Elephant Gun story / interview
A band who have enjoyed a fairly high popularity since the release of their debut ep, which is way back in 1998, receiving some great press & even a pretty decent selection of radio airplay. In the time since that release, the band have been hard at work, no doubt doing a heap of live shows, but also doing some preparation of new material for their debut album, which is soon to be released.
I was able to catch up with Elephant Gun bassist Sean Dennis. Sean's an exceptionally pleasant guy who is as much into the music as anyone I've spoken to in recent times, obviously dedicated to the new album, called Albino & who is as passionate about other issues like fair airplay & others as he is about the band's own music.
First off, we spoke about the recording process for the album, which was apparently completed in a pretty quick time.
"Yeah,
I guess you could say done in short order, 10 days. Our debut ep
actually took longer than that. We worked out of Sing Sing Studios
& we had a producer who helped us no end, by helping us reign
ourselves in. You know what I mean, like cutting off that 4 minute
Zeppelin-ish outro."
I'd noticed the style of the new album was somewhat different from the music found on the album & asked what had changed with the band.
"Nothing's really changed.... I guess you could say it's... evolution, for want of a better word for it. I really think our music has changed, though not greatly. We're definitely better songwriters than we were. People that come to see us definitely seem to like what they hear & we want to make sure they enjoy what we put out on record as well."
With discussion of people listening, I thought it was a good time to introduce the topic of airplay.
"We've had some play from Triple J & of course community radio has been great as well. We're hoping that the little bit of style change will help us get some airplay on commercial stations like Triple M as well, you know to sort of broaden the range of people we're able to get out to. I'm hoping that stations like Triple M will take the time to listen to new music & not so established bands. That's one of the reasons I don't listen to Triple M much, because they just don't play a wide enough variety of music."
We moved onto the subject of online exploration & what the band have done as far as a website is concerned.
"Well, I don't have a computer myself, but I'm living with my parents at the moment, so the whole setup is there at home. There's a small corner of the Metalshop site that we're using, but we definitely want to get out & do something bigger & get our own site name. We want to provide more info for our fans & I guess let people download some music as well."
Lastly, we returned to the album & discussed what the band are looking at doing next.
"Well, we're hoping that the album goes well & we sell some more copies, which will help us get a bigger budget for our next album. We were a bit limited by the budget we had this time, but it certainly helped us with getting a sound which we reckon is a bit more indicative of our live sound, in fact it's pretty close, hardly any overdubs or effects. So I guess that's what we're looking at doing for the next one anyway."
Check out Elephant Gun's new album Albino, out soon through Roadrunner.
