The Slow Readers Club - Interview

The Slow Readers Club release their seventh studio album Out Of A Dream today. The self-released album is one of their strongest bodies of work to date as yet as evidenced at their preview shows in Bury and Manchester a couple of weeks ago. We caught up with the band after soundcheck for their Manchester Gorilla show to chat about the recording of the album and where The Slow Readers Club stand today.

Could you tell us how you wrote and recorded Out Of A Dream?

Aaron : It was a mixture really. Most of the album was done in the practice room jamming stuff out. Some ideas started out life at one of our homes, whether it be synth or guitar lines. We'd share them on phones and kick things off that way people adding things. That was inherited from the 91 Days In Isolation time when we were writing remotely.  So there's a mix of jamming and starting things off at home really, it's been a good process.

Once we'd written the songs it was demoed at Low Four Studios initially in Manchester with Phil Bulleyment who'd produced our second, third, fourth and fifth albums and then we went into the studio with Joe Cross who produced Knowledge Freedom Power in his little shipping container in Cheetham Hill.

It was good because we knew the basic structure of them and what we wanted to go for. Phil brought a few things to the table like the big keyboard riff in the chorus that forms a bit part of Technofear. Joe Cross contributed a lot too, particularly on songs like Boy So Blue where he leant really heavily into electronica.  It was really good to have both their inputs.

Was it the intention to go a little more down the electronica route when you started the album process?

Aaron : No. We don't set off into the process with any agenda really, rightly or wrongly. It just sort of happens tune by tune and that one leant itself to be more electronic. I don't think the record in general is more electronic as a whole. I think I've described it in press releases as kaleidoscopic. There's big electronic moments but there's also lo-fi tender ones.

Kurtis : I'd add after going in with Phil we did do some pre-production with Joe and Jim and David went into a different room and did a lot of stuff live together. 

Aaron : That was something we did differently with Joe compared to how we'd worked with Phil in the past. He does a lot in pre-production where we establish the sonic characteristics of a tune and he gets us to build a rough demo of what we're aiming towards because we're often recording separately working around day jobs. 

Kurtis : We create a sort of digital template and then we add the real live drums and bass on it but it usually ends up like what we'd agreed in pre-production, whereas before we'd go in for days and with a tune spend lots of time layering bits on it and experimenting with different sounds, but now the core is agreed at the start.

Aaron : I think structurally there's more adventurous tunes on this album than we've done before. Little White Lies, Boy So Blue, Animals, the structure of the songs is more adventurous.

Was that intentional?

Aaron : A little, but it happened as the process evolved 

Kurtis : I think when you've got the demos in front of you, you can ask yourself the question as to whether some of them are sounding similar, or even if just the structures are similar on different tunes, that makes you think about them and ask yourself how many of that type of tune you've got. It think it becomes a more organic process.

Aaron : Animals was one where we had a lot of pieces, we could arrange it in lots of different ways - All The Idols was like that on The Joy Of The Return. A track like Little White Lies, when we were jamming that out the vocal melody came very early but then it was difficult to write lyrics for because it had come together so quickly so the patterns weren't the same every time so it took me a while to get my head around that. 

Was there anything specific that inspired the lyrics because they're quite direct at points?

Aaron : Jim has been in my ear over the last couple of albums about being more direct with lyrics and being less abstract I suppose which I've tried to do. Puppets is political, weird how things are playing out with Trump and all the Ukraine stuff that's happening and corporate interests in the American political system. Obviously that song was written a year or so ago but there's a weird parallel with what's going on now.

Technofear was more inspired by how we're exposed by multiple versions of the truth online where more and more people seem to be living their life on places like Twitter and Facebook. You're sent multiple narratives by algorithms and people have different interpretations of what the truth is. There's references to AI as well, like on Know This I Am, being a bit intimated by that.

How are you finding being independent again, being back working and trying to juggle that with being in the band?

Kurtis : The recording process definitely.

Jim : It's just the time like doing gigs. Actually even though we had a year or so where being in the band was our main job, I don't think we changed a great deal because we'd religiously go to practice two or three times a week. It wasn't like we sat at home and just waited to do gigs or to go and record. It was shit from the perspective of writing, it's better when you have the time to write and you're fresh rather than having to write at ten or eleven o'clock at night because you've been working all day before you go to practice. I don't think being self-sufficient and being a DIY band ever really left us. We've always been hands on with all the shit that comes with being in a band. Going back to that wasn't a problem. As Kurtis said, the only difficult thing was finding the time to do gigs, record and commit to things. The rest we just cracked on.

