We caught up with Irish post-rock band And So I Watch You From Afar to discuss the release of their new album, Heirs. They’ve been making waves in the post-rock world with this delightful insistence in rewriting the rules of the genre by each album they release. So, three years after the acclaimed All Hail Bright Futures, the four Belfast natives are now back again with full force and to talk about all things related to album nº4, here is drummer Christopher Wee:
You guys have been on tour recently. How’s it been and how was the reception to the new material so far?
It was really, really great! In hindsight now, since we had a week away from the tour, I can look back on it and review the whole thing. It was great to see people singing along to parts of the new songs already with the album being out only one month or so! That’s always a good sign! People are obviously pre-ordering and getting a really good listen at the songs even before we even played them, so that’s always a really nice thing to see! We always go out to the merchandise after the show to talk to people, and it was great to get feedback directly from the fans of the band, actually talking to them face to face, and there was lots of really good feedback about the album. A lot of people are really liking the direction it took!
Talking now about Heirs and its new direction. While in All Hail you guys experimented with a different array of styles and sounds, you’re now employing a more cohesive, echoey-atmospheric type of sound with a few complex time changes. How do you guys view this new record among all of your previous releases?
I guess I can talk about that in context with the last album. When we did All Hail Bright Futures, at that point we really wanted to try and push the boundaries of what we’ve done before and I think we definitely did that. We probably scared a lot of people, but then we also turned a lot of people on to the band that may have not have listened to us because it wasn’t so much [based] on dark and aggressive riffs. There was more to it, and when we came to this album, there was a lot of talking before we even started writing the music. We were talking about what we wanted to say and how we wanted to say it with the new record, so there were words and things punched around between us even before we started jamming. Right around then we were talking about really vast sort of signs, the feeling of inner space and quiet grounding, just feeling the direction of the album, and that was where we wanted to take it. I think we achieved that to a certain extent and it was really cool because it was also the first time we’ve written an album with Niall [Kennedy] on guitar, so he definitely added a fresh dimension to our songwriting.
The main theme of the record is based on exploring the way we take other peoples’ passion as an inspirational basis for creation. How and when have you thought about making this the concept of your record?
I guess we’ve always taken inspiration from people we’ve met along the way and places that we’ve been to, I think that’s inescapable. You’re always going to do that, no matter if you’re conscious of it or not, things will always influence you and rub off. There’s also the fact that we had nephews and nieces and Johnny [Adger] had his child recently, and all that stuff happened at the time of the writing. There was this sense that we’ve always been the youngest generation and then suddenly there were these new lives around us. We can see the new generation actually appearing before us and that was a big inspiration, the idea of passing on your experiences and things onto the next generation. With your home life changing, that definitely affects how you write music, and it was a very positive time for all of us.
I’ve read that you guys worked pretty much in isolation during the six-month creative and recording process for Heirs. How did the songwriting sessions went and what’s your method to develop your songs?
We planned to take that time way before that. Six months before we were like “Ok, from January, that’s when we’re going to write. We’re just gonna write until we feel that we have a record and then go into the studio”. That was a first for us in terms of being as disciplined, as in taking that exact time to do the writing and then recording, whereas before there may have been times when we were sort of unfinished in parts of songs and we finished them as we were recording in the studio. The last album All Hail came to life during the recording. With Heirs, we’ve put the songs together and began demoing and honing the tracks, taking bits out, chiseling away and fine tuning all the songs, so by the time we’ve hit the tracking stage everything was quick. I think my drums were done in two and a half days, start to finish, which is crazy for me, but all that work was already done in the preparation. In terms of composition, most of the ideas come from Rory [Friers]. A lot of the initial ideas and melodies come from him and Niall also had riffs and melodies coming in as well. Technically a lot of the ideas began on guitar just as “this is the riff”, then the four of us thrashed it out and worked out the best structure, and then we chopped and changed some things. Lyrics tend to come right at the end, and a lot of that is Rory again, so that would be like the typical framework for our songwriting.
You’ve worked again with producer Rocky O’Reilly. How influential is Rocky in terms of how the final recorded versions of your songs take shape?
That’s a good question. With this one, the songs were pretty much finished. Rocky definitely had a hand in a few of the creative decisions in terms of guitar tones and structure. During All Hail Bright Futures he had a lot of input, but this time he played less of a production role. At the same time, I also feel bad for saying that his role lessened on this record because for us, Rocky is really an integral part of our recording process. We’ve done it with him every time. From the very first session we headed off so quickly and so well, that it’s quite a nice feeling to know that you can come back to him as a producer. We know each other’s boundaries and he’s very good at testing us. He’s not afraid to speak up and say “I think this should be this way!” so that’s why we continue to go back to him, because we have a great relationship and he communicates with us well. In the recording side he’s very hands on, he goes above and beyond and stays out at crazy hours during the day to get the best out of us.
