Austin Sound

In January of 2008, Haunting Oboe Music announced their ambitious project to release an EP a month for the entire year. We talked to the band at the outset to gauge where they were starting from and what they hoped to accomplish with the effort, and followed their progress throughout the year. Having survived the endeavor and produced an amazing 12 EPs and over 50 new songs, we wanted to check back in with the now-quintet as they prepare to start playing live again. (For an amazing rundown of their EPs, we recommend you check out the awesomely comprehensive review of all 12 over at ‘Nites!). The most impressive aspect of the EPs is the range of styles and changing dynamics that can be witnessed over the course of the year, listening to the band fearlessly explore different directions and then slowly hone that sound back into a more coherent presentation. HOM is currently working on narrowing down and re-doing the songs from last year for their debut full length to be released at some point this summer, but perhaps the biggest change to their equally cathartic and intricate sound will be seen live. They’ll be playing inside at Emo’s tonight, Thursday April 16, along with Lymbyc System and Loxsly. We sat down with Nick Whitfield, Ian Hunt, and Anthony Johnson at the band’s house to talk about the project, where the band is now, and what’s next.

 

Photo by Sandy Carson 

Interview: Haunting Oboe Music

Austin Sound: When we talked to y’all last year at the outset of the EP project, we asked where you saw yourselves as a band at this point in your career. So where do you see yourselves now a year later after doing the EP a month?

Nick Whitfield: I think we probably answered that question the first time really sarcastically. I don’t know, at this point we’re pretty comfortable. We’re getting really comfortable live. We haven’t played that much in the new year, just twice during SXSW and twice during Free Week, but we’ve been just sort of taking time off and learning all the material that we wrote last year, and it’s like a whole different ball game at this point. It’s like playing with a whole different band than what we started out as.

Anthony Johnson: I don’t think we realized when we started that it was going to be to like sketches, that nothing was a finished product, so it was kind of chance for us to go crazy and just play. There is a lot of different shit in all of those songs. It’s all over the place and we didn’t want to confine ourselves in any way, except maybe to make each individual EP pretty cohesive. But it was cool, because we could just put out a whole bunch of stuff and now we’ve been so all over the place that we can kind of draw it back in and focus it and hopefully the next thing that we put out will be a really polished, finished product.

AS: So y’all are planning on putting out an LP from these songs?

NW: Yeah, we’re going to go through and touch some of them up and there are definitely some adjustments that need to made. We’re still sort of settling on what exactly to put on it, but it’s going to turn out to be something that’s not a compilation but more of an actual album.

AS: Basically the EPs were kind of a demo process?

NW: Yeah. Some of our favorite songs are going to be missing from it because they didn’t necessarily fit or something. But it’s going to be cool. We’re excited about it.

AS: Y’all didn’t play many shows last year just because the recordings took up so much time, so what was that experience like to pick up live again?

AJ: A little nerve racking, because there is so much more focus on vocals now. A lot more of us sing, so there are four mics pretty much on all the time and it’s a lot different.

AS: Was that something that developed specifically from the EPs, more people singing?

AJ: Yeah, all of the overdubbing and stuff.

NW: Like he said earlier, we were just able to go crazy with vocals and add extra harmonies and whatever, and now we want to be able to pull them off live. And the songs sound a little bit different live than they do recorded, but I think they feel more natural because it’s just five of us playing together as opposed to, like, one guy playing three parts and the other guys playing one or no parts or something. So now it’s just all of us meshing with each other, and it sounds a little bit different, but it’s more comfortable I think.

AS: What’s the set up y’all have now live?

AJ: We’re doing a lot more switching around than we used to. We have two drummers and two guitarists and a bassist, but the two guitarists both play keyboard, I play a lot of guitar now. In fact, at our last show I think I played three or four songs on guitar and two songs on drums. So it’s a lot of rotating.

AS: Is that an advantage, being pulled in these different directions as y’all are trying to figure out these songs?

Ian Hunt: I think it was just a necessity. We wrote it in a certain way and only certain people can play the certain parts that are recorded that way. So we have to switch instruments, but I think it kind of identifies us with the music a little better and what we made, so what people hear they can associate with what they see live.

NW: And I think it’s going to be an asset overall. At some point the focus is going to have to turn to transitioning between songs and not having open space or dead air. But just from running through sets at practice and stuff, we’ve gotten pretty decent at that.

AJ: And we’re pretty sample heavy anyway, so there is a lot of transition that can go on with just one or two people while we’re switching, so it can be really cohesive and not have a lot of dead air.

AS: In the recording process, what changed for y’all as you were doing this? What kind of stuff did y’all figure out?

IH: Technically, I think we got way better at recording, and just the way that we use this place in particular. And a lot of it was pieces that we recorded like two or three years ago and we would bring those things in and kind of add to them. So a lot of the recordings are really built over time.

