Mi Volcano, es su Volcano

By Bella Crea

YourGigs caught up with Richard (the one in your mind) for a little chat about the new record, working with SPOD, how nice rice is and of course, volcanoes.

Richard in Your Mind, a psychedelic five-piece comprising Richard Cartwright, Conrad Richters, Pat Torres, Jordy Lane and newest member Brent Griffin (SPOD), is about to release their highly anticipated sophomore record, the follow-up to the much-loved debut The Future Prehistoric.

yourGigs (yG): What was it like having Brent Griffin (SPOD) on board as producer on My Volcano?

Richard Cartwright (RC): It was the best. We just really got to explore the record at our own pace with Brent, he was still learning because he hadn’t really decided to produce a full work [for another person.] So he was having fun exploring that kind of role. In the past we’d done stuff ourselves and spent money to do it really quickly in the studio just to mix it. It sounds really great in the studio but you don’t get that, I don’t know, relaxation. He’d save [the project], and we’d go have a beer!

So yeah, Brent brought so much to it through all his knowledge of audio production as well as just cool synthesisers and other little things. Most of the record we recorded ourselves before we took it to Brent but there were certainly a bunch of  times when he’d go, “you know, I think this needs a moog going “KSSSHQWWWCK!” right here.” And he’d do it and we’d go, “you’re right, that IS what it needs!”

yG: Was it kind of like in Fantasyze how he gives you encouragement every few minutes like, “you can do it! just a bit further!”

RC: That’s it! Yeah, encouragement in the form of synth bleeps. And we were friends before but we’re even better friends now. We’re a family now…It was a musical adventure!

yG: So how are you finding being a part of the Rice is Nice family?
RC: Yeah, it’s been amazing. Julia’s just been doing SO much stuff, making so many things happen without us having to worry about them. It feels really great to have that kind of full time support. I can’t imagine having greater support from any bigger label. Maybe they’d have more money or some other thing but it seems like the stuff that’s really making us feel good is all there [with Rice is Nice.] It feels like a team.

yG: I read that the magical Seja (also on Rice is Nice) played keys on the album too. Were there any other awesome contributions from friends?
RC: Not really outside of the band for this one. There were a few hand claps from folks who were just hanging out at Brent’s. But with the Seja thing, she was in Brisbane when she did it! That was another of Brent’s ideas where he was like, “You know what this needs?” Well basically because he’s such good friends with Seja he was like, “She’ll know what to do with this song!” So he emailed her a thing and she is the world of computers and technology so she just sent it back and it was perfect! It’s crazy to think that you could live all over the planet and still make a collaborative album.

yG: My Volcano had a timely release right after the eruption of that volcano in Iceland. Was that some crazy publicity stunt by Rice is Nice? Did Julia make that volcano erupt?
RC: Yeah, well, that’s it! They really blew the budget on that one! That’s the sense of love we get from them, they’ll do that for us. They’ll explode Iceland for us!

yG: Your songs always have such descriptive narratives; the stories play out really visually in the mind’s eye.
RC: Yeah, I think it just comes with how I write them and I see them for myself. [You start with] either a feeling or an image, and if the moons align and you’re in the right frame of mind then the images or feelings will flow in a way that also makes the right words fit in a musical sense. When I was a slightly younger man I was heavily involved into beat poetry, streams of consciousness forms of writing, like Alan Ginsberg.

yG: I can see that actually, the stream of consciousness thing you mentioned. Your lyrics are often like someone recounting a dream they had.
RC: It is like that yeah, sometimes it’s a bit mythical but other times it is an actual event. But that’s the power of words in that you get to choose really great ones, and if you’re trying to express the FEELING as well as just describing walking down the street then you can get to use more abstract stuff. Sometimes it is just describing an event but in an abstract way.

yG: Does that mean there is a Tiny Colossus Face?
RC: Oh Tiny Colossus Face is strange! That really is something that just came out! But it kind of expressed how things were… it’s actually about an old house mate who was going through sort of dark shit, so the verses are kind of describing that darkness and the choruses, “scale the earth, Tiny Colussus Face” are kind of a call to get out of that shit somehow! It’s not the clearest analogy, calling something a Tiny Colossus Face though.

yG: You got the lovely Katherine Brickman (Greedy Hen) to make the My Volcano cover art. Is the visual aspect just as important as your music?
RC: Definitely! For the album especially, because it’s so crazy how a cover will affect the way you listen to it. Like Joni Mitchell’s Blue, it’s just blue. And suddenly the album has a quality that is like, blue. An album to us should feel like a whole thing, have a real vibe and a sense of its own self. So [the art] is really important. We’re just lucky that Katherine’s been a good friend for years and years and you only need to throw a few words her way and she says, “cool! I know what I’m doing!” and always comes back with something that is never quite the literal meaning (although this one does have a volcano on it) it’s always got something more that we could never have come up with.