We were talking about the influence of Niall, the new guitarist with whom you’ve just recorded Heirs. What did he specifically brought to the songwriting process and how do you think he combines with Rory in terms of musical interplay between guitars?
It’s a really good mixture between those two. We’ve been friends for years, we grew up in the same area in Northern Ireland and he [Niall] was in various bands throughout the years as well. Niall has a strong identity as songwriter. He’s been in some Indie, Pop-driven sort of bands, so him coming in makes this a really interesting mix, compared to Rory who had done the bulk of the songwriting on the previous albums. He sort of strengthened and broadened our palette I suppose, because you have that diversity. They [Rory & Niall] end up meeting in the middle with a mix of their ideas and that creates a totally new approach. Also, Niall started out as drummer so he has some interesting ideas about drum beats and patterns, and actually had input on the drums on this record as well. There would be a bit where he would be like “Oh, how about you try something like this?”, and I would have been thinking of something totally different you know? So, he has mixed up the songwriting, kept it really fresh and really broadened the ideas, definitely!
Talking about your own evolution as a drummer. How did you approach the drumming this time in comparison to your work in other albums?
From the previous album I’ve been gradually toning down the intensity I play my drums at. When I started off it was like “hit on everything as hard as you can” all the time. [laughs] I started out like a real typical drummer with this lack of finesse, but over the years I’ve really started to see the value in having a lot of dynamics, a lot of light and shade with my drums, so in certain songs I’ve been really simplifying beats without going crazy all over the crash cymbals. I’m more conscious of the song in a whole now, rather than just wanting to play everything I want to do. I just want to play for the good of the song and I’m into that a lot more.
“I guess we’ve always taken inspiration from people we’ve met along the way and places that we’ve been to, I think that’s inescapable. You’re always going to do that, no matter if you’re conscious of it or not, things will always influence you and rub off.”
ASIWYFA’s musical approach is mainly instrumental using some vocals here and there. In the last record you guys recorded choirs while on Heirs you have some tracks with individual vocals. Do you always strive to experiment differently with vocals in each album?
Vocals have always been the last sugar coating of instrumentation on the tracks that we do because everything is still predominantly written as instrumentals to the point where the song is almost finished. So, whenever a song is approaching that end stage, when it’s like “this sounds really good, ok…it just needs a little vocal element” that’s when the idea of what sort of vocal would fit comes in, right at that end stage. For instance, on the track “Fucking Lifer”, there’s a vocal line in there and it’s very heavily effected. You can barely make out that it’s a voice, and it’s a great example of that. We thought that this song would be great with a big, soaring vocal. It’s almost inaudible, but it’s there on the top and it sounds really vast and lovely. That’s where the idea for that sort of style came from and that was unique. We didn’t use that vocal effect throughout the album, it was just for that track, so I think it’s very much on a song by song basis that we work with the vocals. Maybe in the future we’ll do an album with a vocal theme throughout but, that remains to be seen, I suppose.
The title track finisher “Heirs” stretched up to the seventh minute mark, making it the longest composition on your record, while the others circle around the four minute mark. It also feels like it’s one of its most musically expansive tracks. When you’re writing, do you guys make a conscious choice to try and keep songs generally shorter and more concise?
I guess we kind of know early on with a riff. It might be quite frantic, and with things like that, with high energy, it’s always going to be a bit shorter than normal because it’s very immediate and you want to get in and out with it and have the impact. With some melody or guitar line, we sometimes think “wow, that sounds really quite deep and meaningful”, and there could be a lot of emotion and a lot of things changing throughout. Then we kind of write towards it being a longer track. So with “Heirs”, as soon as Rory came out with that guitar line, it felt it was going to be a song with a journey to it rather than just “bang, bang, bang” and finish. It depends on the mood the initialideas are creating and we pick up on that very quickly.
Other than “Heirs”, which other songs do you think are the strongest or your favorites in this new record?
