Musicadium Blog

Some music can be like an addiction. We’ve all had bands or songs or even lyrics that for some reason you need to spin over and over again. There’s an indescribable constant craving to hear how it all fits together, and there’s no explaining why you love it as much as you do.  Since Ross from Disco Nap dropped into the Musicadium office a few months ago, the band’s tunes are always one of the first to be played from the Musicadium iTunes playlist. If you haven’t listened to them, do it now. You’ll be touting ‘I told you so’, to anyone with an ounce of musical taste who’ll discover them in a week or so. They’ve had spins on JJJ, and the single ‘The Soft Sell’ debuts on Rage tonight and is a taste of what is to come from their debut album Running Red Lights. For a band that had their first gig ever at the Sounds of  Spring festival in 2009, you can expect a lot. Don’t worry, they more than deliver.

We caught up with Disco Nap’s frontman Ross Hope, and asked him a few questions about the new project and his music.

Disco Nap’s music strikes a real mix of crossovers in different genres, what would you say were the main influences in the writing and recording stages?

There were a variety of influences in the writing and recording stages of the Disco Nap album, notably: my favourite songwriters, favourite albums and favourite TV shows. Artists like Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie/The Postal Service), Elvis Costello, Robert Smith (The Cure) and Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) were huge influences on the songwriting.  After listening to one of their albums I always felt inspired to write better lyrics, better melodies and to become a better songwriter in general by telling stories and conveying emotions.  I didn’t know at the time if the songs I was writing would ever be used for anything but I knew they were different to the songs I’d written for my previous band Iron On and I became interested in different production ideas.  I even went and listened to a lot of electronic music, something I hadn’t really done much of previously.  During the writing process I also watched the box set of Six Feet Under and that definitely influenced the themes of the record and some of the imagery in the lyrics.

You’ve collaborated with and worked with some great musicians who’ve helped out on the album. Do they play live with you? How does it alter the recording process having featured special guests?

I feel very fortunate to have had some of my favourite musicians lend their talents to the recording process. At the time of recording I hadn’t actually thought through what I was going to do once it came time to play live, I just wanted to be able to hand-pick the guests and worry about the live sound later. I’d been a big fan of Dean Shwereb’s (Screamfeeder) drumming since I was a teenager so he was my number one choice in that department. Of course I knew that when I asked people like Scott Bromiley (John Steel Singers) Pip Branson (Something For Kate, Infusion, Pip Branson Corporation) and Seja Vogel (Sekiden, Regurgitator) to help out that they weren’t going to be able to be in the live band, I was just happy to be able to sit back in the studio and watch them do their thing.

You have said that the music was inspired around the central themes of life, death, love, family, and rebirth, tell us a little bit about how this came about?

The combination of what was going on in my life while I was writing these songs and the feelings I had as a result of watching the box set of TV series Six Feet Under led to those themes becoming central to the album and The Soft Sell in particular. At the time my previous band had just broken up and I felt like I was at a bit of a cross-roads both musically and in my life in general. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to continue writing songs and releasing music. Gradually though these different kind of songs started coming to me and I tried to not have any judgement about what they sounded like or what they were for. The themes from Six Feet Under – life, death, love, family and rebirth - really just reinforced the process I was already going through and the ideas I was grappling with – as one things ends another starts, as something dies something else comes to life.

You guys have just come out of the studio recently recording your debut album “Running Red Lights”, was it a big process? and have you found it rewarding?

It was a big process and a slow process but absolutely essential to how the album turned out. Unlike my previous recording experiences where I’ve been in a band that’s booked out a three-week block of time at a studio, the The Disco Nap album was recorded sporadically over a six-month period. Basically whenever Darek Mudge (Producer) had time and I had money we’d work on it for a few days. The best thing about this process was being able to take my time with everything and make sure it was right. The process of starting with 12 acoustic demos and ending with a fully fleshed-out album was very rewarding, it just required a lot of patience.

In September 2009 Disco Nap won Triple J’s Unearthed to play at the Sounds of Spring festival, this was your very first show. How was the experience of playing your first show at a festival and what other opportunities has come from this?

It was very exciting but also fairly terrifying. Stein our bass player had only been in the band for about three weeks when we got the call from Triple J, so to play our first show on a festival stage was a bit daunting. I think when you’re presented with an opportunity as good as that you pretty much have to jump in and make the most of it. From all accounts the show actually went well and being an ‘Unearthed artist’ has created a lot of other opportunities since that first gig. It also hasn’t hurt to get our debut single The Soft Sell on rotation at Triple J.

For those who haven’t heard your new single ‘The Soft Sell’ yet, could you describe what it’s about in a sentence?

The Soft Sell is a song about taking a risk and letting go of all that has previously felt comfortable to you in order to find something new.

Click below to purchase Disco Nap’s Latest Single The Soft Sell on iTunes:

This entry was posted on Friday, April 16th, 2010 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Featured Artist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.