Back in Australia for a run of shows with new outfit Bombazine Black, Gersey’s Matt Davis tells DARREN LEVIN about his recent artistic residency in Paris, his forays into film and his new record 'Here Their Dreams'.

How did the artistic residency at the Cité Internationale des Recolléts come about? Is this record a product of that?
My soon-to-be wife [actor Jayne Tuttle] had lived there for two years while attending theatre school in Paris and suggested I apply. Lo and behold I got it. So we lived there for a year before moving up the hill to Belleville and into a more conventional Parisian apartment.

I wouldn’t say the record is totally a product of Les Recolléts but it’s certainly a major part. It gave me the opportunity to be in Paris, in a fairly large space, and therefore the opportunity to create a document of my time in the city and, in particular, that part of the city, the 10th arrondissement.

The album was recorded in a 16th century convent. Do you know much about its history?
It’s been a lot of things, Les Recolléts. after its convent days it was a hospice and then for a long time a military hospital. In the early ’90s, it was an artists’ squat and there are still artworks from that period hanging on the walls. It opened as the international residence about five or six years ago, I think.

What was your room in the convent like?
We had two in our time there. The first one, where the bulk of the record was done, was a fairly large studio type apartment with a small kitchen and bathroom and a mezzanine where the bedroom was. It was big by Parisian standards. Our French friends couldn’t get over it, but it wasn’t huge – the size of a large studio apartment in Australia, I guess.

One of the best things about that first room was that it overlooked the kids playground in the Jardin Villemin. And every day in summer and early autumn when I was making the record, the playground would be full of kids running around playing on the swings and everything. It was great. I got so used to hearing them when I was mixing, that I couldn’t imagine the record without them so I left them in while I was doing ‘Blowlamp [& The Kids]’.

Tell us about your new local, Chez Adel.
Crappiest food in Paris and possibly the worst décor in Europe. It’s great. It’s run by this old Greek guy Adel who moves very slowly and rarely speaks but who loves music and theatre and poetry and practically anything else people want to do in his bar. It’s a special place.

How much was this record influenced by its locale?
I actually set out to make a much more defined and intimate record, a “place-less” record, but Paris just started making its way in. Before I knew it, the record had become this thing of the city, a document of the time there, a love letter to Paris in a way.

What prompted the decision to bring in outside influences (Marty Cooke from Gaslight Radio, Miles Browne from Art of Fighting, Toby Martin from Youth Group, Danny Tulen and Daryl Bradie from Gersey, Patrick Ryan from Greater Northern, etc.)?
The nature of this record, being so sparse and open, meant there was a lot of room for other things to come in, other instruments and ideas, particularly ideas other than mine, and I thought it was a great opportunity to work with some people I admire and like and to see what they would bring. And I’m lucky enough to be very good friends with all of them so it was very easy.

How did you coordinate those collaborations? And were they given license to do whatever they wanted?
Yeah, I just let them all have carte blanche. Those guys know what to do, they’re all great great musicians, you just have to get out of their way really. Mart [Cooke] just did a few runs at ‘Do Not Go Gentle’ and then we starting messing around with the delays and reverbs to get that bed going. Miles just blasted his way through as he saw fit. Daryl and Danny and Patrick [Ryan] did the same thing. I sent Toby the basic songs somewhere along the line and said, “Yell out if you can think of something to sing over any of them.” Just as I was finishing the mix for ‘The Sun Will Set’, I got an email from him with an MP3 attached. He said something like, “See how this goes.” I put it in and it was just great, it was perfect, I didn’t change a thing.

“'Here Their Dreams' is a record of me wandering around the streets of Paris, drinking in crappy bars and being in the city.”

The album is haunting and beautiful, but at the same time there are no obvious “songs”. Were you worried about Here Their Dreams being perceived as background music?
Well, I don’t know that there are no obvious songs. ‘April 29’, ‘Sun Will Set’, ‘Stories’, ‘Do Not Go Gentle’ and ‘Blowlamp’ are all “songs” with beginnings, middles and ends. Once I had those going, I knew I had an album. I couldn’t do a record full of the more sketch-type songs like ‘Bowler on a Nail’ or ‘Sea-Dark’ or whatever. But with those five as the kind of tent poles I knew I was free then to do what I wanted with the others, to have some fun with them and just worry about tone and things like that.