I think it’s hard to say which ones were the strongest, because we fine tuned everything and cut away so much at the demos. By the time we got to ten tracks, we had to get rid of other twelve tracks we also liked so, it’s really the cream of the crop in the album. I could definitely say there were some that took the longest and were the most challenging to record, “Heirs” would be one of them. When we did it, I felt really proud in terms of my performance. I was quite worried about the end product. I wanted it to sound like a really great performance, and I was afraid I wasn’t going to get that. Because we rehearsed and demoed the songs so much, by the time we got to the tracking stage, there was this expectation about really being able to nail the performances, to recreate the feel of the demos and to do them really precise, so that track was the big one that we left up to the end to record. I kind of flew through everything else and that was the last track to lay down and maybe that’s why it added to the expectation of the performance as well. But I was really pleased. The other track “Fucking Lifer” [is one of the favorites] as well, just because it was so different from what we’ve done before. We all felt really pleased with taking such a step and achieve a song like that. It’s always a lot of fun, writing and recording, but especially with that added excitement whenever you’re pushing the boundaries of where you’ve gone before.
Do you think that the longest song in the record Heirs could be a hint at what And So I Watch You From Afar will be doing more in the future?
It could be, but at the same time we’re constantly evolving in different ways. I don’t think I could have predicted that Heirs would be the way it is at the time we did All Hail Bright Futures because that album was so different for us. We were like “What will we do next?” So I’m not sure what we’ll do. The thing is…we still have so many tracks that didn’t make the album so, there’s still a lot of room to revisit those and possibly do something smaller, like an EP somewhere down the line, but at the same time we’ll continue writing new stuff for the rest of this year as well.
Let’s talk a little bit about the past. It’s been ten years since you guys started. What were the main lessons you’ve learned throughout this time that were important in keeping your guys together up to this point?
Yeah! Ten years! This December will be the anniversary. I think there’s a lot of give and take that you have to be prepared to do. Being in a band is like a marriage essentially. You have to put up with people, bite your tongue about certain things and be able to resolve conflicts. I guess we’re lucky compared to some bands. We got through ten years, we only had one member leave and we’ve been able to keep the van on the road for most of the time. I guess it’s just about maintaining the friendships and respect for one another, and that’s very important when you’re doing so much touring and spending time in a van together the whole year. You need to maintain a good relationship, otherwise by the time you get back, you’re not going to want to get into the writing room and write new stuff. I guess that’s the one thing that’s the secret to it all, it’s maintaining that. If you can maintain good vibes between everybody then you can always write, record and tour the music. Take a band like Iron Maiden for instance. They’re all the best of mates you know? They all grew up together as well and that’s what leads to longevity. They’re obviously very respectful to each other.
How do you personally view yourself comparing who you are now to who you were ten years ago when you were starting the band? Did you manage accomplish everything you wanted to so far?
Hmmm, that’s a deep question. [laughs] I’ve been thinking about this recently because we’re on the verge of having been in the band for ten years. When we first started, I still didn’t have a very wide view of the music industry or what it was like to be in a proper band so I thought, at the start, “Right, I’ll know within one of year of doing the band if its worthwhile, and if it’s not, then I’ll go back to my old job.” By the time that year came up, we hadn’t done much. No band starting out jumps to stardom or does anything within a year. So, at that point we were just starting to do some local shows around the Belfast area and starting to put together a bit of a body of work, and my parents were like “Ok, you’ve had your year, nothing much has happened, so you’re gonna go back to your job, right?” I was working as a manager in a club over England and I had planned to go back, but then after that year I was like, well, I know the band hasn’t taken off or anything, but there’s definitely a feeling that we’re building upon something very slowly and we all had the enthusiasm to keep going, even with such little progression. Then in year two, three and four we began touring. Sometimes we would play to five people, it was crazy, having to sleep on people’s floors, but it was also an adventure. Even with vans breaking down and having no money, there was always that sense of adventure for us, we always had the enthusiasm to keep going and I think the more we toured and had to endure that sort of stuff, the harder we became against all that. Nowadays, if a van breaks down, people barely bat an eyelid, because we’ve seen it all so much. [laughs] We’ve built up this tolerance and resilience to everything that the world throws at us in terms of the touring lifestyle or the music industry so I think I’m really glad that’s the way we’ve gone with it, because that’s a big part of why we’re all still together and love doing it so much. All along we’ve been making the music that we love and it hasn’t always gone well, but we’ve been building these skills and learning to adapt to situations, taking it on the chin when bad things happen. Looking back,when you tell people some stories, they go “I can’t believe you went through that!”, and we’re like “Well, we survived” and it’s all good. Also, we toured so many different parts of the world, and being a mostly instrumental band from Ireland it’s quite an achievement the fact that we’re still building a fan base, ten years in. It’s incredible for us and we’re fortunate and grateful that we can keep doing that.
