SPARTAK INTERVIEW with Shoeb Ahmad
Would you like to give readers of Rollaroll some background into how you came about performing as a musician and became involved in Spartak?
Basically, I decided one day in primary school I wanted to play guitar and be in a band and music then ruined my potential sporting career…met Evan Dorrian in year 7 and we've been making music together ever since. Been working on solo recordings for the best part of this decade so far and still continue to on such wicked labels like Sound&Fury, Low Point and Cook An Egg. So a couple of years ago, best mate Evan and I decided that it'd be a great idea to make music that sounded busted, messy and retarded so that's how Spartak came together. Further ideas like no songs, no pre-planning and use whatever sounds good came to fruition as well and here we are today, at home after surviving a most recent tour of this barren land and two countries on the humidity threshold while storming hellosQuare place with fractal noise and treble blast.
Your new record, Tales from Colony Room, has just been released through HellosQuare recordings. Would you like to take me through the recording and studio process for it?
We came back from a short tour of Malaysia and Singapore, where we played with hardcore and noise bands and basically decided that was the time to record an album, capture us after an intense period of touring basically. So we had a couple of weeks off from each other during Christmas and then spent two days at hellosQuare house playing and recording live, just banging out the pieces according to certain ideas and narratives we had in our minds. The record is more mellow then we both expected but we were really drawn to the fragility and the ambience of say 'The Bloodletting' alongside the noisier, more taut pieces like 'Sunstrokes' and honestly, we wouldn't want it any other way.
I find it quite an impressive record, but how have other people been responding to it?
Cheers for yr kind words! The response has been generously good so far, obviously it's not as representative of our live digs as it could be and people have mentioned that but I think once they understand that we see both mediums (performance vs recording) as separate ideas and play accordingly, they definitely appreciate the record even more then they might have before. That said, we've always been ready for people not to really dig on it so we are finding ourselves lucky to be in a situation where people are genuinely excited by what we are doing and for that we’re seriously grateful.
Are you and your band-mates pleased with the record yourselves?
Yeah, I think for what it is, we are proud of it and while we know the next one will sound even better through the changes we’ve gone through and the circumstances we want to set it up in, we're definitely not ashamed of ‘Tales…’ at all.
I think I remember you mentioning that you were happy with the artwork for the new record. Who conceived and produced the artwork and designed the layout?
hellosQuare's good friend Traianos Pakioufakis was kind enough to put together the photo cards and design which is great because I've always dug what he's done with his label Meupe and he's a great photographer to boot! He basically designed the whole package to go with the cases that I picked out from Portland, Oregon's best organic printers Stumptown and I think it's worked out really well.
Performing live, you seem to create a wide range of sounds through what appears to be quite a simple set-up. What kind of equipment and performing techniques do you use in order to achieve your unique sound?
It's quite hard to say if there is are any techniques involved with the performance itself. We've got the guitar and drum kit that we work from but we compliment these melodic and textural sources with computers and junk along with whatever else takes our fancy. It's just so Do It Yourself and we just want to be making interesting and exciting sounds so really, even if we're just using two laptops, guitar + percussion or if we’re a no-input mixing board and bowed cymbal duo for the night, we just set up a narrative with the initial movements of a set and take it from there.
I saw you perform with Spartak collaborating with 3ofmillions at Bohemian Grove, which worked really well. Any plans to collaborate further with them, either in a live setting or in recording?
Who knows homie? It'd be awesome to play with them again and we've done so much stuff together between all of us anyways but being in different cities does make it a little difficult so yeah, who knows. We do a lot of collaborating with other people in general though, both during jams and live like the Bohemian Grove dig and at the Canberra album launch, where we had a saxophone, trumpet and trombone do the second half of our set with us. It's just fun to get thrown into the deep end with a different element that helps dictate the way we move.
What's next for Spartak?
A nice long break! We have plans to record another album really soon and we've got a couple of tentative ideas in regards to how to do it and what we want to look into sound wise. For now though, just constant jamming and watching cricket to no end!
And lastly, what are some new records you're currently enjoying?
Ah my young friend, I've been listening to heaps of records lately, many of which were bought while Spartak traversed the country so here's a list of current faves:
COOL SCHOOL
Ohana - Dead Beat
Embers – Slag-Welter
The Twilight Sad - Here, It Never Snowed, Afterwards It Did
Tape - Luminarium
Mark Stewart - Edit
The Bug - London Zoo
Robbie Avenaim - Rhythmic Movement Disorder
GOLDEN OLDIES
.snd - Tender Love
Saint Etienne - Finisterre/The Sound Of Water
Low - Drums And Guns
The Necks - drive-by/Chemist
Town And Country - Up Above
The Go-Betweens - Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express
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