What is your name and role within Inklines?
Will – I sing and play guitar.
Where are you currently based and how has your Covid experience been so far?
We’re all based on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. The last year has been interesting, with how much the whole environment of live music has changed. There’s been a lot of down time but we’ve kept busy writing and recording new music. Jamming heaps!
How did Inklines form?
I asked Tom if he wanted to drum with me after I saw him playing in a mate’s band, at a local show. My brother Jason was playing bass for a while, but he wanted to do other things so we called up Dan, who Tom knew from school, and convinced him to join.
What’s been happening recently?
We’ve been jamming heaps which has been really good. Keeping busy with promoting and preparing singles. We played our first show in 12 months just a few weeks back, which was great fun!
Your new single ‘Blossom’ is out now, what influenced the sound and songwriting?
I think I was mainly just going for simplicity. I got the idea for wanting to do a big outro riff from Madison Cunningham’s song – “Song In My Head”.
How did Blossom come about?
I recorded the riff into my phone recorder a year or so ago. It just randomly popped into my head one night and I started writing bass lines under the riff. For about a week, I would record a different little line or chord voicing and add it on there until I just worked out what I wanted, where.
Where and when did you record/produce/master and who with?
We recorded this and 6 other songs in a house on a farm just outside of Goulbourn. Lachlan West engineered, produced, recorded, mixed and mastered the whole session.
What programs/equipment did you use?
You’d have to ask Lachlan about the programs – I think Logic? The guitars in this track are primarily a Fender Telecaster & a Gibson SG Custom, with a J45 for some extra percussive textures. Tom played on an old Ludwig kit that Lachy owns. Dan uses a J bass & a P bass, I’m not certain what he used on this track but my guess would be P.
How did you approach the recording process?
We always like to get the fundamentals down from a live session. So, all the bass & drums and some rhythm guitars are taken from one of the 7 or 8 takes we do, of each song. Then I add all the extra guitar layers and vocals in later.
Who are you listening to at the moment?
I’m not actually listening to much at the moment. I’ve just kind of been relistening to things from the last 2 or 3 years. My most recent obsession was The Neighbourhood’s “Chip Chrome and the Monotones”, and I still love to listen to that, but I haven’t much else that I’ve been super excited about since.
What do you like to do away from music, now things are less locked down?
Recently I’ve mostly been busy preparing to be a father! My daughter is due in May. So I’ve been spending lots of time with my girlfriend, building cots, shopping for small clothes and all the rest! We also have a small business so I’ve been focussing on pushing that as much as possible.
You’re playing Saturday, March 27th Secret Location, Brookvale Sydney, what can we expect from an Inklines show?
We’ve actually just rescheduled the show for April 2nd! Normally you can expect us to play loud and hard, but for this one we’re taking it down a notch and giving the acoustic “unplugged” thing a go.
What’s planned for 2021?
We’ve got a bunch of songs to release so that will be the main focus! We’ll definitely play some shows when we can but it’s a strange world out there at the moment, so we aren’t rushing into anything.
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