You were talking about all those countries you played in. You’ve been recently through China, Russia, India and Africa as well. How was the experience of playing for all these different audiences and what stories would you like to share from playing in these places?
The great thing about playing in so many different places and going into new countries and cities, is that you pretty much have no idea how the shows will go. You almost have no expectations, so when you play and do a great show it’s like “Wow, that was incredible!” and then you kind of have that realization that you’re so many time zones away from your home and you’re playing to people you can’t converse with, because they’re speaking a different language, but everyone is having a great time because somehow they’ve downloaded the music or they’ve been fans for a while and suddenly you’re in their city. It’s very strange, but it’s so rewarding to be able to do that. For instance, the first time we went to Russia, we had absolutely no idea if there were any fans at all! We got there and we played maybe ten shows in that tour, and it was just crazy. People were turning up and made their own t-shirts! They’ve printed photographs of us from the Internet, wanting us to sign them and interact with the band and we were so blown away because we had no prior knowledge of any sort of enthusiasm for the band there. It was like “How could anybody know us in Russia?”, But then they did. [laughs] I can complain about illegal downloading damaging band’s revenues and things like that since it all took off, but at the same time we have a whole fan base in Russia that probably grew mostly upon illegal downloads. If there was no downloading maybe we would never have got there in the first place or have a fan base ever. It’s give and take I guess. Making the type of music that we do, it could have been very different for us before the Internet came along, because it has given us a lot of chances to go out and see these places.
“All along we’ve been making the music that we love and it hasn’t always gone well, but we’ve been building these skills and learning to adapt to situations, taking it on the chin when bad things happen.”
Is the band the main activity and creative outlet for everyone in ASIWYFA or do you guys have other kinds of separate professional and artistic projects?
Well, ASIWYFA is definitely the main focus for the four of us. Each year, the most amount of time is put into this band, but we all do have different projects. Niall has a band called A Bad Cavalier that’s more towards the music he made in the past, really interesting indie music. Johnny is actually into a really heavy, sludge metal band and Rory also plays guitar sometimes in that band. They’re called 7.5 Tonnes of Beard! They’re crazy good, and then also myself, Johnny and Rory play in a sort of punky folk band and with Rory’s father and his little brother as well in a balkan-eastern european sounding, really fast paced band. We play some shows and people sort of go crazy, dancing around, so we try to keep things interesting aside from ASIWYFA. Also, Rory does his own bits of producing and electronic music as well under the name Thrash Hat. We all like to be as busy as we can, especially when it comes to music.
What are your shared musical influences as a band, and talking about you specifically, what influenced you as a drummer?
We’re all roughly the same age, just about in our thirties, so we all grew up around the Nirvana era, the Grunge era, that’s very much where we were and I’m sure we all grew up on our parents music. Rory listened to a lot of Led Zeppelin, Cream and Jimi Hendrix back when he was younger. I listened to a lot of stuff my dad played, a lot of The Beatles and Queen, going back to that era before I was born. We’re all listening to all different types of stuff and there’s always so many different types of music to listen to. As a drummer, my earliest influences were seeing Dave Grohl drumming with Nirvana and Jimmy Chamberlain with The Smashing Pumpkins. They were my two main inspirations when I started to play drums, because Dave Growl is such a visual character, he’s just smashing the kit all the time and as a kid like, 13, 14 years old, it was just incredible to see! I just wanted to do that, just wanted to be that guy. [laughs] A few years ago we supported Them Crooked Vultures and I actually got to meet him and talk to him all about that so, I was able to be the fanboy for the day! But I suppose it’s a mixture of his performance with Jimmy Chamberlain. He was like the perfect fusion [drummer]. He started out with Jazz, but then ended up in this colossal rock band and he had that finesse of Jazz, but then he ramped up and he became this huge, dynamic character. Those drummers inspired me to start to play at early ages and I liked to put my headphones and try to play along with the songs. That’s how I’ve started drumming. How I’ve learned. Those sort of beats and grooves were the basis from where I learned from and I’ve carried that all through the years.
So, back to the start, but looking forward. Where is ASYWYFA going to be touring now?
In August we have the Reading and Leeds festivals and then, from early September, October, we’re going to the US and do a tour there. That will take us up next to November and then we’re going to have a short run in Portugal and Spain, and that’s basically us for the rest of the year. Once we’ll get back from that, we’ll have maybe a month before Christmas and I think we’ll get straight back into the writing and try to see whether there’s another album or EPs worth of songs that we can maybe get out next year.