How did you first start playing music?
All of us have played music from young, in high school bands and for school. It was sort of a natural progression for us to continue playing music with people going on from this, however we only met each other years later as complete strangers in a new band around 2010.
How did WAWAWOW form?
A couple of us originally started in a previous band, called Lenox, playing a more contemporary style of easy listening music with a good singer friend of ours who was keen to play gigs with some of his originals. I think eventually he got tired of us jamming for too long and ruining his music, and we parted ways. Within a couple of weeks we had caught up again as instrumentalists just to play around with all manners of instruments, including stand up drums and a drum sampler/sequencer. Eventually we found a sound with the bass synth and we played our first gig with a set of janky party music as a three-piece at the Marly Bar, to a questionable but generally positive reception.
What’s been happening recently?
We’ve just released our debut album, Pink Elephant, which has been a huge project for us and a massive relief that it’s finally out. Alongside this we’ve taken on two new members, Duncan Bell who plays the baritone guitar and Adam Pilcher our new lead guitarist. They have been absolutely amazing at dealing with our unusual approach to music, and it’s been surprising how well they’ve picked up the nuances of each song. Since they’ve joined we’ve played around 10 gigs and they’ve been a great success – looking forward to a packed year of playing our music now that we’re back.
Your new album ‘Pink Elephant is out on the 14th of February, what influenced the sound and songwriting?
Honestly we never have good answers to this question. I think we wrote all of our music without much thought as to how it would appeal or what sound we were trying to emulate. We combined our impossible array of contrasting tastes in music, from hip-hop and electronic to indie rock and psychadelic blues music, which ended up being quite evident in the mish-mash of styles you can hear on our album. We like to call it Psych-junk, but really it’s all over the place. I think the main thing that united us at the start was a passion for creating ‘fun music’ that we could imagine getting into as punters at a gig.
How did you go about writing/conceptualise the music for Pink Elephant?
Our writing process was generally fed by collective hours of jam sessions and obsessively recording everything we played. Eventually we could isolate parts or riffs from each jam that we liked and start to build songs from there. Shaun (our drummer) was integral in the structuring process, coming to us each week with rough mixes, structures and suggestions for song concepts, that we would then vote on and discuss. Pink Elephant started as a continuous live set, that eventually we stuffed into a digestible album format with a few extra frills, but our main focus was re-creating the feeling of a live show and really testing the limits for what kind of strange sounds and effects we could get away with showcasing.
Please tell about the experimental process that you took to record/produce this album:
After recording 3 singles over a couple of years prior, we came to the conclusion that recording in a studio over a few days would never work for us. The jam style of our music never lent itself well to getting a good take when put on the spot in a studio, and the recordings always lacked some of the live energy we had been getting from the recorded jams. Our guitarist at the time, Hayden, was a bit of a mad scientist on the guitar, and his inspired moments happened so sporadically that capturing them on a quality recording was almost impossible. We decided that tracking everything ourselves, from the comfortable confines of Shaun’s homemade studio/garage was our best shot at getting the most organic sound from our recordings. We recorded every rehearsal, effect and sample we could get our hands on throughout a 12 month period, filling up terrabytes worth of hard drives – sometimes using the original jam recording in the final track and sometimes re-recording parts 20 times before getting something we liked. It was a huge task but we ended up really squeezing out what we wanted, and we’re very satisfied with the final result.
Where and when did you record and who with?
We recorded everything at Shaun Allen’s house in Stanmore throughout 2018 and 2019, starting to submit our stems to Dane Burge for mixing in late 2018, and eventually getting the album mastered by Streaky in December 2019 in London.
What programs/instruments did you use?
We started recording through Garage Band (which was surprisingly effective for a free software) and eventually graduated to using Logic. This was a great way to get into the DAW world, as it is quite intuitive and visual, while providing a heap of inbuilt effects and samples to get us started. We recorded using all of our usual live instruments, including Shaun’s Tama Star Classic drum kit, various Fender Strat/Teles, a Squier Jazzmaster baritone, a Nord Lead A1, Novation Bass Station, Moog Sub Phatty and a wealth of pedals and effects units (honourable mention to the Earthquaker Devices ‘Data Corrupter’ pedal).
What did you find most rewarding and challenging through the songwriting and recording process?
One of the most challenging parts of songwriting and recording was that we didn’t have a dedicated songwriter/vocalist to bring formed ideas to the table. We wrote everything instrumentally while rehearsing together – adding vocals last, often written by both Shaun and Wade, our main vocalist. We used a stern democratic process involving voting and janky versions of lobbying and insider trading to bring our own favourite ideas into the music. Essentially it worked great, as we all felt our creative voices were being expressed fairly, but it means things took a while to iron out, and a lot of debate was had over the quality and appeal of countless parts of the album. What made it all the more rewarding was that once it was finished, we had settled every disagreement and included as much as possible of each of our visions, that we can all proudly say that this is our best work to date.
What do you have planned for Pink Elephant?
We have just had vinyls pressed and delivered, which is hugely exciting for us and marks one of the big milestones we’ve been aiming for. We’ll be selling these, alongside our ‘TAWAWOWELS’ at most of our gigs coming up! Other than that, a healthy amount of gigging and enjoying a well-deserved period of time outside of the studio, and hopefully a small festival or two!
What do you like to do away from music?
Away from music, we all have jobs and generally separate lives, our guitarist adam is a Nurse, while our other guitarist Duncan is a Science Educator at primary schools. Wade is a commercial photographer and Shaun runs admin at Macquarie university while also producing multiple podcasts (one of them his own – ‘In Brackets’ which contains a healthy amount of WAWAWOW’s outtakes). We all treat the band as a creative escape from our daily lives, and something fun to liven up our weekends, which I think has helped us not to burn out over the past few years.
Who are you listening to at the moment?
Pretty much anyone and everything! We’ve always appreciated a healthy dose of local music, including Pyjama Sundayz, Wartt Gun, Light Entertainment, Lord Dodongo, NARLA, Turtle Skull and Psychadelic Porn Crumpets, but outside of that we all have very different music tastes – Wade is mostly into Hip Hop including J Cole, Childish Gambino and Eminem, while Shaun loves a dose of band music including Supergrass, Regurgitator, Devo and Cog.
What’s planned for 2020?
2020 should be full of gigs for us – we are really hoping for some small festival slots after playing Psyfari and the King Street Crawl a couple of times in previous years. Ultimately we’re looking forward to playing some fun shows and getting involved in the live music scene again after an 18 month hiatus.
Favourite food and place to hangout?
I mean, not sure how to answer this. We hangout together at Zen rehearsal studios in St Peters, and bars like The Townie, Botany View Hotel, Brighton Up Bar and The Bank where we play a lot of gigs. I’d hazard a guess that we all enjoy pizza, hopefully WITHOUT pineapple but this remains unconfirmed.
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