ARTIST: Architecture In Helsinki
TITLE: Places Like This
LABEL: Cooperative Music / Polyvinyl
GENRE: Indie
TIME: 31:41 min
SIZE: 40,5 MB
RIP DATE: May-28-2007
RELEASE DATE: Sep-07-2007
WEBSITE: n/a
Track List:
01. Red Turned White 02:47
02. Heart It Races 03:15
03. Hold Music 03:54
04. Feather In A Baseball Cap 02:28
05. Underwater 03:31
06. Like It Ar Not 03:02
07. Debbie 02:54
08. Lazy (Lazy) 02:56
09. Nothing's Wrong 03:24
10. The Same Old Innocence 03:30
Release Notes:
"We tend to go to seed pretty quickly, so we have
some polishing up to do," reports Architecture in
Helsinki multi-instrumentalist James Cecil, calling
from a break in the Melbourne six-piece's rehearsal
schedule. The group are a day away from heading to
Brisbane, where tonight they start a brief east
coast tour to mark the release of their new single,
'Heart It Races'.
"We're excited, and we're also pretty nervous to see
how people receive us," notes Cecil. "We haven't
really stopped in the last two years, but it's been
a long time since we played here. We hope people
still like us."
The initial indication will come from reaction to
'Heart It Races', the first single from AIH's new
album Places Like This, which will be released in
August. A deceptively complex mix of sunshine
synths, solemn tribal backing vocals and indie
chants, it sums up the band's collective musical
preferences.
"As far as the listening habits of the touring band
go we pretty much listen to world music and hip-hop
- we don't listen to rock because we grew up with
it," notes Cecil. "Now we're leaning towards a
rhythm-orientated approach, which just opens up a
whole new world of music. 'Heart It Races' is rhythm
and percussion-orientated - it even has a bit of a
reggaeton feel to it."
Places Like This was recorded at the close of 2006,
when the band came off a five week tour of North
America with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Having road
tested almost the entire album, they went straight
into Brooklyn's Stay Gold Studios, the preserve of
TV On The Radio's Dave Sitek, to cut an album with
engineer Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The
Radio).
"We hit it off massively and recorded the bulk of
the album in 10 days," recalls Cecil, who'd
engineered AIH's previous two albums at his own
Supermelodyworld studio in suburban Melbourne. "It
was the first time that we'd had someone else
engineer for us and it meant we could really
concentrate on the playing and the production."
"[Places Like This] is pretty chaotic, although it
is more focused than the last one. We're no longer
just jumping from one style to another within the
songs," he adds. "We're definitely more focused now,
just from time together and there being less people
in the band. We're concentrating on playing more and
really getting people to move, which is difficult to
do."
With support from Muscles and Soft Tigers, there are
only three dates in this run, although there will be
more when the album is released, and by the end of
next week the band will be again be overseas,
playing another six weeks of shows across Britain,
continental Europe and America. By the time they
finish up at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles
on Thursday 19 June it will be another step up for
Architecture In Helsinki.
"It's growing internationally, but it's still a real
struggle," Cecil concedes. "We're not cruising
around on motorbikes with a semi-trailer with our
name emblazoned on the side delivering all our gear
to each show. Everything we make gets put back into
the band and we're just trying to take advantage of
the opportunities that have been created for us."