At his computer where “all emails find him”, Decoder Ring’s MATTHEW FITZGERALD gets defensive about a whole bunch of things – from a description of the band’s latest album 'They Blind the Stars, And the Wild Team' as “accessible” to mistaking a horse for a unicorn on its cover.

What have you been up to lately?
We’ve just got back from the first leg of our tour. On Thursday we kicked off the tour in Byron, then Surfers and then Brisbane on Saturday. The shows have been great and we’re having a blast, although feeling a little worse for wear. In the next couple of weeks we also have album launches in Sydney and Melbourne. Bridezilla and Seekae are supporting us for the tour which has been great. They’re both fantastic bands.

What prompted the two-year break?
Even before we recorded Fractions we had decided that we wanted to have the luxury to have a few years working on the next album. But it was only after we were in New York after SxSW in 2006 that we really committed to taking our time.

Explain the songwriting process. You don’t start writing songs until you have a “sound”?
I’m not sure that I can, but I will give it a go. Sounds are like colours. A painter might have something they want to paint but the first step is to put something down and the colour is important; it’s the first step in the commitment to the expression. Think of any painting and imagine if a wildly different colour was used … Even if you think of Andy Warhol and the screen prints, even though there may be a range of colours, the colours are still an iconic part of the image.

Sounds are no different. I suppose in the same way you can have primary sounds, and then you get into mixing sounds. We spend a lot of time mixing our sounds, both individually and then again as a group. We tend to know what we want to represent and then it’s about finding a sound that represents that. Then when you put them together it creates different impacts, and then again it’s about tweaking that so the combination represents what we’re trying to do. Our colours are distortion, delay, guitars, synths, amps … and more distortion.

How did you arrive at a particular sound?
You never arrive, it always evolves.

Tell us about the recording process. What was it like to work with Scott Colburn? And why Scott?
We were keen to work with a producer on this album as we could just focus on our performance, so we went through the albums we really loved and contacted some of those producers. We loved both Animal Collective’s Feels and Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible. They both have a great spirit and life to them.

For us it was really important that the recording captured the live performance – that you could hear and feel that a band was playing. So we wanted something that had the presence of those classic rock recordings that “captured the moment”, but that was also both almost orchestral and epic, and at the same time experimental and psychedelic. Scott was the only person we thought could do this and we’re so pleased to have worked with him, and to count him as a friend.

I’ve heard you describe They Blind The Stars as the “definitive” Decoder Ring album. In what sense?
I think this is the most all-encompassing album we’ve made – on every level – in terms of sounds, music styles, emotions. At the same time, it’s the most coherent of all our records. In short: I think it’s the album that most accurately reflects who we are and what we're trying to do.

Tracks like ‘Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom’ showcase a more effervescent, less ambient pop sound. Did you set out to make a more accessible record?
Have you even listened to the album? I don’t think eight minutes of drone makes it a more accessible record. We set out to make a Decoder Ring record, and that’s the beginning and end of it.

From the Rorschach inkblots on the cover of your self-titled LP to the minimalist aesthetic of Fractions, your artwork says a lot about your albums. What does a unicorn in space say about They Blind The Stars?
For a start it’s not a unicorn – it’s a horse. A unicorn would be way too new age for us. It might seem semantic, but for us it makes a world of difference: a horse cantering through the galaxy is cool whereas a unicorn is gay. Now that I’ve corrected that misunderstanding it should make perfect sense. If not, here’s the background:

“A unicorn would be way too new age for us. It might seem semantic, but for us it makes a world of difference: a horse cantering through the galaxy is cool whereas a unicorn is gay.”

When we were recording in Seattle we did about 10 days straight and then had a day off. Twin Peaks was shot near there at a place called Snoqualmie, so we jumped in the van and all headed out there. The diner is still there (although it was damaged in a fire) so we all had cherry pie. After that we headed up to Snoqualmie Falls (where Laura Palmer’s body was found wrapped in plastic). We climbed down this massive hill – actually I was wearing thongs and more fell down it – then climbed around a power station and out onto the base of the falls. While we were down there we heard this voice and traced it to the entrance of a cave which actually went behind the falls. We went in to check it out and there was this midget speaking backwards. He beckoned us further in until the cave gave way to this black and white floor and then to these red velvet curtains. He drew back the curtains and that is what we saw.

Who’s behind the artwork?
Like all things Decoder Ring it’s a collaborative effort, but Simon K is our main man for all things visual (and the midget behind Snoqualmie Falls).

You’ve experimented with different vocalists in the past, namely Lenka Kripac. What was the rationale behind going back to an all-instrumental sound?
We’ve always been an instrumental band, but we’ve also had vocals on some tracks – some with Lenka but prior to then also from Jodi Phillis, Cibot (from Further) and Tylea.

Right from the beginning of writing Blind the Stars, it was apparent this was going to be non verbal. It always depends on the songs and with the new album, the songs had neither the space or the need for vocals. If anything, we felt they would detract from what we were trying to do.

Is the door open for future collaborations with Lenka or any other vocalists?
It’s not closed but at the moment, but it’s not something we’re interested in either. There’s still a lot of things we want to explore and neither words or voice are part of them, so that pretty much rules out a vocal collaboration for now. At the same time, we’re still all friends so if the stars align who knows.

That being said, if we are going to collaborate with a singer it’s going to be with this guy.

What’s your live show like these days?
Both bigger and better which has been a bit of a nightmare with gear. There’s now so much between multiple projectors, multiple amps, multiple guitars, in fact, pretty much anything that’s a bitch to move around. That being said it’s great once everything is set up – it’s sounding massive and looking amazing. Simon has new visuals for the shows and there’s some awesome split screen action which is really trippy. It’s all coming together to create something that we think is pretty unique and special.

How integral are the visual projections to the performance?
As it says on our first EP: “Music Sound Vision.”

Are you worried about the live visuals overshadowing the music?
No. Should we be? It’s not like it’s supposed to be wallpaper. The music and visual are interconnected, they work off each other, we see no delineation.

Any new soundtrack projects in the pipeline?
We get approached quite often, but we are not interested in scoring films for the sake of it. We have to feel that the project is right for us, we need to really fall in love with it and be fairly confident that we can bring something to the film as a band that a more traditional film composer might not be able to. Right now – after three years locked in rehearsal rooms and studios – our priority is for some time on the road.

Tell us something we don’t know about [former touring buddies] Coldplay.
They’re all really heavily into Norwegian black metal and the songs they were practicing for their new album in the soundchecks are like a cross between Burzum, Darkthrone and Gorgoroth. It’s going to be awesome. Evidently Diplo is going to produce it.

Did you ever flirt with asking Chris Martin to sing on a track?
Yeah. Originally the tour was going to be us, Coldplay and Santigold. We were going to do a track with Chris and Santi and Jay-Z was going to mix it. Kanye was up for it too, but we told him we weren’t so keen on the T-Pain route he has gone down, so we were going to stick with Jay-Z. Then unfortunately Santi had to pull out of the tour and since then we haven’t been able to get our schedules to work. It still might happen – for some reason Richard Branson is really keen to hear it so he wants to fly us all to his island in the Caribbean so we can make some magic.

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UPCOMING SHOWS'

Friday, August 28
The Metro Theatre, Sydney
w/ Bridezilla

Saturday, September 5
Hi-Fi Bar, Melbourne, VIC
w/ Bridezilla

Saturday, September 12
Baroque Bar, Katoomba, NSW

Saturday, December 5
Homebake, Sydney, NSW