Folie à Deux (with Sarah)

WE ARRIVE ALIVE - E.P. EXCLUSIVE - TRACK 4

W E   A R R I V E   A L I V E   //   D A C H A U 

Track 4 from  M Y   F R I E N D ,  T H E   B O M B M A K E R 

I N T E R V I E W  C O N T … (Part 4)

What has been the process of writing your songs / EP ?

Adam : I think almost everything we’ve written has been as a group. Somebody will think of something or be trying something new that they want to work out or stumble upon something that sounds good and it’ll catch. Either another guitar line, or drum beat, something that allows the idea to expand into a song.

Ben : Well usually, one of us, mostly Andy, comes to a jam with some sort of idea, be it a guitar line or whatever and we just jam it out and new ideas spawn.  The guts of the sopng is usually written in one or two jams.

Michael : It’s a pretty simple method actually. We all show up at practice and one or more of us may have some cool idea which we’re itching to show the lads. So we all hear it out and invariably one of us, while listening, will have another idea to complement the first. Before we know it, we’re all jamming out the ideas together, trying out different sounds for a while as something takes shape. From there, we do some pruning and shaping, and let the idea(s) mature for a few weeks while we think them over. Sometimes we’ll have the guts of an entire tune taken care of in a single jam. That’s always awesome.

Andrew : There’s a particular impulsive feeling when we write songs. We try to jam twice a week normally and a lot of the time our songs will just come out of something that someone is randomly playing. I’d love to be able to say that we all go and ponce around and get divine inspiration from mother nature  or something else just as corny but sadly that just isn’t the case. Frankly, we just go with whatever comes in the moment and pour whatever experiences we’ve had from the last week into it.

Are you aiming for an emotion / feeling when you are writing each piece?

Neil : I guess we just jam and see what happens. I don’t think there’s any hidden deeper meaning for me anyway… well maybe there is… I suppose “A Lethal Black Ooze” is about how much I love my dog

Adam : Happiness. But not in the way you think. It’s more of a happiness with the song for ourselves, if we enjoy playing it and are happy with how it sounds we consider that a success. Sometimes a suggestion of a slow song or a high energy song comes out but rarely an emotion. I think we all of smile when we’re playing the songs. I do anyway.

Ben : Most of our tunes have a range of emotions

Michael : Not at all. It’s more the other way around for me, the emotion when writing is what gives the piece gravity in the first place. Then the emotion snowballs with the piece until both fuel eachother. It’s like, transcendic man.

Andrew : Um… I like to think that our songs do have stories inside the music, we spend a lot of time on dynamics and stuff to try and pave a way through the story. Emotions and stuff I figure will come with whatever the person makes of the song themselves but we generally name the songs to give the people listening an idea of what we were visualising in our heads when we wrote them…

We Arrive Alive are : Neil Dexter, Adam Faulkner, Ben Healy, Michael Naude & Andrew McGurk.

Cover Photo Credit : Niamh Forbes 

WE ARRIVE ALIVE - E.P. EXCLUSIVE - TRACK 3

W E   A R R I V E   A L I V E   //   Z O M B I E S 

Track 3   //   M Y   F R I E N D , T H E   B O M B M A K E R   E . P .

I N T E R V I E W   (  P A R T 3  )

Why did you decide being an instrumental group? Will it stay like that?

Neil : Well, I joined the band about a year after its conception, so I wasn’t there when the decision was initially made to be an “instrumental band”. During that time I was playing loads of chilled post-rock sort of stuff with my older brother Paddy and my mate Jeff in a band called Five Weeks in a Balloon. Then WAA released “Walls” and I absolutely loved it (not that I’d expect any less from these fine lads). Over a few jars and wanderings through the Dublin mountains they asked me (or maybe I asked) to play guitar for a gig the next week. That particular gig never actually happened but sure they’re stuck with me now. 

