Holed up in the isolation booth of a Melbourne studio, Ned Collette chats to DOUG WALLEN about the state of Berlin’s music scene, rekindling his love for the nylon-string guitar and being his own worst critic.

Based in Berlin for two years now but back in his native Melbourne for a five-week stint, Ned Collette has been completing the follow-up to 2009’s third album Over The Stones, Under The Stars. That album’s collaborative band Wirewalker – drummer Joe Talia and bassist Ben Bourke – has been pared down to a team-up of just Collette and Talia, who have been working with each other since the experimental ensemble City City City. Bourke’s absence is simply because he couldn’t make it over to Berlin, where Collette was conceiving the new album.

Bourke will be playing with Wirewalker at a one-off Melbourne appearance, though, as will the band’s live keyboardist James Rushford. The gig will launch the ‘Long You Lie’/‘The Hedonist’ 7”, the first taste of Collette’s measured, compelling songwriting since last year’s ‘The Pool is Full of Hats’ single.

Is this [forthcoming release] going to be a Wirewalker record?
No, it’s gonna come out under Ned Collette and Joe Talia, because it really is just us. I recorded most of it in Berlin, and Joe came over in May and did bits of his parts and then brought it back here and added some more of his experimental, abstract stuff. Now we’re just trying to piece it all together into something that’s coherent and makes some sort of sense to us.

Is it along the lines of the single?
Some of it. Those two songs are quite different from each other in a way. There’s a lot more of Joe’s work on this, which is more clearly identifiable. There’s going to be a lot of stuff without lyrics, and a fair amount of his stuff either linking the songs or bubbling away beneath.

Is Joe engineering it too?
Yeah. Well, I engineered the stuff I recorded. He’s mixing it all. I mean, I’m there participating in that, but he’s the guy that runs the desk. As he always has been with us, really.

How’s Berlin been treating you in general?
Good. I love living there, but it’s for surprising reasons I guess. I really enjoy that city for its sort of entirety but, interestingly enough, for what I do it’s probably not ideal. Except I can live there because they have visas for artists, and also it’s cheap. But the music scene is actually quite difficult to non-existent, I would say.

“There are a lot of Australian and other expats living there [Berlin], but that doesn’t seem to have really engendered any strong musical community.”

That’s funny, because I have this rosy picture in my head of all these expats playing together there...
It’s a funny one. There are a lot of Australian and other expats living there, but that doesn’t seem to have really engendered any strong musical community. I would maybe even go as far as to say artistic community. I mean, the people I know well there tend to do most of their work outside of Berlin. It’s just where they live. Whether it’s because the city’s essentially still really broke and therefore there’s no enough infrastructure for gigs and venues … There’s really not that many small venues that take bands with drums and any sort of volume. I think it’s quite rare that people go out to see music the way they do here. It doesn’t seem to be like a common pastime. You certainly don’t go to gigs and see the same people. But the truth is, I kind of don’t miss that at all. It’s really nice being here [in Melbourne], and it’s incredible how much still goes on here. There’s so much being launched at the moment! But as much as I love it, I enjoy the space and time of Berlin.

It sounds like a bit of an isolation booth itself.
Yeah, well, it’s nice to do some other things with one’s life. Music’s what I do, I love it, and I guess it’s my purpose for now, but living where I’m living has made me realise there’s all these quite mundane but really enjoyable other things to do with your life.

Have you been getting out to Europe much to play?
Yeah, that’s been great. That’s what I mean. That’s the real bonus of being able to go and play different types of audiences than here. I’ve played a lot of towns where universities are based, which aren’t necessarily big towns at all. They can be really small, but there’s a very different atmosphere. I guess it would be like if you played Canberra and people actually went to the show. I’ve done some crazy things, like this gig at the Swiss Cultural Institute in Rome. That’s all very enjoyable. Getting flown down to Rome for a gig.

How are you setting all this up?
Well, I’m not really. The first six months I got there, I didn’t put too much pressure on myself to jump immediately into trying to tour or play a heap of shows. I quite enjoyed that, so I kind of kept going. [Laughs] I still write to a lot of venues in fits of enthusiasm and get a few gigs that way, and I know a couple of agents who throw me things here and there. That’s the other thing: that whole thing about the Berlin scene not being that strong. And I guess in a way the German scene as a whole isn’t that strong.

But then I wonder if any European country’s scene is as strong as the scene we have here. If a band comes to Europe, it’s not like they do a German tour. They do a tour of Europe. So in a sense there’s a much bigger underlying community of people who are into certain types of things, right throughout Europe. But it’s not as concentrated, so as a result I don’t find myself as busy as I do when I’m here. But again, that plays into being able to write more and record more and just do other things as well.

Was this single just to have a little salvo before the album?
Yeah, I guess it was sort of a teaser. And also, those were the two songs, when Joe took it all back here from Berlin, that appealed to him to start the mix on. So he finished them first and I had this idea to do a 7” because we’ve never done vinyl. It’s a bit of a test, really, because it’s the one thing people always ask for at shows. Especially over there, people just aren’t remotely interested in buying CDs. And it seemed like a nice way to start. But I’d say both those songs will end up on the record. They might be slightly different: maybe we’ll do a different mix.

