, touring the beginning album. I remember the 2nd anthology was afflicted by that touring. I actually liked the free energy of touring. Nosotros ended up remixing a lot of the songs on the first anthology, making them heavier and shorter, punchier, faster. I think that bled into the second album.

This latest album is the about personal. Finally, I had the confidence to write something personal, properly. Right on the nose. Information technology takes from all of my babyhood influences. Every vocal that I've ever listened to has bled into this latest tape. It'due south definitely the most representative of us.

MC: That's Dreamland, which came out in 2020…

Bayley: Yeah, but sometimes I still experience similar information technology's 2020 now. Then sometimes I think 2020 was 2 decades ago. Time is weird.

MC: Did the pandemic hinder information technology? I know it came out in August 2020…

Bayley: It was all written pre-pandemic. We were getting ready to tour it. We'd actually started touring it. We were doing a warm-up tour across America, and I call back nosotros'd got 2 weeks in. We were in San Francisco, and we started hearing about the virus. A few days later, all the cities were locking downward. We were going to drop the album ii months later, in Apr or May, and halfway through the tour, BAM. It was all pulled, nosotros got sent back to England, and honestly I felt nosotros were going to be going back and finishing the tour afterward two weeks. But it didn't plow out that way.

We had ii evidence nights booked at Carmine Rocks, Colorado. We were going to play at that place for two nights with our friends. Information technology was the large launch. But we just tore the whole programme in one-half, and I was torn apart, to be honest. I thought this album was the most personal album, like my babe. It felt like it wasn't going to have a gamble. Everyone was listening to older records. At that place didn't seem to exist whatever space for new music in that climate.
So, I was absolutely distraught. I didn't get out my room for well-nigh two weeks. And and so I started to realize that the reason everyone was listening to older record and music from their past was because anybody was in this weirdly nostalgic state of mind. So I saw the parallel, that I'd but written this album almost nostalgia and the past. Information technology all started to add up. I pulled myself together, and we managed to get it out. It was hard. Anyone who's released music in the pandemic deserves a medal, or done annihilation creative and put themselves out there in any way.

MC: Who did you lot work with on Dreamland? Where?

Bayley: I did virtually of information technology in this room. We recorded most of it in this room. We did some drums at a place called The Church in N London. We worked with some engineers that we've worked with for a long time. Riley McIntyre is a genius engineer. I just produced it myself. Paul Epworth, who ran our previous label, was sort of overseeing it and exec-ing.

MC: Did you learn to produce as you went along?

Bayley: I spent a lot of time trying to learn that stuff, since anthology one. I was making trip the light fantastic tracks when we starting time started. I know our music is definitely not trip the light fantastic music anymore. I got more into songwriting, only it started with dance music because that's all I had. All I had was a computer and an one-time Casio keyboard.
So, I was doing what I could with what I had, and I kept reading more and more about it. So every time we did go into a studio, I would know what was going on. I could experience my manner around. I call up studio time being and so rare, and then expensive, that I would program out every hour of what nosotros were going to do for the whole time nosotros were in in that location. I knew that, in that hour, I had to get all the drums down, and I had to know how to compress them and EQ them properly. Make certain information technology was all proper.
I spent a lot of time ownership weird $.25 of equipment and learning how to use it. That was very much the case on this latest record.

MC: What was the songwriting process betwixt the band members? Do you write it all?

Bayley: Aye.They're incredible players, and I'm not the all-time player. I can faff around and out the chords together. I'll create a demo, and then they'll come in and play things well.

MC: Tell me virtually one song you feel particularly good about—how it came to exist—from writing to recording. Tell us your process.