Adam : We got bored writing the pop music we started out with. I think the biggest part was Andy telling us he wasn’t happy with the sound of his voice and the lyrics he was writing. We had already written one instrumental song and running off that we started a new band with the same members and went in a completely different direction. We had also started discovering post-rock and other instrumental band like Explosions in the Sky, Enemies, Adebisi Shank, 65 days of static, Mogwai and the likes and all of them really made us want to start writing music like that. We also wanted to consider writing soundtracks for films, games, anything really, another challenge musically. Will it stay like that? Couldn’t tell you, Neil has started singing in some of our songs but not as a singer. He uses his voice as another instrument and adds a new sound to what we’re doing. I don’t think any of us are opposed to the idea of bringing singing back but none of us are chasing the idea either. 

Ben : Cuz none of us can sing very well.

Michael : I wouldn’t quite say it was a decision. More like none of us were really happy singing and writing lyrics. Though to be honest, I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit as singers/lyricists - except for me, I’m shocking at lyrics. We wrote a few tunes which happened not to have lyrics and we liked them that way, so one day one of us suggested we just do away with them entirely. I wouldn’t say they’re gone for good though. Neil has an exceptional voice, and he dabbles in poetry in his spare time, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled something out of the bag.

Andrew : Myself, Michael, Ben and Adam used to play in a pop band back at school with vocals and everything but as we left school and grew up we wanted to write better music. There’s only so long you can sing about the girl next door or some other shite like that before your mind explodes and you realise that you hate the girl next door let like her enough to write songs about her. When we started We Arrive Alive we did intend on having vocals but I think we got a bit discouraged about our voices from the days of being in our little pop band… Which hopefully will remain unnamed! Since Neil has joined the band though we’ve been trying to bring in some human elements to the songs, he has a lovely falsetto voice so we’ve had him doing ambient moans and wails and stuff of that sort live. I don’t think we want to limit ourselves to being a strict instrumental band but it’s where we’re comfortable for the time being so I reckon we’ll be here a little longer before anything drastically changes.

Is it difficult to work together ?

Neil : Yes. They’re all a shower of bastards

Adam : Rarely, there’s frustration every once in while and there have been explosions of anger the odd time. We’re all guilty off annoying each other, particularly if there’s a plan for practicing and someone is either late or isn’t bothered but every bad practice is always out weighed by the number of good ones.

Ben : Nope, i luv me boyiz

Michael : A hyperactive eccentric, a chilled out music buff, the obligatory classic rock heart-throb, a crazy foreigner, and a half-man-half-bird. Difficult: sometimes. Craic: always.

Andrew : Like every band, we have our outbursts and stubborn moments. We grew up together so we’re like brothers, and brothers bitch at times but it’s never forgotten that we all love each other. Just give the guy a hug and move on!. We’re a pretty sappy bunch so we do talk about our feelings a lot - non of this tough guy shite in this band. Except Neil, He’s a tough guy. 

If you had to put an ‘family order’ on the band who would you say ACTS like ‘oldest child’ ‘middle children’ and ‘youngest’ ? 

Neil : Well there’s Dadam, Mummy McGurk, Sexy teenage Ben, distant uncle Michael and Baby Neil

Adam : This changes every time we’re together but, Andy always the most amount of energy and is the easiest to distract which I think puts him as the youngest. Michael is far to smart for most of us to hold an educated conversation with so I think that makes him the oldest from that respect. I think myself, Neil and Ben are the most similar so i guess that puts us in the middle. A good question.

Ben : Adam - Oldest - organises the boring shit and hounds us for rehearsal space rent. Andrew - Youngest - gets away with murder. Neil, Michael and myself - somewhere in the middle

Michael : Adam takes the oldest child since he’s taken up the resposibility of the rent for the practice space, as well as organising most other official-like things most of us find too scary or too boring. Kind of ironic since he’s actually the youngest. Neil’s one down from Adam. He’s really mellow and lets things happen. He’s seen it all, really. Ben fits into the third slot because he’s also a bit wild when we get him going, but he does a better job at keeping it cool. I’d be just a little older than Andrew. I love a bit of mischief and it’s easy so set one of the other guys off with a bit of madness. Andrew gets to be the youngest - solely because he eats the most sweets and travels exclusively by jumping, sprinting, or imaginary car.

