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Perth MusicFaker Interview
After playing to over 1 million people with their renowned energetic live gigs and their TV performances, Faker now celebrate their second album Be The Twilight officially achieving Gold sales status. Be The Twilight features Faker’s Top 10 hit single This Heart Attack – which is still in the ARIA chart after staggering 40 weeks! After a #5 peak on iTunes, a #5 peak on the radio airplay chart, a ‘Law & Order’ promo and endless TV performances, This Heart Attack has well and truly been seen and heard across the nation and also came in at a very respectable #5 on the Triple J Hottest 100. Far from resting on their laurels, Faker are soon to head out on the road on the ‘Are You Magnetic Tour’, supported by Sparkadia. Bassist Nic Munnings spoke to Justin Middleton for this interview.
Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (9:56 - 2.3Mb)
“It’s pretty surreal. It’s really exciting, we’ve been doing this forever and it’s flattering that people are starting to pay some attention to it. We never really have any idea what is going to happen next. The best we can do is try and write songs that we like and try not to care too much whether other people like them as well.
I asked Nic if the band felt more pressure from outside influences or themselves while writing and recording Be The Twilight. “We probably put more pressure on ourselves after the first record. It seemed to take us forever to get our teeth into the process for the second album. We were basically doing demos for two years from just before the first record came out until when we recorded Be the Twilight. We didn’t really feel a great deal of pressure from anywhere else but there were definitely points where we were going ‘What the fuck are we doing?’. We kind of had 45 songs before we went into pre-production and there was quite a lot of trimming down to come up with 12 songs out of that.”
The album was recorded in LA and I asked Nic if it was good to be away from friends and family for the period of recording. “The main thing about recording in LA was being away from everything. We worked really hard and were there for three months. We had a couple days off when we got there but other than that we were working six day weeks, up to about 14-15 hours a day. We didn’t get much of the sightseeing experience of LA and there is a reputation of LA people being superficial but we didn’t see that. You really need to be able to focus on the task at hand and we really thought we were going to be making the record at home so I don’t think we would have been able to focus all the energy if we were kind of going home at the end of the day.”
Asked what the band are up to at the moment and coming up in the next few months Nic replied “The tour starts next month but we a couple one off shows leading up to that. We are turning on the tap slightly before letting it all out. At the moment we are up the coast doing some demos of new stuff so that’s already underway. That will be the next thing we do after the tour and it’s pretty rare that we actually stop. Nathan will always be coming up with things while on tour but by and large, the touring side of things is not really where the creative process happens. It’s usually pretty important for us to find some space and time to let that stuff happen because on tour every ten hours you have to be somewhere else.”
I asked Nic how much he enjoys making music videos and especially the new Are You Magnetic clip which can be viewed at the bottom of this post. “It was even more colourful on set due to the amount of digital effects and stuff. We had a blue screen and we were wearing green lab coats that I don’t think are ever actually green in the video. The main thing was working with the guys making the video and making it a collaborative effort instead of them telling us to stand here and there. There is a lot of standing around but it’s important to feel like you have some involvement in the visual representation of your music. Our old drummer Paul used to say that every time he had to make a video a little piece of him died inside. But maybe that’s why he isn’t in the band anymore.”
Are You Magnetic Tour Dates:
Thur 4th September – Prince Of Wales, Bunbury, WA
Fri 5th September – Metro City, Perth, WA
Sat 6th September – Settlers Tavern, Margaret River WA
Fri 12th September – Forum Theatre, Melbourne, VIC
Sat 13th September – Wrestpoint Showroom, Hobart, TAS
Sun 14th September – HQ, Adelaide, SA
Thur 18th September – Tivoli Theatre, Brisbane QLD
Fri 19th September – Coolangatta Hotel, Gold Coast, QLD
Sat 20th September – Enmore Theatre, Sydney, NSW (licensed and all ages)
For more info visit www.faker.com.au
Faker - Are You Magnetic
