Amplifier and the music industry, it’s a stormy affair to say the least. Two years after the release of The Octopus Sel Balamir and co. are gearing up to release their latest effort, entitled Echo Street; it’s a very different affair with quite a story attached to it. Ghost Cult caught up with Sel to discuss the latest developments in the Amplifier camp…
What’s your take on The Octopus?
We spent an amazingly long time on making The Octopus. It’s not only the songs, but there are countless layers as well; on top of that came the whole concept and design bit. Nowadays lots of bands are making double albums again, but when we released The Octopus I hadn’t seen any bands doing it for years really; perhaps we started something there.
Like you said, The Octopus was a massive operation. Was there a point when it became a little too much?
No, when I said that the record would be a double album that definitely set some parameters as far the music goes. Every project has their set of phases; there’s always a playing phase when you jam and work on new ideas, for The Octopus that phase took 18 months. At some point we wanted to make the record and move onto a new area so to speak; that was the time we started recording and it took another 18 months before the album was finished.
Is it true that some of the songs on Echo Street are from Amplifier’s beginning stages?
Yes, we had to make a record and I was actually working on another record which was intended as the follow-up to The Octopus, but it wasn’t ready yet. All the music that I wrote was on that record, so we had a blank sheet to fill as it were. I have probably 1000 cassettes containing all the music I’ve written from 1990 onwards; with Echo Street it finally paid off storing all that stuff, I had a whole archive of ideas that I could use. I actually could remember most of the melodies and ideas stored on those cassettes; I figured out the best way to fill the proverbial blank sheet was to go over the strongest ideas and use those as a base for the record. It was only way I could make a record so quickly.
To which extent did you have to re-arrange those older ideas in order to make them usuable?
That differed quite a lot, to be honest. A song called ‘Echo Street’ was essentially a jam from 1996 that I had on a cassette. Obviously, the version that ended up on the record was very different from the cassette version, because that was nothing apart from feedback. We basically took the spirit of the original performance and made a new version of it. The only thing that needed to be done there was sorting out the arrangements and improvising a bit. Some of the more complicated songs I completely rewrote and only kept some chord progressions and vocal lines. Other songs had the arrangements and structure already there, but the lyrics and vocal melodies needed some polishing, because many of those lyrics were written when I was nineteen. Back then I didn’t have the experience to know what I wanted to talk about and how words and melodies worked. In summary, some of the songs got a make over, other songs were completely reworked and restructructured from the inside out.
So when you went over those old cassettes did you encounter any cringe worthy moments?
Oh, god, yes! There’s nothing worse than reading the lyrics written by a 19 year old. You have to get all the clumsiness out of the way and you’re fine. However, it was very nice to have all those cassettes as an archive and revisit those ideas you had when you’re young and innocent in a way and finish them in a good way. I’m not sure many people get such an opportunity to do something like that. It was quite a privilege in a way and I learned quite a lot from the whole experience as well. I was stunned by the simplicity of it all. It has to be simple because we recorded everything on a cassette. I had kind of forgotten about that style of songwriting.
Simplicity in the good sense of the word is the cornerstone of Echo Street, isn’t it?
It had to be. The last record was incredibly complicated and we didn’t want to repeat ourselves. I also think ‘Echo Street’ has a timeless quality to it. I like to compare the whole process of that as a farmer who planted the seeds many years ago and they were waiting to be harvested.
Amplifier is a four piece now. How did this affect the dynamics within the band and the general direction of Echo Street?
It has definitely changed the dynamics within the band, certainly on stage. As far as the new record goes we didn’t had the time to rehearse so it was basically me and Matt Brobin (drums) who did all the backing with the other guys coming in laying their parts down over the top. When we’re putting the record together it was definitely written for the three of us singing. That’s the biggest difference I think.
In what way are The Octopus and Echo Street related to each other?
There’s certainly a sort of yin yang thing going on, because the two records are the complete opposites of each other. Not so much through intention as through circumstances. We spent four years making The Octopus and the whole process was very slow and meticulous. Echo Street was done in a split second compared to that. It was way more organic and there wasn’t a lot of time of thinking things over or to be anal. The Octopus is also way more complex. It’s a really dark record, so hence the black references. I’m not too sure now whether Echo Street is white album. I kind of see it was the color of the old photograph on the front cover of the album. It’s not like day and night. Echo Street is a rather dark album as well. It’s rooted in nostalgia.
The Octopus was released independently, the new album is released traditionally via a label, Kscope in this case. What’s the story on that?
We’ve gotten to a point where we sold a lot of copies of our previous album and doing everything ourselves became a full time job. Essentially it was selling albums from our drummer’s garage and sending them around the world. At one point we had a band meeting and had a discussion on how we could sell more records than we already had; in order to do that we had to stop being a band and start being a record company. That was the kind of decision we were looking it. We thought it would be a better idea to look for a third party that already had a sales and promotion team, otherwise we had to hire people doing that and get an office and everything going which would be too expensive. That’s essentially the type of business a label should do. The Kscope guys are really good and they seem to know what they’re doing. Kscope is one of the few labels that actually thrives where many other labels are struggling. They have very good business models and they have a very close working relationship with their bands. That is very important for me. I can sit with them and talk about my band as an equal business partner for a change. My experience is that most people in the music industry are shitbags. As you can tell I’m not bitter at all. I’m merely being sarcastic. I learned a lot by selling The Octopus. I learned a lot of tricks and now I know how the whole game is played. I can point my finger when it’s needed. Amplifier and the music industry is a love/hate relationship.
Raymond Westland