Rip It Up Hot Six act Horror My Friend recently decamped to Melbourne to record their debut album, and we enlisted drummer Sam Kolesnik to pen his thoughts from the road and the studio. These are his stories.

Recording your first album is a big deal. For the members of a band it represents something that they’ve only dreamed about. It would be a magical period where the true, raw creative aspirations of the band would be hammered out into a body of work that would feel significantly more legitimate than anything that came before it.

So it came to be that three guys from Little Ol’ Adelaide would pack up their gear in a dented Holden Commy and travel to The 2nd Biggest Smoke In Australia for two weeks to chase their dreams, record their first album and indulge in Melbourne’s finest all day breakfast joints. It was going to be brilliant.

But by the third day, there was definitely 100% less Commodore appearing in our parking spot.

It was going well.

St Kilda

A stolen car was just the kind of fun Tom, Josh and I were after in this exciting city. At this point, we were staying in what I can only describe as a Super Fun Hostel in St Kilda.

You know, a place where the only two shower options in the whole building are Right, featuring blood on the floor, or Left, featuring potentially anything (it’s hard to tell in complete darkness).
A place where free goon is the selling point.
A place where many doors for no apparent reason are bolted shut.
We never found out what horrors lay behind those.

Of course, this all makes sense. It was situated on the one street in St. Kilda which literally EVERYONE told us we should not walk down or make eye contact with anyone standing on it (particularly if they look like, act like and just generally are a pimp).

So it almost wasn’t surprising to see our car missing on our last morning at the Super Fun Hostel. Instead there was a police car, with the officer talking to a resident on the street. In my mind, this confirmed that the car was indeed stolen. But after consulting with the officer, it was discovered that we were not victims of some hooligan with a Bachelor of Stealing My Car but in fact victims of the council’s towing contractor with a PhD in Militant Clearway Enforcement.

Whoops.

This definitely meant all day breakfast was out and $4 cheese and bacon roll packs, questionable Asian noodles and banana bread were to be the major sources of sustenance for two weeks.

Also, Luna Park. Never Again.

Drums

This is a recording diary after all so it’s probably worth mentioning why we were actually in St Kilda. You get three guesses. Recording? WOW UR GOOD A++

We started at Hothouse Studio, recording drums with all round legend and lover of European-style rolls, Jez Giddings. This is one of those studios you dream of recording in. The mics, the Neve desk, the guitars, the Neve desk; it was a gear nerd’s dream. I was particularly impressed when I requested that the drums sound like those on The Mars Volta’s first record and was met with the answer “yeah dude that’s easy”.

Sweet. That’s the bulk of my negotiating done.

We also managed to get some bass recorded. Richard Bowers [left], who would be recording and mixing the rest of the songs came along for the Neve desk but stayed for the bass. It was seriously chunky bass. If it had been anymore chunky we’d probably have been sued by Campbell’s Soup.

[Editor’s note: Not before the Bad Joke Police get you.]

So after two days of laying down drum tracks, I was done. Complete. Fin.

Being the drummer meant that I had the luxury of an excellent work:play ratio.

Work for two days, relax for twelve.

Just my kind of work trip.

Fitzroy / Northcote

We left the hostel faster than the free goon and made our way towards greener pastures: Fitzroy.

Fitzroy is a dump. But it’s a hip dump so like, that’s ok. It has the best restaurants, bars and vintage stores all in a neat little area. But all that didn’t matter. We just wanted a clean shower.

Also, my future home resides in Fitzroy.

We stocked up on cheese and bacon rolls and made our way down the road to Northcote. Did you know that Northcote has the most musicians per capita than anywhere else in Australia? I certainly didn’t but I committed it to memory in case it came up at the Highbury Tavern Trivia Night.

The rest of the time that we spent interstate was almost exclusively spent at Soundpark, a Northcote studio and practice space. Now Papa Bowers was in control. Taking time out of his duties with local legends Magic Bones, Papa was tasked with recording guitars to HMF’s exacting standards.

You see, you can’t just record a guitar once. You have to record everything. Three times.

We take our fuzz seriously.

Guitar, Guitar, Guitar

I quickly found out there is no such thing as too much fuzz. Pedals were lying everywhere. Cables were strewn across the floor. The practice rooms we setup in were soundproofed but if you listened hard enough, you could hear the other bands rehearsing and recording.

This is probably a good point to thank City Calm Down for their collaboration with us on the background noise for our album.

Cheers guys!

The benefit of recording with Richard’s portable setup meant that we could afford way more time to experiment with the sounds that we wanted. Pedals were combined in a ton of different ways. By the end of our time, I could accurately tell you the difference in sonic and build quality of a Russian Big Muff pedal compared to it’s more widely available American version. It was the space race all over again.

But this time, the Russians won.

Look, I’m going to have to be honest with you, reader of this ‘diary’.

By the second week, I wasn’t even really at the studio a lot of the time. There was only so much I could do when recording guitars. Before long, I was switching between reading philosophy and napping.

So I present to you…

SK’s Top Melbourne Hangs For When Your Band Is Recording and You Are Not

Melbourne Museum (4/5)

Highly recommended. They have an indoor forest with owls. They have more human body parts than a Chinese organ farm.
[Lawyer’s note: Allegedly. This has not been proven. You’d better hope their government doesn’t see this.]
[Editor’s note: Don’t stress. People stopped reading 2 paragraphs ago.]

They have Phar Lap. Need I say more?

National Gallery of Victoria (5/5)

This place is stunning. The top level of contemporary art is a vital visit. As I walked around in my skinny jeans, glasses, beanie and general air of pretension, I felt at home.

Sugar Mountain Festival (4/5)

I attended this with Josh who had escaped the pedal jungle to come see one of the best lineups I’ve experienced in a long time. King Gizz, Nas, BO NINGEN. Holy shit. A bunch of long haired Japanese guys (I think) playing brutal punk whilst looking like they were being exorcised. That was incredible.

And then there was SWANS. I seriously thought demons were coming out of the speakers. A++

We also discovered how HMF will record drums next time.

Luna Park (No Stars)

Nope. Not going in.

The Final Days / Vocals

It was down to the wire. By the last night at Soundpark we were struggling to get everything recorded. In typical student fashion, we pulled a late one.

The following day, we went back to Hothouse to catch up with Jez and record the vocals.

It was pretty intense for #bedtimebatters.

We had made it to the end. On the drive back we drove through Keith, ate at the bakery and spent too long on the town slide (*****/5).

We were done. 11 songs. Coming out soon on CD, vinyl, iTunes, Bandcamp.

JUST JOKING.

Now we have to mix, master, press, distribute and market the whole thing.

So I guess in the meantime you’ll just have to be content with one song, which we’re launching this week. It’s called Mazes. See you there?

Catch Horror My Friend launch the new single on Friday April 17 at the Crown & Anchor Hotel, with support from The Controllers (VIC), Super Best Friends (ACT) and Relying On Luck. Tickets available here.

More Hot Six news

New music, tour dates from Horror My Friend
New SA music: Lonelyspeck + Joy Sparkes
Strict Face makes us an exclusive mix
Wireheads head to USA, launch new tape
The Hot Six 2015 Revealed

Photographs:

Horror My Friend / Sam Kolesnik / Hugh Black