Eaux

Armed with an elegant darkness and dramatic auditorium quality that could fill an entire city with shivers and pops, breathy gasps and a shrill earnestness evoked from the lips of front woman Sian Ahern, Eaux have carved out a music niche all their own. In the midst of touring, the band took a few moments to answer our questions. We get the scoop on their collaborative creative process, their video for ‘New Peaks’, and of course what they have in store for 2013. Check it out.

I hear you are in the middle of a tour. That’s exciting, how has the tour and live shows been so far?

SA The tour was great thanks, it’s always great to be on the road. We’re back now, the adrenalin is fading fast…

So tell me the story of how Eaux came to be.

SW We all played together in Sian Alice Group. That band kind of ran its course musically – the three of us wanted to head in this direction and thus we became Eaux.

If you had to describe your sound as a food or a dish, what would you pick and why?

BC This question reminds me of Blind Date…

SW Haha maybe Tapas?…or dim sum.. you can sit round and share and talk about it !

SA Ramen because its light with hidden robust depths and subtle flavours.

For me, your music is dark, but in a deep and exploratory way. You create this inviting, organic feeling to your music by juxtaposing the dark with this airy, lightness. It seems to be a theme throughout your music.

SW I kind of know what you mean about light and dark- but we probably think about it in a more textural way, and maybe a colourful way. We’re definitely aware of contrasting and balancing textures and sounds… Sian’s vocal hovers in quite a fragile place sometimes. We sort of throw different things at it!

BC Maybe its more luminescent than dark or light? Glow in the dark.

Where does your sound come from?

BC From broken old equipment in a damp basement. and improvising and refining what sounds that we make in there.
SA From an excitement, a mutual appreciation of each other’s abilities.

I guess what I’m asking, are there any people/places and/or things that have influenced your sound?

BC Everything influences what you do essentially. I guess we’re interested in people that play electronic instruments though, rather than programming or software led musicians. I don’t know if we are a dance band as such – we’re just a band with an electronic drummer. I personally don’t like to see a laptop on stage unless its being used in a very pure and creative way. i like to see people playing and engaging with what’s in front of them. there’s room for playing in our music – the beats aren’t programmed, they are loops that Sian selects. all of our synths and effects are hardware – the danger that they can go wrong is real but we find it attractive. Heavier than Ableton live for sure, but that makes it physical you know?

SA I dont have a problem with artists who rely entirely on their computers, but for us- we want to be a band. That means reacting tothings and each other live.

SW Yeah I think we are definitely influenced by electronic music that’s happening around us but a lot of artists these days have a very private virtual work-space which is inside the world of their computer – which can be interesting of course – but as Sian says, we want to be a band and take it out of our private head-space. Playing live and making noises in a room together is important to us.

How did you go about writing and recording your EP, i?

BC We wrote it with the same broken equipment but in our old, drier, shared rehearsal space. what we recorded was current at the time, five songs that felt vital and fresh, and felt like they could be recorded quickly and in a live setting in a vintage studio. Some of the tracks weren’t quite finished as such so there was room for play and performance.

SA Shuta Shinoda, who engineered and mixed the tracks, was so great to work with. He seemed to be on the same page as us and the recording and mixing flowed without any problems or disagreements at all.

SW Shuta is amazing… we were totally on the same page which made the whole process kind of easy.

Do all write songs together? Is it collaborative?

SA Our general writing order is first we all play around with and program the beats, then Ben and Steve build the instrumental melody and structure and i weave vocal melodies around that. We all freely pipe in with ideas and opinions, shaping the songs equally.

BC It’s totally democratic and equal, as collaborative as it can be – same with the production of it. With Eaux we want to work it out in advance and only use the computer as a format, not as a tool – in theory we could record to tape or hard disc or straight to vinyl. We want to keep it as pure as possible to the sound of the three of us playing at the same time in the same space.

SW We talk about what works and what doesn’t the whole time. It’s an open and honest process.

You recently recorded a DayTrotter Session, what was that experience like?

SA Ah yes. Well it was a good experience, the studio(in the back of a church) was lovely but we didn’t have very long at all to record it…no second chances! i hope the result wasn’t too scruffy…

Your video for “New Peaks” is fantastic by the way. The song itself is so beautiful, and the damaged film and fisheye lense captured those gritty imperfections so perfectly.

BC Thanks, Douglas was the first choice to direct it. he’s a legend in british music and music videos with an encyclopedic film knowledge. we knew we could trust him to make something great, there’s a real purity to his film making that’s totally unique in music video land.

If the internet disappeared for a week, what would you do with all your free time?

SA Read.
SW Studio week! if we can drag Sian away from her book….

What does 2013 hold for Eaux?

SW We just played a free headline Eat Your Own Ears show at the shacklewell arms on the 18th of december. Now we’re writing and developing ideas for our debut album, and hopefully finding someone to release that, and hopefully playing as much as possible.