AJ: We had stuff that was recorded earlier in the year from scratch and didn’t get put on an EP or just didn’t get the attention it needed until November or something.

NW: But as far as the recording process, we definitely got better at miking and better equipment over the year. And even something just as simple as mic placing or just getting our guitar sounds better and drums.

IH: Just the overall attention to detail got better.

AS: Which EP would be each of y’all’s favorites?

AJ: I think December is the closest to what we’ve got going right now. And I like September.

NW: September is definitely my favorite.

AJ: September was just three songs and I like them all.

IH: It just fit together really well.

AJ: But with December too, that’s funny, because those are two totally different EPs. One is big and crazy and all over the place, and the other is concise.

IH: It’s just what we’ve been discussing with the full length too, whether to put fewer songs or more songs on it. It just goes to show that three songs together can be as cohesive as a full fourteen song album. It’s all how you hear it. I think that’s another thing that we developed as we went on, just how to create songs that kind of blended into each other and made way for one another, and I think that’s what we did on December which is why I like that one so much.

NW: December actually started out as like a nine song EP, but then it got whittled down – definitely for the better. But that just means that we have a lot of extra stuff recorded that hasn’t been used. But yeah, a nine song EP is ridiculous.

AS: Listening to each one as they came out, I think I expected each EP to be experimenting with just a bunch of different songs, but was surprised with just how coherent each EP was unto itself.

IH: A lot of that really just grew on its own.

AJ: And we’d just have a bunch of songs going and see the ones that were kind of growing together. There was also this weird thing where people would be kind of really creative in phases, really have a lot of input on one EP but less on another. Like there was one that I think George wasn’t even on. So that also gave it a flavor all its own in the context of each EP.

AS: So has the dynamic of how the band is writing changed at all?

NW: Yeah, I have to imagine that it will, but we really haven’t tried to write too much since we’ve finished.

IH: I think writing is still kind of going in the same formula. We’re all still writing separately, and we’re going to still do the same thing I think when we come back and write all original stuff. Just say, “Ok, these are the recordings that each of us have” and then just kind of embellish them. It’s almost like we don’t write together. It’s weird.

NW: But we do. Somebody comes in with a skeleton, but we’ll work on it, and the best stuff is when we’re all here just going crazy.

AS: So do y’all record a lot of when y’all are just jamming?

AJ: There is no jamming!

[Laughing]

IH: We don’t really jam. It’s maybe like ten per cent of practice. Have we ever pondered the idea that we’re just a recording project? I don’t think that’s ever been brought up, but now that we’re speaking it out loud…

NW: Well, it definitely crossed my mind when it got to be August or something and we hadn’t practiced in a while. And actually the first shows we played when we were done, which were free week shows, was stuff that we had already been playing. So we decided we were going to take a few months off and try to learn a whole new set, and we didn’t have any idea exactly how it was going to go. We played our last show and just basically didn’t talk to each other for about a week. But when we started practicing again, it became evident that our live shows were going to be much different.

AS: So what are the live shows like now?

AJ: In a way, it’s more vulnerable or something, because there’s a lot more focus on our vocals. We still rock, but it’s a lot more intermittent. Before there was this feeling that you could just go crazy and kind of hide behind the craziness of just noise, but now I think there’s a lot musicianship going into it.

IH: I think that end product of that attention to detail with the recordings really changed how we approached playing live. We had a chance to really develop a formula in a room where we were comfortable to be able to attack the new songs that we wanted to, but now it’s like we have that approach on them.

AS: There’s been a kind of debate recently about bands putting out too much stuff just because it’s easy to make it available versus the kind of usual supply and demand kind of dynamic. I was wondering just what y’all’s impression of that is. It seems that the EPs are really more for y’all.

IH: Absolutely. We never really had a chance to put them out there. They’re not on iTunes or anything.

AJ: But those will always be there. Those have been created, and like I said before, they are sketches.

NW: I think that’s the way we always kind of looked at it. Logistics and financials aside, I think when George first mentioned it, we were like, “Well, we need to do something.” We needed to not just keep playing shows three times a month, and none of us could really afford to tour, so we needed to do something that would keep us busy and help us progress as a band.

IH: It was weird guarantee to people also that said we’re going to put out this much music between now and next year. I mean, it was two weeks before January when the idea first came, so we all of us buckled down to the idea inside of a two week window that we were going to be writing and recording music straight for a year.

NW: I don’t think we really had time to think about it. I’m glad we did it. It’s something that we’ll always have, personally. You remember years in your life, but you don’t remember a year in your life from January 1 to December 31 chronicled in a way like that.

Websites:
http://hauntingoboemusic.com
Myspace