Andrew : Adam is the strict father. Michael is definitely the flamboyant mother. Ben is the good looking older brother and Neil is the charismatic middle brother. I can’t cook or anything so the lads are always making me nice foods. I guess that brings me down a peg or two. I’m the family pet.

WE ARRIVE ALIVE - E.P. EXCLUSIVE - TRACK 2

W E    A R R I V E    A L I V E   //  ’ A    L E T H A L    B L A C K    O O Z E ’  (Track 2) 

M Y  F R I E N D  ,  T H E  B O M B M A K E R    E.  P.

I N T E R V I E W (Part 2)

Being that your music sounds to be extremely emotive, can you explain to me the story behind ‘A Lethal Black Ooze’? 

Neil : This song was written pretty quickly I think. We started jamming something out and i was in the mood for playing something in a weird tuning so i began playing palm muted drop C# chords in a metal-y way. I remember getting a few filthys from Andy, but Ben was defo on the buzz. Michael was messing around on the keyboard as well with a borderline bogey effect but he got the DD-7 going and started playing some nice arpeggios. Thumbs up Michael. The song just naturally started formulating from then on. Ben plays a really nice melody towards the end of the song which repeats over and over getting more intense, which I think came out really well on the recording. He used an unholy amount of pedals for that one including a pulse-synth (which I would never trust myself with) so fair play Ben! Adam got a really cool rhythm going with the bass drum and rim shot on the snare which carries the song to the climax smashing cymbals in tandem with Ben’s guitar line. Andy’s always on form so there’s no need to praise his alternate lines ;) After writing this one I started writing a lot more in open tunings like in ‘You, Me, and the Wall’ and a Spies song we wrote the week after called “Distant Shorelines”. 

There’s definitely more freedom to fill the space with guitars in WAA so I think when you have 3 of them the 3rd one can afford to do something a bit weird (that’s how I justify it anyway, I think if I did this sort of lark in any other band I’d get the boot).

It probably sounds like this stuff was calculated but it was just what we started playing in the jam and it worked. I loved writing this one the most out of all the tracks on the ep, just cause it’s simple and effective… and I get to play in drop C#. Haven’t played this one live in a while so I look forward to doing it at the next show. Maybe we’ll play it in Kilkenny for the RSAG gig on the 21st… 

As for the name I remember Andy getting really excited about the song after writing it and saying “Can we call this one A Lethal Black Ooze?”. There was no objections, so it stuck!

Adam : I can’t. This song never had a story for me. I think the song came from a need to write something new and a bit different from what we had previously written. Neil had only recently joined the band when we wrote this and I think that was the biggest influence over why it came about. He was having fun trying weird turnings on the guitar and that opened it up in a new way. Michael ended up playing only keyboard on it which meant there was no bass and that made it very…lacking almost until we got into the studio with it and Liam helped us transform it into something huge and monstrous. My favorite part in it now is that high gritty synth line that comes in at the end which is actually Bens guitar line run through (and I quote Daniel Fox on this) a ‘Gimp load’ of effects. Not really a story.

Ben : A jam that went horribly wrong.  Andy came up with the name cuz he loved the visual it inspired

Michael : A Lethal Black Ooze first oozed its way into life when I was messing around with a cool keyboard effect at a jam and we all liked it. At the time, Andrew was going nuts with his new e-bow and he came up with a haunting line to go with mine. He’d also just bagged himself a Muk in Pokemon Red, so that’s where he came up with the name. The crunchy second part of the tune was the filthy child of Neil’s musical wallowing in the depths of drop-C. As deep and emo as the tune appears, the only real contributors to its forging were Pokemon and whichever nasty sounds we could strangle out of our instruments.

Andrew : I guess we ran into ALBO when Michael was messing around on the piano.. I could be wrong but I remember him coming up with that first line you hear at the start and I was messing around with an E bow at the time and then blah blah blah we came up with a song. I don’t know if it’s really about anything - The name A Lethal Black Ooze comes from when I managed to catch a Grimer in Pokemon Red, waited feckin ages for it as well.

