Over the last years British band BLUENECK evolved to one of the best alternative/ambient bands. Shortly NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION sat down with singer Duncan Attwood to talk about what can be expected from the new BLUENECK album (out “in the front half of 2014”), musical comparisons, favorite bands, instrumental albums and of course hope and passion.
With “Sirens” you released the first song of your upcoming album. What can people expect from the album?
Well, what we tried to achieve on this album is a bit more diverse. We wanted to do the production more dynamic. I wouldn’t say we go mainstream now, but perhaps it is a bit more mainstream. For example we’ve pushed my vocals a lot more up in the mix, you might have noticed that in “Sirens”. Also the drums are a lot more prominent. So with this album we’ve experimented a lot more rhythmically, sometimes the percussion is driving the songs a lot more. I’m a big fan of interesting rhythms and I wanted to try a few different things on this next record. But when we say it’s mainstream… I think it’s not really mainstream. We’ll never gonna be mainstream. It’s certainly not pop, but what I mean with “mainstream” is more the production side of things. It’s more punchy. So now we have to think a lot more about the rhythms that we’re using, because a lot of the tracks have multi-layered percussion… with electronic drums and live drums. It’s a more exciting album and I’m generally quite excited by this album. I think “Sirens” is the most BLUENECK-esque track of the album. There’s a few different things on that from which we’re really hoping people will like. The album will be out in the front half of 2014.
What would you like to see happening with the album?
It may sound a bit cliche, but I’m generally happy with how BLUENECK has been received so far. There’s not many bands that get heard as much as we do. We are not aiming to make a living out of BLUENECK, but we get to experience some amazing things through BLUENECK. So I guess the best experience being in the band is touring different countries and meeting people. My hope is that this album maybe gets heard by a lot more people and that it opens up a few more doors. Maybe we can play in some countries we’ve never toured before. Also hopefully some festivals, since we never really experienced that – we always struggled at that point. I played some festivals with CULT OF LUNA last summer when I joined them for a week and played the keyboard. It was such a great experience and I would love to do that with BLUENECK and my boys in the band.
With BLUENECK you often get compared to bands like EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY, MOGWAI, RADIOHEAD, SIGUR RÓS and such. Do you feel well with comparisons like that?
It’s always nice to hear from people “oh you sound a bit like him or her or whatever, but it isn’t the normal MOGWAI, EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY.” It’s nice to hear people that have a slightly other opinion of music. And it’s nice not to be compared to those bands over and over again. Still it is pretty blasphemous being compared to such bands, because they are amazing bands. I personally don’t really think that we sound like them, but I see why people may say that there are some similarities. There are quite a lot differences. I really don’t mind people saying that we sound like those bands and I understand that people almost need to compare us to another band or put us in a genre. That might be why BLUENECK has been put into the post-rock genre. But I think it can only help a band if you got an identity such as being post-rock. I get asked a lot if those bands are the bands I listen to on a daily basis and quite often people seem to be disappointed when I say that they are not my favorite bands. I’ve always been a fan of ARCADE FIRE, WHY?, ALCOHOLIC FAITH MISSION. I guess I like bands that have more melody. M83 is also a band I listen to a lot.
That’s interesting, because with BLUENECK you play much more melancholic music.
Yes. I find writing melancholic really simple and it comes naturally to me. I don’t like listening to melancholic music. When I sit down to write a song or when ideas come to my head it’s almost like I’m tapping into that melancholic side or dark corner in my mind that I’m pretty sure we all have. I seem to be able to just tap into that, open the door, write some music and then become a cheerful guy. I think people, especially at shows, expect me to be this deep and depressive guy. Sometimes I’m not sure if they are disappointed when they meet me with a smile on my face. I guess BLUENECK is more of a valve of those emotions rather than the norm.
Of all the songs you’ve ever written, what is you favorite BLUENECK song?
I would say it’s “Barriers Down” from the album “Repetitions”. I think it’s not the song that could be called a fan’s favor, but for me personally it’s a very special track. It has a lot of personal meaning for me. Yes, I go with “Barriers Down”. The rest of the band they don’t tend to know what the songs are are about or anything and so I guess yes, “Barriers Down”.
Why did you decide to release an instrumental album with “Epilogue” but came back using vocals then?
A lot people ask that and they were surprised or even disappointed at that point. So here’s the story behind “Epilogue”. At the time I was doing soundtrack work on a short film with Johannes Persson, the guitarist in CULT OF LUNA. When I finished the soundtrack work I just realized that I could make an album out of this. I’m a big fan of instrumental movie soundtracks. So somehow I see “Epilogue” almost as a side project to BLUENECK. So it wasn’t that I thought “let’s do an album without any vocals”, it just happened.
What do “hope” and “passion” mean to you?
I guess hope and passion are both similar. We need hope and we need passion to live and to survive. Without hope you can’t really survive. If you got no hope what’s the point? And if you don’t have passion for something in life then once again it’s kind of almost pointless. You gotta have hope and you gotta have passion.
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BLUENECK