This article has been very difficult to write. It’s been sitting on my computer half finished for over a month now and I just can’t figure out a way to start it. It shouldn’t be hard, considering everything going on with the band, they’re just about to release their debut album Buy The Ticket Take The Ride; they’re releasing it on their own record label The Anti-Machine Machine, backed by EMI, it features a who’s who of contemporary psychedelia, including Ricky Maymi from The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Peter Hayes from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, they’re headlining The Tote in Melbourne on Nov 19th, and last but not least… they’re just fucking awesome.
Why then am I having so much fucking trouble with this?
The only conclusion I can come to is that I’m over thinking everything, and with that in mind I have to decided not to think about it at all and let my interview with the lovely Aimee Nash speak for itself.
However before I let you go let me just say this, The Black Ryder are bone-bendingly good, make sure you grab every opportunity to see them that you can, because they’re not going to be playing small venues for long.
Music Feeds: So you’re going to release the album on your own label, The Anti-Machine Machine, what made you want to do it that way?
Aimee Nash: I guess we’ve been very hands on with the recording process as well. Everything we’ve done since the inception of what we’re doing now, we’ve done it ourselves so it didn’t really feel right to hand over once we’d finished it, give it to someone else and let them take control of how they release it, go with someone else’s vision of how to release it, so it really made sense for us to go down this path. I don’t know how it’ll work out you know I can’t look into a crystal ball, but it’s just nice that we’re very much involved with the whole process.
MF: Sounds great, but what about the workload?
AN: There’s a lot involved as even throughout the recording process, we both had jobs. It’s taken a while to finish the album and we thought things would die down a little afterwards but we’re actually quite busy, it’s a good busy though, we’re definitely not complaining. We feel very fortunate to be in this position cos the industry’s changing out there, it’s very different these days, and I think it’s very important to keep evolving and looking at new approaches.
MF: Speaking of evolving the band itself has changed a lot in terms of line-up over it’s lifetime, why?
AN: In the beginning we didn’t really know what we were going to do. We just started writing and recording ourselves, and then with the help of people we knew and played our music to. They wanted to be involved, which was wonderful for us, especially since some of those people were people who really inspire us, like Peter from Black Rebel, who was a great help actually.
He came in towards the end when we were close to having some final mixes of the songs ready. We’d just been too close to the music for so long, and not working with a producer at all… and you know when you’ve listened to something so much you don’t really know what you’re listening to anymore? We were lost and having someone like Pete come in with a fresh perspective really helped.
So I sent the music files over and he had a listen and asked me if we had some lyrics to send him, and the next day he sent over five guitar parts and some vocal harmonies. So that was a great moment for us, we’re big fans of Pete and of what Black Rebel do as a band
MF: It seems like you must have had a lot of those moments making this album?
AN: Obvioulsy working with Ricky Maymi from BJM was definitely an honour. We’ve known him for a quite a while, and he was actually staying with us when we were first floating these songs around and he really wanted to put some ideas down, and it turned out he was actually on quite a fair few of our tracks. It was great for us at the time, you know to have someone who’d played as long as Ricky, and who’s such a fantastic guitarist and musician, the fact that he was interested in putting some ideas into our music really made us feel like we were on the right track.
It was all very much a bit of a pinchy pinchy experience you know.
MF: But it’s all done now and waiting to be released, what are the plans for the future?
We’re definitely keen to just get back to writing again for a bit. We had all these ideas that we kept starting and we just thought, no, we have to focus and finish what we have, finish the first album before we start thinking about the second. We’ll just wait and see how things pan out with getting the album out there. We’re definitely keen to play some more, the album should be out in October and we’ll be doing album shows around then.
Be sure to get down The Tote on November 19th when The Black Ryder launch their debut album Buy The Ticket Take The Ride. For more information check out http://www.myspace.com/theblackryder
