Text by Steve Kerr
Photo by David Read
Originally published in Staple, 2005
On a sweltering February evening earlier this year, when more than 3000 punters turned up to hear them play a free gig at the Wellington Botanic Gardens, it was clear that The Phoenix Foundation’s time had come. Here was a band creating original music, defining its own musical terms, and winning a genuinely popular audience for its trouble. A band that really mattered, to all kinds of people.
When The Phoenix Foundation’s debut album Horsepower was released in 2002, it took a lot of people by surprise. Many Wellingtonians had seen what a great band they were live, but the album was so highly accomplished, and so difficult to pigeonhole, that it seemed like a real landmark in local music. Horsepower’s sound was both immediately accessible and thoroughly idiosyncratic – a weird, potent combination of analog synths and heavily delayed guitar, evoking the radio-friendly psychedelia of ‘70s Pink Floyd, with plaintive lyrics delivered in the style of Jeff Tweedy or Steve Malkmus, and a rhythm section which constantly threatened to git funky on yo’ ass.
In due course, the album attracted a huge amount of critical attention, and this, combined with extensive touring and a couple of award-winning videos, has seen the band’s national profile rise considerably.
This month, the band releases the follow up to Horsepower. It’s called Pegasus, and sees them shifting camp from the indie Capital Recordings label to Festival Mushroom Records. I headed out to Island Bay to speak to founding members Luke Buda (vocals, guitar, keys) and Conrad Wedde (guitar, keys) about Pegasus.
Buda and Wedde established The Phoenix Foundation with friend and fellow Wellington High School alumni Samuel Flynn Scott back in 1997. Luke: “We first played together in fourth form. Sam loved The Pixies, and me and Conrad were into heavy metal. But we were never really bogans, we were also into lots of other things…” Trivia buffs will be interested to note that Fritz Wollner, their (obviously inspirational) high school music teacher, contributed piano to one of the tracks on Pegasus. Percussionist Will Ricketts, drummer Richie Singleton and bassist Warner Emery complete the line-up.
The success of Horsepower didn’t come as a complete surprise to the band: “To be honest, we weren’t expecting or hoping anything, but I think we thought it was pretty good. It’s not like it sold real big, but the response was big in terms of the good reviews, and people getting really into it. We fucking agonised over it, there were definitely huge periods of struggle, so it’s nice that people did like it in the end.”
The band was then faced with having to consider offers from a number of labels, but seem to have taken the shift to FMR in their stride: “Initially we had some reservations about going with a major – we were worried about losing control. But FMR seem to be quite on to it. They’re coming to us with questions, even about small things, rather than making their own decisions.”
Despite their move into the big time, the band still finds their hometown conducive to doing what they to do, and have no immediate plans to seek fame and fortune overseas. Buda: “I don’t think there’s any point in New Zealand bands moving to a place like London unless they’ve already got some contacts there, ‘cause all that happens is that you move over there, it’s fucking hard to survive, everything is way more expensive and no one gives a shit anyway. It’s so much nicer living in New Zealand… None of us are after fame and fortune, we’re after self-sustenance, and a nice house in Island Bay, with a garden. And a nice Volvo that’s safe for the family.”
Buda and Wedde are largely responsible for the sonic weirdness which defines The Phoenix Foundation sound, whereas Scott’s role is much more the main vocalist and singer-songwriter. There’s a fine balance between these two roles, which makes the band much more that the sum of its parts. The attention to detail that Buda and Wedde pay to production, and their analog retro-futurist tastes, create a sympathetic foil for Scott’s indie/folk leanings. Meanwhile, Scott’s heartfelt vocal delivery helps ground the band, preventing them from descending into an airbrushed prog rock quagmire.
While Scott still does the bulk of the songwriting, the production and arrangement are much more of a collaborative process. Wedde: “Sam does often come with a song, and we develop the initial arrangement in the practice room. In the studio we take it to the next level.” Buda: “A really important part of our process is to not be precious. While recording, we try a lot of different ideas, so we know that they weren’t right, or maybe take it too far, so then we know we’ve gone too far, and when we strip it back we know that that was actually where it should be.”
The recording of Pegasus has seen The Phoenix Foundation consolidate and refine their sound: “The sound on Pegasus is less hesitant than on Horsepower, the band playing is less hesitant. It’s kind of similar but stronger. On top of that, [producer] Lee Prebble has stepped up big time, ‘cause since Horsepower he did The Blackseeds’ On The Sun, Trinity Roots’ Home, Land And Sea, and he learned a lot. So the actual sound of Pegasus is a shitload better than Horsepower.”