Bayley: A lot of them start in the same style. Let's do "Heatwaves." A lot of songs start with an quondam classical guitar that I bought for literally 5 pounds in a marketplace. I had a nicer guitar that my cousin bought me, merely it got stolen. I went out and replaced it with this. I've written well-nigh everything on information technology. It sounds like shit, merely if you've written something with something that sounds like shit, it's but going to get meliorate. Hopefully, once you've added the product and things.
That was actually a trick that Tom Morello from Rage Confronting the Motorcar used. He writes all his massive riffs on a guitar like this. He'southward like, "If it sounds heavy on this, it'due south gonna audio insanely heavy when I put it through my Marshall Stack" or whatsoever he's using. I took a leaf out of that volume. I start with the guitar and I pick it up and start noodling around with chords. Depending on how I'm feeling, similar if I'1000 feeling whimsical, I'll write some whimsical chords.
With "Heat Waves," for instance, I was feeling really nostalgic. It was late at dark, and I wanted to write some chords that told a story. A long chord progression. You can hear that in "Heat Waves." It goes upwards and and so down, and so resolves. Merely it always starts with the chords and guitar. Then I start humming over the top. Usually the chords will give me an idea of a moment, a memory, or something to start writing lyrics. I'll start repeating the words over and over again. I hit tape on my phone, and play around with the chords, repeating words over and over once again, finding melodies for them, and I spend half an hour doing that. Then I accept the recording, listen back, and exist like, "verse, pre chorus, chorus, bridge, song." At that point, I'll construction it in the computer, and start adding other sounds. Showtime calculation production. It all comes from the chords and maybe a little plow of phrase. All the sounds come from that atmosphere. "Oestrus Waves" was cornball so I tried to add together some nostalgic pads and chords, that swell and bloom like memories flowing over you lot. I normally practice drums after that.

MC: At what point do show it to the guys?

Bayley: Information technology depends. Sometimes I have sent songs to them in that form. "Heat Waves" kind of ended up very, very similar to the demo that I sent to them. We tried to take it apart together and rebuild it, but information technology didn't finish up as good. So, you kind of hear the demo on "Heat Waves." The showtime few seconds, where yous can hear it really filtered down, that is my phone recording from that original little fuckaround that I did.
Sometimes they'll say they detest it, sometimes they say they simply like the vocal line and we'll take the whole thing apart and rebuild together. It just depends what they call up of information technology, to be honest.

MC: You were nominated for a couple of American Music Awards, losing out to Machine Gun Kelly and BTS. Thoughts on that?

Bayley: It'due south amazing. Really wonderful. When we started, it was never well-nigh awards or anything like that but it feels incredible to have any recognition, especially after the circumstances of how this album was released. Our drummer had a terrible blow and well-nigh died, and we were just coming back from that when nosotros were hit with the pandemic. All of those plans were torn up, and with that and with information technology being such a personal record and having taken quite a big punt on that, it does feel amazing.

MC: That'southward right—I believe Joe Seaward had to learn to drum once more?

Bayley: It was quite a long procedure. We were halfway through touring the 2nd record when he had that blow. He'southward made an astonishing recovery and is back on the drumkit, playing also equally e'er.

MC: The "I Don't Wanna Talk (I Simply Wanna Dance)" single was your last release of the year. Why that song?

Bayley: There'due south a lot that comes with a record. Launching it is a lot of piece of work. Then every fourth dimension after we've washed an anthology, I find it's quite daunting to start making music again considering it's associated with all that, non luggage, but a lot of other things. So I quite similar just going into the studio and making a song. Giving yourself a few days, writing a few songs and just putting 1 out, so break through the pressure. It breaks the water ice over again. We've done that now after every record—released one or two songs every bit a stopgap that takes the pressure off. I hate the idea of not writing music at all between albums. It could really hinder the procedure. So that's where that song came from.

MC: What do you lot see the future property for live music in 2022? Planning to bout?

Bayley: Yes, we're going to bout a lot. I think information technology's going to exist actually busy. We're going back to the States in March, which volition be wonderful. Then we've got Europe, and so festivals, then in that location's even more coming, then there'southward Australia. We're kind of making upwardly for lost time.

MC: Do yous have a view on vaccine and masking mandates in music venues?

Bayley: I think people should do everything they can to brand shows as safe as possible. We did our last tour completely outdoors, and I retrieve that was particularly helpful. Going into the next tour, we'll assess the situation as it approaches, because I feel like everything's changing every week at the moment. We've got to be safe. Live music is important, for everyone's sanity.

MC: What do you recall of the overall country of the U.Yard. music scene?

Bayley: It feels salubrious. There'southward a lot of amazing music coming out of the U.K. It feels really skillful. I recall people are hesitant to tour, but it's happening and shows are happening. I've been to a couple and they've been absolutely wicked. A band chosen Wet Leg, and a ring called Squid, I really like. There's a producer called Lil Silva that I love. Arlo Parks, I've liked for a long time.