I love the ocean on the cover of ours, and it has a kind of dark cloudiness to it. We let her know that the album was like a deserted island where the sun shines but there could be an angry tribe of head hunters, or crazy pygmies, one definitely with sounds in the night to make you uneasy. So like, a nice sense of lushness and freedom but with that, a sense of uncertainty…

yG: None of the songs on the Summertime EP made it onto the second album; it’s just a nice little package unto itself. Why did you decide to do that?
RC: It was kind of a little bit of a B-side before the album came out, there were just things we thought weren’t going to go on the album but that we thought still deserved a listen. We also knew that the album wasn’t quite ready but we wanted to put out some stuff. It was because of that Fantasyze thing because we got a bunch of that stuff together and we were like “wow, we got that together really quickly, we could just put something out.” Just to be like “Hey, we’re Richard in Your Mind, we haven’t put anything out in a little while but we’re still here AND by the way there is an album coming.” And that was the original reason but after we finished making it we loved listening to it because it was a bit more flippant, easier…

yG: The word you are looking for there is “chill.”
RC:Yeah, right on! It was just cool for it to have a place where we didn’t have to stress too much about it… It was, “here are some of our other crazy experiments, you might like them or you might not!”

yG: I watched the promo video for My Volcano that Brent made. It’s kind of amazing. It felt like you were really getting into my brain, with like, voodoo magic or something.
RC: It was cool! He’s great like that, he gets an idea and just whips it up!

yG: I assume this means that you have a crazy awesome SPOD produced video coming up.
RC: We do! It’s not done yet, Brent’s in the middle of doing it. We set up a green screen at his house and filmed a bunch of stuff…

yG: Yeah I know, Brent borrowed my camera… He hasn’t returned it yet…
RC:Cool, thanks! Oh, but make sure you get that back to do your own creative stuff!

yG: I will! But can you tell me about the video?
RC:Well I’m not sure yet! But it’s for Candelabra. It’s a bit like… I don’t know if you saw his clip for ‘Dead’?

yG: Oh yeah, I helped make that!
RC: Awesome! Well I think it’s a bit of that kind of After-Effects-laden, lots-of-weird-cuts-into-cosmic-places kind of thing. So yeah, but we’ll have to see how that goes ‘cause we haven’t really seen it! But it should be cool. It starts off with Jordy as a vampire and that’s all I can reveal!

yG: Amazing! And what’s it like being on tour with Cloud Control?
RC: It’s wonderful, they’re great. They’re great friends. And they’re really popular so all the shows are really full! We’ve been adoring our time with them, it’ll be a shame to end it…

yG: But you’re about to head off on your own album tour…
RC: And that will be excellent! I don’t think it will be quite as extensive as Cloud Control but all the places we go to are like “hey you should come back here” and we’re like, “OKAY WE’LL COME BACK IN A MONTH!”

yG: Any plans for the tour?
RC: Make sure we’ve got together a bunch of songs that we haven’t quite got together off the album yet, like we want to get ‘Flower of the Heart’ together because that will be a crazy jungle jam. I’m sure we’ll come up with some visual things too but mostly we just want to reflect our album live as well as we can which should be kind of exciting. There will be some awesome tribal jamming that the audience might have to be involved with.

yG: We heard rumours on the internet about grass skirts and bi-carb-powered exploding volcanoes.
RC: It’s funny how little comments you say in interviews turn into ACUTAL THINGS. Well um, hrm, maybe we could bring a volcano on tour.

yG: Start saying, “we’re going to get an actual volcano to erupt on stage.” Let’s get that rumour out there.
RC: Yeah that’s it! Well we do need to make [a volcano] for the Red Eye window. So I don’t know much about the bi-carb aspect of it but we do need to at least make a papier-mâché volcano.

yG: Lastly, on your myspace page it says “spiritual guidance” and then your email address. Has anyone ever asked you for spiritual guidance, and if so, what did you tell them?
RC: No! No one has, the punks! But I would probably just tell them to, “make it chill.”

My Volcano is released on June 26 through Rice is Nice Records. For tour dates, check out our gig guide.