Check Back Tomorrow for Track 3 :   Z O M B I E S … 

WE ARRIVE ALIVE - E.P. EXCLUSIVE

 W E  A R R I V E  A L I V E // M Y   F R I E N D , T H E   B O M B M A K E R

We Arrive Alive’s music is a constant surprise. Movement between slow / fast / run / fall / run. Their conversational instruments speak in constant battle or harmony, depending on how you care to interpret them. Their music is nothing short of filmic. With the release of their second E.P. ‘My Friend, The Bombmaker’ - the five strong group present another collection of songs that are, in equal measure, devastating and beautiful. Shapeshifters - they are anything you want them to be. 

The title track of the E.P. is called M Y  F R I E N D , T H E  B O M B M A K E R - and the perfect introduction to a witheringly good quartet of songs. We will be presenting a new track here each day for the rest of the week. Enjoy.

We Arrive Alive are : Neil Dexter, Adam Faulkner, Ben Healy, Michael Naude & Andrew McGurk.

Cover Photo Credit : Niamh Forbes 

I N T E R V I E W  w i t h  W E   A R R I V E   A L I V E   (part 1)

What is the meaning behind the name ‘We Arrive Alive’?

Neil : No idea ask Andy.

Adam : I don’t believe there is one. We were having a hard time choosing a new name    and this was the only one that most of us liked.

Ben : The initial plan was to form a road-safety-jingles-band

Michael : It was originally the final line in a piece of verse Andrew wrote to be spoken during the quiet interlude during our song “Walls”. In the end we scrapped the verse but liked the phrase “We Arrive Alive”, and we’d been juggling abour four different names so it was an easy way to just pick one. 

Andrew : Someone’s going to mention a road safety sign on this one. Our first song “Walls” initially had a really faint, underlying poem in it during one of the more chilled out parts of the song. I don’t know if the lads will remember this or not and sadly I can’t remember the other lines of the poem now but the last line of it before a giant dynamic jump was “…we arrive alive” - So that’s where the name came from anyway…

What is the meaning behind the name ‘My Friend the Bombmaker’ for the EP?

Neil : Let’s just say Michael reads a lot of Stephen Leather…

Adam : t’s the same as the first song on the EP and I think we chose that because we felt is was right. The meaning behind that name came from the way it was put together. It was originally called A-Bomb (as in atomic) because we had these two song ideas  that we couldn’t really expand but we wanted a new song for a gig that was coming up so we rammed the two ideas together to have a song and, by sheer luck, it worked!

Ben : it felt right to name the EP after My Friend the Bombmaker as we felt it was such a ‘tour de force’

Michael : The name was actually intended for the title track, not the EP itself. I came up with it because I like the weirdness of the idea. “My Friend the ____ ” seems to me like the title to a children’s book, so it’s a bit of a shock when the next word is so violent. We then arranged the tunes to tell a story, if you like, wherein the bombmaker is introduced and unleashed his fury, ooze and flames consume the place, followed by zombies and nuclear fallout and whatnot, and then everything fades to a desolate peace. Fill in the details however you like.

Andrew : Michael came up with the name so i’m not actually sure what he had in mind but I personally think it’s just a great visual.

What is currently your favorite Album / Song?

Neil : Santana – Abraxas

Adam : My first proper album for sure, Live and Dangerous by Thin Lizzy. My favourite song changes weekly, at the moment it’s somewhere between Wasting time by Booka Shade, Recurring by Bonobo and Alter Ego by Tame Impala

Ben : In Utero - Nirvana

Michael : Album: Radiohead - Hail to the Theif

Song: Explosions in the Sky - Catasrophe and the Cure

Andrew : At the moment i’m listening to loads of In Utero by Nirvana, Very Ape is great for getting energy to wake up in the mornings. Such a badass tune. 

CHECK BACK TOMORROW FOR TRACK TWO ‘DACHAU’…