Oklahoma-based band Colourmusic have made a huge impact with their latest record My ______ Is Pink and are currently part way through a tour of the UK promoting it. It’s undoubtedly one of my album’s of the year and a fascinating follow up to their debut LP f, monday, orange, february, venus, lunatic, 1 or 13.
I fired a few questions over to Nick Turner and Ryan Hendrix of the band…
GIITTV: Hello, how are you today?
RYAN: Super tired, just did a super walk around London. Looking for stuff to do before the show tonight.
GIITTV: What’s the reaction to My _____ Is Pink been like for you? It’s a very different record to f Monday…
RYAN: I’d say those who get it seem to love it. Not everyone gets it and I expected that. I find the record to be very subconscious and that requires a certain type of listener who is attracted to the abyss like we are.
GIITTV: f Monday… came together out of the Red and Yellow eps, did that make the process of starting My ______ Is Pink particularly different, in so much as, were you approaching it as an entire LP?
RYAN: We actually did a rough version of this record before we were even a band. We skipped a lot of this material at first because we were attracted to writing joyful music. Which became the two eps then the orange album. I can say we didn’t nail the joy thing because our orange album was met with a pretty big yawn in the states, but we did predate the joy movement because that’s the biggest thing in music these days. It’s weird because we kind of burnt ourselves out on that emotion and we went back to the direction that started the band, which became pink.
GIITTV: Beyond being influenced, as you say, by Issac Newton’s Theory of Colour and Sound, how does that relate to your song-writing process? How does one take a colour and make music?!
RYAN: Well that’s an old question and many people have tried to answer that with an objective answer such as “red is e major”. I feel that music and color have a real relationship, but it’s unclear and the bond is subconscious. I wanted the Colour/music process to break us down so we operated on a very primitive level emotionally and we could create music without the influence of culture. We haven’t totally succeeded but each album gets closer to our band goal.
GIITTV: What other musical acts, or even films/books/art/theatre/household objects, have had an influence on this record or your musical tastes in general?
NICK: For me Francis Bacon is a great influence on our more recent music.
RYAN: For me, films have been very influential to the song writing. We now live in the future, but music today seems very reflexive, very conscious of recreating influences and sounds of the past. So I watch a lot of sci fi and contemplate future musics.
GIITTV: A question for Nick, with the final track Whitby Bay and your film Dawn To Dusk, you clearly love your York home, how does that environment compare to where the band formed in Oklahoma? And what influences do you feel you’ve brought over and vice versa?
NICK: There are major similarities and differences between Yorkshire and Oklahoma in my mind having spent a lot of time in both places.
The similarities are that both environments are rural and give you a sense of having lots of time to be free and creative. I always say to people in the US that Yorkshire is the Oklahoma of England. Both are quite ignored and out of the way for the country as a whole and in general both have the friendliest down to earth people.
They are quite different landscape-wise; Oklahoma is very flat and prarie-like with big wide open spaces whereas Yorkshire, particularly the North York Moors where I grew up has these lovely undulating hills, valleys and coastline which I attempt to pay tribute to in my film Dawn to Dusk. Strangely enough, Ryan and I first bonded over our love for electronic music, particulary the Warp Records artists from the mid 90s. This was the thing that first brought us together to make music but we have very different approaches to writing music which perhaps keeps the working relationship fresh and often bumpy.
GIITTV: Dawn To Dusk talks about the relationship between the land and the artist, is that something that resonates with Colourmusic?
NICK: I think we are all products of our environment, physically and culturally. Landscape always plays a part in my visualisation of music and one thing we were discussing during the making of pink was bringing the movement of the ocean into our songs because of its continuous ebbing and flowing nature. Also for its sexual symbolism. So we tried to copy the sound of the ocean in a lot of our sounds during the whole album, which people may or may not notice. Adding a sound recording of Whitby harbour (which I had recorded for use in the film Dawn to Dusk) to the album felt really nice to round off the album.
GIITTV: There was something of a wait for your first LP, which came out in 2008 in America, we never got it over here in the UK, having the Yes! EP instead a year later in 2009, which is when you were recording My _____ Is Pink, is it frustrating having to live with a record for so long, once it’s recorded do you want to get it out there and move on or do the songs evolve beyond the record? How far ahead are you with the next record as a result of this kind of drawn out process?
RYAN: Yes it’s frustrating, and it can make the process of releasing an album feel like being stuck in a time frame you’ve moved past and really burn you out on playing the songs live. But so far with pink we are still finding them live and I enjoy our live show.
GIITTV: If each band member were a colour what colour would they be?
RYAN: Probably an ugly colour.
GIITTV: What are your plans for 2012, aside from avoiding the impending Mayan apocalypse?
RYAN: Finish the purple album and then start over completely.
A huge thanks to Colourmusic for taking time out to answer those questions, My ______ Is Pink is available to buy now, and you can check out the band’s brilliant live show at the following dates:
26-Nov DUBLIN Crawdaddy
28-Nov SHEFFIELD The Harley
29-Nov NOTTINGHAM The Bodega Social Club
30-Nov LONDON Koko Lucky 13 with The Go! Team, Dutch Uncles, Field Music
(Anyone who buys a ticket for the Koko London show from THIS LINK receives an exclusive 13 track Memphis Industries compilation download!)
