Former Architecture in Helsinki drummer James Cecil wants to get people up and dancing with his new project Super Melody – trouble is he lives in Melbourne. Words by DOUG WALLEN.

If the name Super Melody rings a bell, perhaps it’s because James Cecil has been using the phrase for years. First there was his Super Melody World studio, and now there’s the musical venture he commenced after leaving Architecture In Helsinki at the end of 2007. Following last year’s Life Is Like Glass EP, Super Melody has just made its full-length debut with Destination Unknown. Aptly titled, it’s a free-wheeling lark through cheesy funk, glossy electro-pop, honeyed orchestration, African rhythms, and much more.

The project began in the spare room of Cecil’s father’s house in Melbourne’s suburbs, and the album was completed at Cornel Wilczek’s Electric Dreams studio, where Cecil also works. Members of the Lucksmiths, Ground Components, Wagons, The Ca$inos, Magic Silver White, and The Smallgoods guest on the record, while Cecil has cherry-picked Sashi Dharann and Tom Gould from World’s End Press for the live incarnation of the band. It all makes for a loose-limbed new chapter that places the emphasis squarely on fun. But just because he spent the better part of a decade in one of Australia’s most recognisable exports doesn’t mean Cecil has avoided a steep learning curve for his own band.

Why did you leave Architecture in Helsinki?
It was just time for a new chapter for me. I was stuck in a bit of a rut personally. I wanted to pursue my own thing and spend more time producing, which I really enjoy.

Exactly how long had you been in the band?
Pretty much since the beginning. I think I joined after their third gig.

And you mainly played drums?
In the live show I mainly played drums. I mean, we all moved around a bit. And I engineered the first couple of records.

“I’m hoping to make music that gets people dancing and having fun – that’s essentially the number one aim of Super Melody – and it’s sometimes difficult in Melbourne.”

How soon after you left was Super Melody born?
Well, I spent about a year writing songs. I had my dad loan me a room at his house; I set up a little writing room and I would try and go every day. I wasn’t really thinking about the outcome: I wasn’t sure whether I would be performing it or try and find someone else to sing the songs. I just wanted to enjoy the process of writing and see where it took me. I was also really happy to be away from the whole music world. I’d spent like 80 percent of my time touring and playing, and I was looking forward to concentrating on creative time. I was very down on my singing when I left the band, and that’s probably been my main challenge. Then I got to the point where I needed to put what I was doing in front of people. I used the name Super Melody, which I’d been using for a long time. I had a studio where I recorded a couple of Architecture records called Super Melody World.

How much of the album was done before you started bringing in outside help?
Well, I wrote a whole bunch of songs. I probably had 40 things in various stages. I started to feel like I would try to put something out, so I did some drum recording. I just grabbed the top 20 things that were feeling good and set up the drums with an old eight-track and played heaps and heaps of drums. Then slowly, just from that, I started piecing things together more fully. When I started working out of Electric Dreams, which is Cornel Wilczek’s studio, I’d roughly decided what the songs for the album were going to be and had a clear idea of where the album was going. There were a few things I really wanted to have people play. Plus, by that stage I was starting to feel a bit of cabin fever. I really do enjoy being in the studio with people. I was longing for some isolation at the start of the process, but after about a year, I was longing to have people in the studio with me.

Was the Life Is Like Glass EP more to just test the water?
I guess, in retrospect. I’m probably a bit harsh, but it was a good way to make a bunch of mistakes I would try to not make when I release the album. [Laughs] At the time, there was a window to put something out and I was really ready. The original idea was to do the album in three volumes: that and two other EPs. But once that came out, I started to realise it was going to take a really long time. But that was the original plan, which kind of went out the window. [Laughs] I hadn’t been thinking about all the steps involved in releasing something and promoting it, and I made a bit of a mess of it.

It’s lucky you had something low-key to work that out with.
Totally. And I’m coming from a very privileged position, where I didn’t have to worry about any of that stuff with Architecture in Helsinki. We had labels and publicists and a manager taking care of all that, and now I’m doing everything myself, which feels really good but was a bit of a reality check. I’m back at the early stages of the whole process of having a band. You can’t just assume all this groundwork has been done.

If you don’t get the word out yourself, nobody will find out about the band.
Yeah, exactly. We went up to Sydney and played a show and I think 40 people came. [Laughs] We lost so much money. We still had fun, but at that point I needed to approach this as we would have approached things seven or eight years ago with Architecture, rather than where we were at when I left.

Destination Unknown spans pop, funk, and electronic music, among other things. Were you wanting to scratch those specific itches?
I definitely have always had eclectic taste. When I was writing, I was just throwing a whole lot of ideas around and seeing what stuck. The album developed from which things were really sticking with me after a couple of years. Essentially it’s under the broad banner of pop, but of course pop is just what people like and everyone likes different things. Super Melody is just looking at pop from a whole different bunch of directions. I do listen to a lot of funk, but I also listen to ’60s rock and all sorts of stuff. The [album] title seems appropriate. [Laughs] I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was having a hell of a lot of fun trying to figure it out.

You co-wrote string arrangements with Biddy Connor. Had you done anything like that before?
Kind of. We did some string and horn arrangement with Architecture, and that was always really fun. I’m very interested in record production in general. I love the idea of doing string arrangements. I love the sound of records from the ’50s through to the ’70s, where you have these amazing sections. There were a couple of songs where it seemed appropriate. I met Biddy when I recorded an album for Kes Band. We really hit it off. She put together a really amazing section. Believe it or not, recording the strings was possibly the easiest session of the whole record. I had some lines I would write for the synthesiser that seemed to be working, and Biddy took it from there. It’s a collaborative effort, but all the arrangement and harmonies and whatnot was Biddy’s work.

