Melbourne folk-pop wunderkind Whitley recently returned to the studio – well, a house in Collingwood – to record the follow-up to his debut LP, 'The Submarine'. In this recording diary, he details his quest for that ever-elusive “new sound”. Will he find it? Check in here for regular updates.

Part One

Dear Mess+Noise,

I’m not going to lie to you. The first two weeks of recording almost sent me mad. I was on the hunt for the elusive “new sound” - it was a terrible torture. The new sound was taunting me. I was reaching for it with every finger. So, after two weeks of wasted time in the studio, I thought it was a great idea to return to the tiny town down the road where I grew up and find a solution.

My solution was simple. I would take my music player down to the beach and run through all of my favorite records and look at things from a new point of view – one Aldous Huxley could vibe with. My brilliant idea revealed absolutely nothing apart from a frightening incident where I thought the moonrise was an explosion at the refinery. When you are in a small town and most people work at a giant refinery, an explosion there is pretty serious. But, like I said, it was just the moonrise.

It wasn’t until the next day that the way forward presented itself to me. I made the link sitting on a couch in an alley in Collingwood with little memory of how I got there. All of my beloved records were people who were playing without an intention that went beyond “sounding good”. There was no attempt to be anything other than themselves. It was a liberating and very fulfilling realisation. So, I was to take complete control of the situation by placing no expectations on how it could sound, and focused on how it should sound.

“I want it to sound like me and we should be as honest as we can,” I told Colin, my engineer. No click tracks, no complicated computer software. The answer was simple: I would assemble the bass player and drummer from my live band and capture a band sound, and then add all my melodies over the top with the instruments I have collected over the past three years.

This plan worked well. The boys played the song like heroes in magazines and Col caught an amazing drum sound that threw itself out of the monitors with the power of a Midnight Oil record and the natural detail of an expensive jazz record. The bass was smooth and locked in. I began the task of layering the instruments: a pump organ I found that was made around 1830, piano, acoustic guitars, microKORG and an instrument called a celeste.

The celeste is an instrument that was popular in classical music at one point – imagine if a mouse, a glockenspiel and a piano had a three way. Sure, sure, it’s hot. Anyway, this one was made around 1920 in Ohio. Anyway, after I layered these, I started banging the vocal wankery down on a few tracks, painting my face white and acting like a freak. And, hey presto, I have an album which sounds exactly like me, which I’ve never had.

I’m recording in my house now, with my bedroom looking like a real rockstar bedroom. The difference is that I get up and eat my high-bran Weet-Bix instead of doing a line on my bedside table. That’s pretty much the only difference. The house I live in was left to me by The Panics, who have gone overseas to gallop about. And I’m in Jae’s old room. They left me a beautiful old piano behind, so I should have a good piano sound on this new record.

Anyway, that’s it from me. It’s a pop record.

Regards,
Whitley