Interview: Precious Mess on 'Hold You To Your Word'

Nate and Reggie, what inspired you both to start this band, and how did the idea come about?

Nate and I had discussions on a project colab where music informed art, we had worked together on a number of NFT’s where the art informed the music so we decided to flip the concept , that’s when things got out of control … ending up with us building a rig with a speaker under a canvas to create the art for each song

Can you share the journey that led you to create “Hold You To Your Word”? What was the initial spark for this single?

The song was a study in suspicion and conjecture of what we know as a political system. We all have suspicions as to what we think goes on, and none of it sits right, especially when it comes to accountability hence the title, and also leans into the frustration we have in said system and helplessness that we have with our leaders

How does “Hold You To Your Word” reflect the mission or vision you have for the band?

Its sits pretty solid in the middle, the mission of the band is wide and varied, primarily its half art creation and half music creation, and the single represents one lyrical facet of where we come from, we like to ask questions that lead to more questions, in the hope that we all can collectively find solutions not reasons. Our hope is to show people that you can also do things not on a computer.

What themes do you explore in “Hold You To Your Word,” and how do they tie into the overall concept of your upcoming album, “An Exercise In Letting Go”?

Its not uncommon for us to talk about the things that affect us and hold you to your word reaches into the place where we feel helpless and frustrated under a political system and there are other moments on the album where we refer to scandals of politicians, these are things that you make a choice to react and be militant and aggressive or you can take it as a teachable moment and realise that they are just faulty broken humans like so many. So you hold onto that memory for future reference in the hope that it won’t repeat and if it does then that sways you voice when you get to vote or be active. And that NOT being reactive is “An Exercise In Letting Go”

Can you describe the musical influences that shaped the sound of “Hold You To Your Word”?

The entire album was written on one guitar with a non standard tuning which meant that all the usual tricks don’t work so it was like relearning guitar and as we were writing the sound of that guitar was shaping what we were writing but I must say that when it took a turn toward Queens of the Stone Age and Royal Blood I kinda helped it along

What was the collaborative process like when writing and recording this single, especially between the two of you?

We would always jam the song in its inception. I would start with a riff or nate would start with a beat. There ways nothing preconceived it was a really spontaneous organic moment between 2 blokes.
This song was no exception

How do you envision the visual representation of “Hold You To Your Word” through music videos or artwork?

This was the reason we started the project… we create painted canvases by the canvas (30cm X 30cm) over a specially built speaker box and then we pour paint on the canvas and play the song through the speaker to make the paint bounce around and the end result is the artwork for that song … it was our way of pushing back at what seems to be a massive lean on AI to create art … I mean if we can do it so can you. The music video was a straight up performance video with some b roll. but there are some breadcrumbs in it that point to our push back against AI

What challenges did you face when starting the band, and how did those experiences shape your music?

When we started it was more to create organically driven art and as it progressed it seemed to want to be more song based and then the melodies and lyrics came very quickly so it choose it own direction
Not having a bass player for the process I think initially was a concern but when we had our first session we didn’t even consider it and I’m glad we took this path

Please give us an idea of how you approached the songwriting and then recording process:

No agenda the songs chose us, we would usually do a song in roughly a day and then some overdubs and lyrics and vocal on the next day. but a lot of the time when we were jamming the melodies and lyrics would start to appear, so sometimes it was a panic to get the overdubs done so I could start the vocal.
Generally we would have a protools session open with everything plugged in so after a while of jamming and we had a solid arrangement we would hit the red button and throw the bones down live

How did the concept for the music video come about and how did you approach the film and video production?

We and our long time friend and confident Lucas Packett set up in the studio as we would normally to write and then Lucas would blaze away with the camera
We also have been distorting our personas in an attempt to push the narrative that it’s more about the art . But it’s also music . So we set up a rig for the paint and we built rig for the paper to fly at us and Lucas used a power drill wth a sponge buff to shoot A4 sheets of (Recyled) paper at us … its always fun..

Looking ahead, what do you hope listeners will take away from “Hold You To Your Word” and the album as a whole?

Just that if your frustrated at our system understand that it was built to be attacked .. so maybe pick your fights and wait for your time to choose as part of a more equitable resolve ,,, maybe from the inside ?
Accountability is everything.

Nate and Reggie