Aaron : Creatively I don't think it's had that big an impact at all. The adversity motivates you and we're still building back to a position now. The pre-orders for the record are doing very well, we're getting festival slots, we're supporting Elbow. Even last year we supported Pixies and Morrissey, so when we weren't full time anymore we managed to keep at a decent level regardless of having day jobs. I know from being out on tour with people that some you wouldn't think have other jobs too alongside music. It's not for everyone for it to be a full-time thing. Who knows, maybe one day it might.

Kurtis : It's more about being economical with the time we have. Like I said the biggest downside is with the recording, we had to do it in bits, half days here and there, separately at times, going in at night after work. 

Aaron : I'm not saying going in for two weeks straight would necessarily create the perfect record but that relaxed headspace definitely helps.

It's still restrictive though. Look at the album release week and other bands are out somewhere every day doing something that will drive sales

Aaron : Definitely the point you made. I know we've sold a lot of records doing the out-stores. If you're in a position where you could do twenty of them you could potentially get a number one record. That's frustrating, but we are where we are and we're doing the best we can with what we've got. 

   

Looking back, we're close to the tenth anniversary of Cavalcade. Did you ever imagine in 2015 that you'd still be doing this back then and having the chance of another top ten record?

Kurtis : Well, no, we didn't even think about chart positions with Cavalcade

You didn't even have barcodes on them!

Kurtis : Well we thought after album one we'd be flying.

Jim : (laughs) It wasn't a case of whether we'd still be doing it, it was how big we'd be. We didn't really officially release Cavalcade, but when we'd finished it and we were listening back to the final mixes, we thought it was great. What's coming next? How big are we going to get?  And of course it didn't really happen then. Every album has been a stepping stone. The days of us bursting onto some music scene and getting a big record deal, those days are well and truly gone, we had to take the long route.

Aaron : I think with Cavalcade, it did its own work. The first album we had expectations that people would hear it and we'd be huge. By the second one we knew it wouldn't just explode. But we were picking up fans around the world, we were getting radio play in Ireland and we sold out a show over there in a day, the first time we put three hundred people in a room and that gave us confidence that it could work. And a few months later James got on to it and that opened lots of doors for us. 

We've got the ability to create what we create and it goes out there in the world and as long as people like it. Last night we played in Bury, the new album and people really loved us and a lot of those people were new. As long as people still care and we appreciate what we're doing, we'll still do it.

One final question. What are your favourite songs on the album and why?

Aaron : Mine is Boy So Blue. I like how we've leant very heavily into electronic music. It's personally meaningful to me in terms of the lyrics. It's nice to be adventurous and go into new territory. It is everything it should be that tune, it's a big electronic dance tune although it's quite different. I like how it's turned out.

David : I've been through pretty much all of them. At the moment it's Pirouette. I like the different parts to it, it progresses and doesn't stay the same so I'm buzzing off that, but it could easily be Little White Lies, certainly during the recording process that was my favourite. It changes, which is a good thing I think.

Jim : At the moment it's Know This I Am or Our Song Is Sung. Know This I Am I love lyrically, I love how haunting it is and I like how heavy it gets at the end, similarly with Our Song Is Sung. I like the little string arrangement we've got on Know This I Am as well which was done by someone Kurt knows, Lorenzo. We sent him the track and gave him a few pointers and he sent back this amazing arrangement. But like David said, it depends on what mood I'm in because I've listened to the album most days.

Kurtis : Technofear. When we first did it, it felt like it could have been on the last album as well, but it's one of those tunes that's bang in your face like Lunatic. It has that dark 80s energy that I like anyway, it's just my personal taste and it's got a real drive to it.

The Slow Readers Club's official website can be found here. They are also on Facebook and Twitter. 

Out Of A Dream is out today.

The Slow Readers Club play Bury Met (April 14), Liverpool Jacaranda (15), Leeds Headrow House (16, two shows), London Rough Trade East (20), Kingston Pryzm (21), Nottingham Rough Trade (22, two shows) before heading out to Europe to play Amsterdam Paradiso (April 22), Nijmegen Doornroosje (23), Groningen Vera (24), Cologne Luxor (25) and Hamburg Kent Club (26).

lead image by Liam Maxwell

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