The band pays a lot of attention to production, building the final tracks in ProTools from live takes, and experimenting with many different arrangements and structures before settling on a final version. Buda: “Actually, both albums began with us talking about how we’d love it if we did really good band takes. But with neither album have we actually had the arrangements to a point that we’re actually happy with them when we go in to record. So that’s why there’s heaps of post-production. A recording has to stand up to repeated listening.” Wedde: “We’ve always separated those things [live versus studio] quite a lot.”
Despite the seriousness with which they approach recording, there’s an overriding sense of fun to The Phoenix Foundation sound – probably the result of some of their more unexpected musical influences. Take, for example, the kitsch ‘80s theme which bubbles under the surface of their music. By the band’s own admission, Toto’s soft rock anthem “Africa” figured largely in their minds while they worked on the outro to Pegasus’s “Cars of Eden”. Wedde: “It was the lightness of the production. There are guitars on that track that are almost invisible, they’re so trebly and so produced, they just sit right up there in the sound. We tried to replicate that in a loose kind of way.” Buda: “That track pushes it the hardest, the bad taste ‘80s cheese production. We tried to get the Michael Jackson/Quincy Jones guitar sound and used ‘80s percussion, like claves.”
While all the band members play a role in making production decisions, it’s Buda and Wedde who are most passionate about it. Buda: “Of late, Sam has been listening to more and more guitar based singer-songwriter stuff, and for him it’s all about writing songs, and he’s into the more raw kind of sound. Sam’s folky, he’s totally folky. Whereas Con and myself have been on a similar path of listening to Air and stuff, and Vangelis, and getting into those kind of super lush complete fantasy escapism sounds – where it’s more about the tone and the sound than it is about the song… We’ve been listening to music that’s probably slightly tasteless, but for a different angle – you know what I mean? I just discovered the 10CC song “I’m Not in Love”, and the production on it – the choirs, the Wurlitzer – is so Air. Obviously things like Beck and Radiohead and Flaming Lips and Wilco are influences too – I still like that sort of shit, but I’m getting a bit bored of it and looking for another vibe, a different angle.”
Likewise, Wedde professes a deep love for everything from Wu Tang mastermind RZA to the reverb-drenched slide guitar soundscapes of Ry Cooder’s Paris Texas soundtrack; from the minimal synth soundtracks of John Carpenter to Giorgio Moroder’s moody synth-disco soundtrack work. “There’s something about the minimalism of that stuff that I really like. It’s hardly doing anything, but it’s got a lot of vibe to it. There’s something cool about soundtrack music – you can hear that it’s been made for a purpose. It’ll be quite weird abstract music sometimes, but you can hear that it’s got some intent behind it, an idea behind it, as opposed to just living in its own world. That gives it an interesting quality.” Luke and Conrad are now working on purely soundtrack material to release as a side project to The Phoenix Foundation.
It’s not surprising, then, that Pegasus contains three instrumentals as well as the more trad songs. Unusually, one of these instrumentals – the highly infectious “Hitchcock” – was chosen as the first single. Buda: “’Hitchcock’ was Will’s piece, but it was arranged by us in the studio, and I think that was close to the time that I bought [the Goblin soundtrack to Dario Argento's 1982 film Tenebre], and that was definitely an influence, the evil aspect of it, the horror sound. It’s this strange disco electronic evil music.”
In keeping with their fine tastes and attention to detail, The Phoenix Foundation are also developing a reputation for having innovative music videos, having worked with high profile directors like Richard Bell (Nirvana, Depeche Mode) and Reuben Sutherland (Shihad, Fat Freddy’s Drop). In spite of this, the band is still finding its way a little with the video-making process. Buda: “It’s always a gamble – you never really know what someone’s gonna do, that’s got your name on it. Like with “Hitchcock”, it’s so good, everyone tells me ‘great work, man’ and I’m like, ‘well I didn’t really do that much’. So I just feel grateful to Rueben, y’know, for doing something that completely rules.”
While the “Hitchcock” video features Ladas pulling off incredible computer-generated stunts around the streets of Wellington, The Phoenix Foundation’s first video, for “This Charming Van”, was a much less techy affair. Made by school friend Luke Savage, it consists entirely of carefully edited Super-8 footage. Wedde: “He’s a genius. He went up to Tokomaru Bay, which is where he comes from, and cruised around and filmed people. It only cost a hundred bucks.” Savage is currently working on the video for the next single off Pegasus, “Damn the River”.
One last question – where did the ‘horse’ theme come from? Buda: “With the first album, Horsepower became the name, and then we looked for reasons for it. It was the Year of the Horse that we recorded it, it was the Year of the Horse when a lot of us were born… Pegasus was just a joke name that I came up with. Everyone went yeah, sweet as, then we hated it, then we tried to come up with another name and we couldn’t come up with anything… Now we’re thinking that we’ll do the horse trilogy, Horsepower, Pegasus and the last one will be the death of the horse – the abattoir. Maybe…”
(c) Steve Kerr 2005
