Stereoboard Talk To Canyons Of Static About Their New Album 'Farewell Shadows' (Interview)
Friday, 06 January 2012
Written by Patrick Gormley
Wisconsin’s Canyons of Static almost immediately set the new year alight with their startlingly graceful and extremely accomplished new album 'Farewell Shadows'. Formed in 2005, 'Farewell Shadows' - the bands fourth long player, exudes a maturity and a finely crafted balance that Canyons of Static have no doubt endeavoured to create since their inception. To find out more about this, the new album and Canyons of Static in general, stereoboard caught up with the bands guitarist Ross Severson.
“We all just happened to be in the right place in our lives to start this band”, begins Severson, “we were all a few years out of High School with very little else to do other than play music. The first year or so we lived and breathed Canyons of Static. We were very much influenced by Sigur Ros, Radiohead, and My Bloody Valentine. Over the years however all the members have developed their own tastes in music so nowadays everyone comes with very diverse ideas.”
Down through the years Canyons of Statics song writing process has pretty much remained steadfast but with 'Farewell Shadows' the band looked at slightly different ways to add to the new record. Severson explains “Songs can take anywhere from a few weeks to a year to write. It really depends on the amount of distractions we have at the time. We write most songs as a collective so we need to be in the same room together to make that happen and then we basically go to war with each other until something happens we can all agree upon. Of late Nathan and I have taken to doing some writing separately so we can experiment with creating new sounds, but in the end we still need to flesh things out together to achieve what we are looking for." He continues, “We try to better ourselves with every song we write. I liked the spirit of exploration and the anything goes attitude we had when we first started the band. We got away from that for awhile which led us down some dark paths but we are coming full circle again with this album."
The albums opener the majestic ‘Take Heart’, is for me the highlight on a record full of highlights and I am assured by Severson that I am not alone in my opinion. “Take Heart started to take shape over a very long time. It has everything from singing, electronic beats and police scanners to reverse guitar loops. Basically we kept playing it live and revising it at practice which is a rare thing for us. Usually when a song is done we don’t touch it again. We broke that mould with 'Take Heart' and we are happy with the outcome. When our new guitarist Nick joined he brought a lot of great riffs in for that song. He still attests to this day that it is his favourite song to play live.”
And it would seem that this willingness to embrace a more experimental approach to recording is in some way responsible for 'Farewell Shadows' finely polished sound. “We recorded most of our loops and overdubs prior to ever stepping foot into a studio” elucidates Severson, “so when it came time to record all we needed to do was play the record live and add the loops in. This way we knew we would have the sound we were looking for. Our Engineer Ben Derickson let us sit in and be a big part of mixing as well which is a change from our prior releases.”
When asked for his opinion on the argument that the post rock/ instrumental genre is currently oversaturated, Severson remains diplomatically coy. “I’m not sure we are qualified to speak on this one. None of us follow the supposed Post Rock scene. We loved some of the early bands like Godspeed, Mogwai and Tortoise but beyond that we have really stopped listening to Post Rock. When you are making instrumental music all the time the last thing you want to do is listen to bands doing similar things. I still love bands like Tortoise who strive to stay fresh and original. I’m all about textures in music so bands that can manipulate sounds and create moods are bands I can get behind especially if they can keep things sounding organic.”
The band is currently working out the finer points of scheduling American tour dates for the new album and with some luck European dates may materialise at sometime in the hopefully not to distant future. However, touring is not the only plan on the horizon for the industrious quartet as Severson reveals, “We are going to keep writing more and more. We have 'Farewell Shadows' out on cd at the end of January followed by a 10” of 'Wake/Drift' out on Fin Records in the very near future. We are still in talks to get the full album of 'Farewell Shadows' on vinyl by the end of the year as well and fingers crossed that we may have a record to follow up Farewell Shadows within a year.”
'Farewell Shadows' is released on Oxide Tones January 27th.
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And it would seem that this willingness to embrace a more experimental approach to recording is in some way responsible for 'Farewell Shadows' finely polished sound. “We recorded most of our loops and overdubs prior to ever stepping foot into a studio” elucidates Severson, “so when it came time to record all we needed to do was play the record live and add the loops in. This way we knew we would have the sound we were looking for. Our Engineer Ben Derickson let us sit in and be a big part of mixing as well which is a change from our prior releases.”