Was the drum machine on ‘Long You Lie’ just by necessity, or was it an aesthetic decision?
It was totally by necessity in the sense that a lot of these songs I was essentially demoing, as far as I was concerned. That’s a sampled drum kit: it’s not a physical drum machine. It’s something I had in my computer, samples of all these different drum kits. It’s the same thing that Hipster Shit Magnet used on the remix of ‘The Pool is Full of Hats’ on that last EP. I was interested in that because I was going away and wouldn’t have a drummer. I just put it in there as a temporary thing with the idea that Joe would probably replace them at some point, but he really liked them. It suits the song. And he may have added some real percussion to that track. It’s all fairly hybridised, the production of this whole record. There’s elements of drum machines and then trying to merge them with real drums. But yeah, it was out of necessity – that’s the short answer.

Ned Collette & Joe Talia - Long You Lie by 00remotecontrol

How about the nylon-string guitar?
That’s something I started getting back into when I was still here, which I guess is a bit on the last EP. I have a crappy old nylon-string here that was my first guitar, but I just couldn’t take that many instruments with me. So as soon as I got there, I was really quite obsessed with finding a nylon-string. I just got really into that sound. I’ve never been a big fan of steel-string acoustic; I’ve never liked the way my songs sound when I do it. But I was sick of playing solo on electric, and I was sick to death of loops. So the nylon-string really appealed to me. Also because I’m still massively into Jorge Ben and all those Brazilian dudes. I think you can rock on them a bit more. Especially because the one I got is like a flamenco guitar, so it’s a bit brighter. It’s like the sound breaks up a bit more when you hit it; it almost distorts naturally. I love it. It’s given me this new lease on life at solo gigs, which I’m really enjoying again.

So you put your older songs through that lens as well?
Some of them. Some of them just don’t work at all. Actually, that becomes a kind of quality control point for me, as far as how good the songs were in the first place. It’s hard to get them happening if all you have is a guitar and a voice and you don’t have the world’s most wonderful voice. If the song still speaks that simply, it works. And a lot of the old ones just don’t, so I don’t really do them.

It gives ‘Long You Lie’ this funky levity, but some of the lyrics are almost apocalyptic.
Yeah, it’s a strange song. It’s about a few different things. At one point I thought it was about a fairly immediate attitude I had about Australia as soon as I left. But it’s also just about a girl. The music itself doesn’t mean anything. The way these things happen is I just lay all these parts down and usually I think they’re kind of funny. Then after I sit with them for about a week, I quite like them. But a lot of the songs on this record, when I had them in a demo phase, I just thought they were all really ridiculous.

It’s good you don’t discount them at the start then.
Well, I sort of do. I just run away from them and don’t open them for months. And when I do, I remember thinking it was really stupid but now it doesn’t strike me as remotely stupid at all. [Laughs] It’s quite serious now. It’s kind of weird working on your own. I haven’t done that totally for a while. I guess I’m fairly self-critical in one sense, and the other guys are usually the ones saying, “No, it’s fine. Let’s just keep going down that track.”

It’s interesting that you’re still working with Joe after so long, starting back with City City City.
Yeah, of course. I find it hard to complete things without his input, in a way. Because it’s been so long since I’ve mixed something myself. I can get them close, but he’s just infinitely more experienced at that now. And his input’s good. He’ll put up with things that I won’t put up with if I’m being pedantic. I guess he sees the bigger picture and I get obsessed about little details that really don’t matter.

What’s this Toff show going to be like?
Good. Now I can actually say that with some confidence, because we had a rehearsal last night. Joe and I were both really relieved. It came together really quickly. We sound a bit like the [old] band if people remember our last shows here. The songs are a bit rawer and simpler.

And you’re just doing the one gig?
Yeah, there’s the one Toff show that’s kind of the big production number. We’ve got Laura [Jean] and Biddy [O’Connor] singing with us as well. And then I’ve got a solo show on Sunday afternoon at the Post Office Hotel in Coburg. I’m gonna do two sets there, which will be much more like what I’ve been doing in Europe.

Let’s talk about ‘The Hedonist’. It’s got that open-ended structure a lot of your songs have.
Yeah. That’s an old one, actually. We recorded it once as this kind of rollicking rock thing for the last album, but it never really worked because we just weren’t that kind of band. But I always liked the lyrics. I don’t feel like I write quite that way anymore. It was one of those songs that came out in one go. [This version] is exactly the same harmonically; it’s just more of a folk version. I’ve got a few of those now, because I’ve got ‘The Optimist’ and ‘The Idealist’. It’s a tool for coming up with characters or ideas for songs.

Ned Collette & Joe Talia - The Hedonst by 00remotecontrol

Archetypes…
Yeah, exactly. It’s sort of an archetype exercise for me when I’m stuck. I’m really happy with the way it turned out, actually. But the meanings behind it are cloudy as always. It’s sort of about penance, really, for all that sort of behaviour. Taken to ridiculous extremes. [Laughs]

Well, it’s someone who personifies this single quality…
Exactly. So obviously there aren’t ever those people who are so basic in their characteristics, but it’s kind of fun for me to explore. Sometimes I think maybe all these songs could somehow join up and form a fairly cohesive, realistic person.

It’s tempting to think they’re different sides of you.
Yeah. A lot of the time I think songwriting is about having to split shards off reality and analyse them one by one. Otherwise you’re just dealing with too big a pool to draw from or too big an image to analyse at once.

+

The ‘Long You Lie’/‘The Hedonist’ 7” is out on Escobar Records. Ned Collette & Wirewalker will play The Toff in Town in Melbourne this Saturday (October 29).