TLOBF Interview // School Of Seven Bells

Adrian Mules caught up with Benjamin Curtis prior to their Pure Groove show in London to talk about their new album and upcoming tour.

How did the recording of Disconnect From Desire differ from the previous album? The sound seems a lot fuller.
Although it’s denser there is actually less happening , but I can see how that would contribute to that – as when less is happening each sound has a little more room to be bigger on its own. When you are trying to pack the production so full of ideas everything has to be filed to a point so it has its own little space in the field. Here everything has the space to be round and a little more harmonically exciting. Also the ideas are a little more concise.

We didn’t think too much about the process, we started writing on the road and started working when we got home; the next thing you know we were half way through it.

You recorded at home again like you did on Alpinisms, did you learn a lot from self-recording your debut that you could apply to this?
I learned everything, because I had no idea what I was doing. I hadn’t even owned a computer until five years ago. I had to figure out how to translate our ideas onto tape. With the second album we were already there, so we could focus on the ideas.

Did you find there were times that effects or sounds you wanted to achieve were unattainable in a home recording model?
No, because I think everything is a restriction in a way. Whether it be time or space. Sometimes dealing with equipment that you have to have someone operate for you is a limitation – so you aren’t able to actually do it yourself. Limitations for me are ideal because I feel I work best when I’m having to work with what I have.

Is there an urge to keep fiddling when you are producing your own record? Is anything ever really finished?
Sure, when you are working on a project that’s this big at home there is always the urge to go to sleep and jump right back in when you wake up. At a certain point I realised I wanted to have a record out this year, which came above everything else.

Have you ever thought of going DIY with the whole process of selling records yourself using digital distribution?
I’m a big fan of people doing what they do well and I know that I’m not great at selling music. Other people have a passion for doing that, maybe it’s just the socialist in me but it’s great to have people doing the things they love and working together.

I just think the whole idea of the musician as CEO and entrepreneur competing in the marketplace against other people that they should just be listening to and inspired by is probably very dangerous for art, plus most musicians I know are horrible businesspeople.

You mentioned earlier that you were writing on the road, did the record grow organically whilst you were recording or did you have a set vision of where you were going from the outset?
A little bit of both. A lot of the ideas came together really quickly, we had the album title really early on, and we had specific songs and knew what the vibe and mood was going to be. We knew what kind of record this was going to be before we recorded it – which is really great, it’s not often you get such a clear picture. People often asked what that picture was, but it was really hard to express it as it was so abstract, but we just knew what we were going to capture in the record.

Some of the lyrics come from Alejandra’s lucid dreams – can you expand on that?
Yeah, it’s something that’s really paid attention to in the relationship between the things that pop up in the subconscious. Maybe things that are troubling in the day. I think it’s treated more as a window to the day, rather than something to focus on in itself.

Was she bringing concepts and lyrics from those experiences to the table?
Yeah, it seems to frame situations that could be everyday and mundane in a bit more unrestricted way. That’s defiantly what happens when you sleep, the most ordinary things can be the most creative things in the world.

What’s the image on the cover of the album?
It’s made from the words “Disconnect From Desire”. We were discussing images with Brian Collins, who does our art, we kept coming back to this concept of iconography to bypass language in your brain. Alejandra was talking about this thing called a Sigil, which is a personal tool where you sit down and write something you want to see happen and go through a process of boiling down the words to a few letters through a system, then you create an image out of those letters that doesn’t resemble any of them.

You are embarking on a tour now, are there challenges bringing the studio creations to a live setting?
Yeah, a few of the songs we had the luxury of taking out on tour during the recording. We played about half the record on various tours, that really helped us out a lot to make sure we were heading in the right direction.

So, did you get feedback from playing those songs live and then go back and adjust them based upon what did and didn’t work?
We got feedback from people who came out to see us, but I think the best feedback is when you are up there playing twelve songs that you’ve been playing for a year and you add a new one it’s really easy to tell what’s not good about it – it happens really quickly. There’s also a danger that you can be a bit safer doing this, but for us it allowed us to be more deliberate and concise.

What’s the best and worst thing about being on tour?
I’ve toured so much of my life that I feel like there are little things I love about all the places I go and it’s cool to check back in with them. I get different little feelings from every city I’m familiar with.

The worst thing is I just get a taste of everything, I end in places and think it would be amazing to spend a week here.

What’s been your favourite album released this year?
I like the Pantha Du Prince record and the Actress record, Splazsh, that’s really cool.

I went to school with identical twins that caused havoc by pretending to be each other – do Alejandra and Claudia play any tricks on those around them?
Yeah, but unintentionally – there is a lot of synergy there, but they aren’t too into pranks. They are very different in a million ways, but there is no doubt about it that they are in-tune a lot. It’s a simple and complex dynamic that’s hard to understand.