There are lots of guests, including Magic Silver White on the title track.
Well, Jojo [Petrina] and I work together at Electric Dreams with Cornel. So I was there in the downtime of the studio working on this. I was working on this track that had a very Serge Gainsbourg feel to it. Jojo has an amazing voice and can pretty much do anything. I asked if she wanted to do a duet a la Serge and Jane [Birkin]. That was her first rough take, which sounded perfect. Magic Silver White are just an incredibly strong band.

On ‘I Want Your Blood’, Romy Cecil is credited with “histrionics”.
Yeah, my sister, just screaming. [Laughs] There’s an imaginary horror thing at the end of that song. I was gonna do sound effects as well, but she did an amazing job. She’s a bit of a drama queen, and she really found her calling with that. [Laughs] I was getting chills because it was quite horrifying.

The album also has these sax and flute solos that are cheesy but really fun.
Oh, for sure. For example, on ‘Tell Me’, it just felt like a sax solo there. I was listening a lot to George Michael and things like that, which you kind of grow up with and take for granted. But when you really listen to it and break it down, I have so much respect for him. Particularly trying to do the kinds of things he does with his singing, which is insane. It just felt like it really captured that mood. Even though most of the record [was] produced on a computer and has a bit of a robotic feel, having a really expressive human element works for me. It’s a nice counterpoint. It was also just incredibly fun. Jules [Gilchrist] came into the studio and we were laughing the whole time. He’s got a great ear for where rock and jazz meet with the saxophone, which when it’s done well is very evocative. I also listen to a lot of South African jazz, so that’s definitely an influence as far as the sound of saxophones and flutes and the harmonies that come from that.

What was the inspiration for ‘Octopus’? It may be my favourite song on there.
[Laughs] I don’t know where that came from. It was just a dumb idea. It came from writing some … I don’t know what the term would be … world funk? A bit of reggaeton influence and African house. There were a bunch of tracks that never made it into being songs but were there as instrumental dance tracks, which hopefully sometime I’ll do something with. But that one I liked too much to not put it on, even though it’s completely incongruous with the rest of the record. Hopefully some people will pick up on that and think it’s cool, because it doesn’t really make sense in context.

I wanted to talk about the live band, because you’ve picked up the rhythm section from World’s End Press plus Cornel on lead guitar.
That’s right.

It’s a nice mix of the seasoned vet and the young guns.
Totally. I play live with Qua, which is Cornel, and have been doing that for a while. We tend to end up in whatever the other one is doing, which is great. We played a show with Ratatat when they came out to Australia, and World’s End Press were supporting. I just thought they were really, really great. They’re really flamboyant and energetic. I’m hoping to make music that gets people dancing and having fun – that’s essentially the number one aim of Super Melody – and it’s sometimes difficult in Melbourne. [Laughs] Not just Melbourne, a lot of cities. People tend to be reserved. I loved the energy of World’s End Press. I loved Sashi’s bass playing. he can play this kind of funk bass, which has a really bad name. [Laughs] He was excited that he had the opportunity to let his love of Brothers Johnson come to the surface.

And those guys actually dance while they play, which helps a lot.
I know, it’s great. As long as they make me look good on stage, it’s all good. [Laughs] That’s the brief.

The first time I heard Super Melody was your remix of Ned Collette’s ‘Your Golden Heart’, this 10-minute thing that erases the cynicism of the original. How did you approach that?
That track goes in two directions. I couldn’t decide on one or the other, and then it made sense to have two parts. That was just what came out. It was a bit of an odd fit I guess, but in a way that made it more fun, because I could take the tone of it and switch it around. I performed it at his launch before he went overseas. [Laughs] I hope people liked it. It was pretty weird.

Any remix of a Ned Collette song would seem strange on paper.
For sure. I think he thought I was going to do a sort of New York alt-disco thing. But again, it became more of that Afro-inspired dance stuff, which I really like but don’t always get the opportunity to put out there. That’s probably the closest thing to something like ‘Octopus’.

The ‘Worker Bee’ single has a house mix called ‘No Such Thing In This Town As A Cheap House Mix’. Is that a poke at Melbourne real estate?
Oh, you bet. [Laughs] It’s internationally known. You talk to people overseas and they’re like, “Oh, Melbourne? Where there’s the housing crisis?”

And you got a remix from James Pants for the first EP?
Yeah. That came out great. I just wrote to him on MySpace. What he did was really musical and fantastic. It was a completely different interpretation. I almost like it more than my own version.

Will you commission more remixes?
I really want to. It’s a matter of money at the moment. Same with the videos. The video for ‘Champagne Glass’) was really fun, but I’ll probably wait a few months, once the album has got out there a bit. That would be a good time to do more remixes. Honestly, I’m trying not to make the same financial mistakes I made with the EP. It’s something I love doing and I have a list of people I’d love to approach, but I’ve got to make sure I can do the album release properly.

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Destination Unknown is out now on Love & Mercy/Shock.

ALBUM LAUNCHES

Thursday, September 9
Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, VIC

Friday, September 10
Polyester Records, Melbourne, VIC
6pm in-store

Saturday, September 11
Marrickville Bowling & Recreation Club, Sydney, NSW