I was never worried about it being perceived as “background” music. If anything that idea is kind of part of the aesthetic. Before I left for Paris I was living in a block of flats in Northcote. Every night when I came home I would walk up the stairs and past all these windows and doors and I’d hear little snippets of music and conversation and I’d strain to hear what was happening. I loved the mystery of that and I thought that would make an interesting record, just lots of little snippets you can’t make out. In reality a record full of that is probably not that interesting but with the bigger songs in there I thought it could work.

The music on this record almost seems destined for a film soundtrack. Do you write songs with visuals in mind?
No, I much prefer the mystery. During one of our shows in Paris I had this Russian film playing behind us, very beautiful black-and-white stuff of the sea etc. But there was a narrative in there, it was loose but it was there and I realised afterward that it was a mistake to have it playing behind us, it grounded the music too much, it gave it too much context. It was much more exciting to let the visuals appear in the mind of the listener rather than me forcing it on them.

In that sense, are you pleased with how the music is pared with visuals on Sarah Watt’s new film My Year Without Sex?
It’s an honour. Sarah’s wonderful. She has a great touch.

How did the collaboration with Sarah come about?
Sarah used the Gersey song ‘Crashing’ in Look Both Ways and I thought she used it so well. The song became this other thing, a bigger thing than what we had written and I thought the film was great, really warm and funny and sad and clever. So when I finished Here Their Dreams, I sent her a copy. I thought if anyone will get this it’ll be Sarah, and sure enough she was coming to the end of My Year Without Sex, needed some music and liked the stuff. Voila.

You’re also composing music for Luke Davies’ new film Air. Do you think that you’ve found your calling in film soundtracks?
Maybe. Time will tell. It’s a very interesting and challenging process, much more challenging than writing an album, for me anyway. There are so many factors to consider! I’ve realised that it has a lot less to do with actual composing and much more to do with understanding tone, mood, space, colour, intention, ambition, pace, and direction, and then responding to these things in a musical way. It is really, I think, much more akin to acting - serious acting - than to normal music composition.

Do you think the old Gersey fans will engage with this new incarnation?
I have no idea.

Speaking of Gersey, is there anything in the works in the immediate future?
[Craig] Jackson has just done a record too so hopefully that’ll be out soon, it sounds great. And Daryl, Danny and Drew have a new band called Tall Buildings so hopefully they will record soon too and get something out.

There are no actual Gersey plans in the works but who knows.

Gersey is such a quintessentially Melbourne band while Bombazine Black samples sounds from Parisian streetscapes. How important is a sense of place in your music?
I always thought of Gersey as much more than a Melbourne band or an Australian band, we were always trying to make timeless international records rather than “Melbourne” records. History may show we were mistaken, but that was the intention. Here Their Dreams, on the other hand, is far more about the place.

I like the idea that records are just that: records of a moment. And where the Gersey records were records of four or five guys trying to make great timeless records, Here Their Dreams is a record of me wandering around the streets of Paris, drinking in crappy bars and being in the city.

Is France home now for you?
Right now we are back in Melbourne for the launches and for some acting work for Jayne and after that we’ll see.

What does the name Bombazine Black allude to?
Apart from being my ode to Paris, Here Their Dreams is also somewhat of a homage to Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, part of which is read by Richard Burton in the opening song ‘Confessional’. And Bombazine Black is a part of that opening monologue.

What’s a Bombazine Black show like? I imagine it’d be quite a difficult album to replicate live.
Each show is remarkably different. We generally have different people every time and different instruments so I never know quite what’s going to happen. The main group in Paris was Jayne on organs and Mellotrons and percussion, a wonderful French cellist Amalia Guégan and the jazz vibraphonist Michael Emenau. In the US we had Danny and Daryl from Gersey and a bass player from American indie-rockers Monroe Mustang. Here we’ll have Miles from Art of Fighting along for the ride and hopefully some other special guests. So I’m not sure what it’ll be like. We’ll see!

With Danny and Daryl in your backing band. Any chance of some Gersey “covers” on this tour?
Ha, I don’t think so! We could maybe do ‘She Draws Good Pictures’ at a push, but I doubt it.

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‘HERE THEIR DREAMS’ LAUNCH

Thursday, March 12
The Toff in Town, Melbourne, VIC

Friday, March 13
The Hopetoun, Sydney, NSW