MC: Do you relish visiting the States?

Bayley: I love it. I grew up in the States, so information technology feels similar home. I feel similar a kid again every fourth dimension I come to the States. I grew up in Texas. Bryan, College Station. I spent some time in Massachusetts when I was actually young. I was actually born in a place called Grafton. Population 8,000 probably. I was 13 when I moved to Oxford. It was quite a weird time to move because I was just sort of working out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life, and that apparently shook things up a fleck. Information technology was a big move and a civilisation shock, but ultimately I think information technology was a expert thing for me.
I ended up meeting my best friends, and Oxford, England in full general, is a pretty good identify to grow up and live your teen years. You lot can walk everywhere. You're not trapped at home, which I very much felt in Texas. Bryan is about three hours from Austin and a chip more than that from Dallas, a couple of hours from Houston. You're not walking anywhere.

MC: What gear do you utilize?

Bayley : I've got a Mellotron M4000d over here and I apply that a lot. Half of the synths that you hear in Glass Animals records is that.

I've got a Jupiter-half-dozen over hither that I use a lot. That's my baby—I love that thing. I employ ProTools for tracking, and Ableton is really good for starting ideas and sketching ideas, considering y'all can work then fast, loop things and pitch things around. I write a lot of songs actually quickly, then throw them out considering they're all shit.

I've got some old amps hither that I use, and I have an sometime Fender '57 Deluxe. That'southward my favorite amp. I've got an old Laney VC30 amp over here that I use a lot.

I use a lot of UAD stuff now. I've got an Apollo, and for recording my vocals I use a U67 mic. I used to go through a Neve 1073 areamp, but at present I go through the new Neve Shelford Channel, which is really good, then the Tube-Tech CL1B. For bass, I like the sound of valves, so I usually have a Hofner 500 that I use on almost everything. That is really the bass audio that you hear on everything. I go through that Fender 5'7 Palatial with the U47 mic, and I go through a Universal Audio 6176 Valve Pre for that.

For guitars, I just employ an SM57, on the mic going through that amp, and through an 1176 compressor. Ordinarily, Neve preamps for guitars and keyboards. I similar the warmth. Simply I take so much shit. I use these one-time Hofner guitars that I'1000 obsessed with. I have like six of them, just they always fall apart. Hofner Galaxie, they're called. They sound amazing when they work.

What else have I got? Quondam Wems, old Casios, loads of old shit. I can talk for ages.

MC: How about on stage, including the other ring members?

Bayley: I know that I use a Strat, a '50s Strat, and a Danelectro, simply I just utilise the Danelectro because it's actually light and I broke my back. I use a DiPinto Galaxie. I apply that on stage. And a whole bunch of pedals.

Joe'southward using a modernistic Ludwig kit live. Because information technology'southward touring and vintage ones get battered. I love Answer vintage mahogany Ludwig kits. That's my kit of selection—the kit on the records. Ed uses a mod Hofner 500 bass considering taking an quondam one out is pointless. Drew uses a Fender Jag and a Fino guitar. All with those Fender Deluxe amps live, and loads of pedals.

And and so loads of synths. But we've sampled all the synths alive, so we really run Ableton Live. We don't apply whatever backing tracks or click tracks, it's all live alive. Which causes problems but it's worth information technology. Just yeah, we sampled all the synthesizers that I have and that'southward what we use in the live realm rather than bringing loads of vintage synths which would exist a nightmare.

MC: What's next, in terms of more releases, shows, etcetera?

Bayley: In that location's stuff floating around, but really I'1000 gonna arctic a little bit for the first scrap of the year. There's some potential collaborative stuff coming that I'grand really excited about, only I can't say any more than. New sounds pretty soon.

Contact taylor.vaughn@umusic.com

Photos By Pooneh Republic of ghana,Meredith Truax

Editor'southward Note: An edit was made to the online version of this article only not in print. Delight note that the "Heat Waves" unmarried went triple platinum, and the band were nominated for Best New Artist at the GRAMMY Awards.

Source: https://www.musicconnection.com/qa-with-glass-animals/

Posted by: chapmancorgunts.blogspot.com

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