written by Chris Familton

The Black Ryder have been riding a wave of momentum since the release of their debut album Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride late last year. It has seen them receiving plaudits from mainstream and underground media alongside some coveted support slots with international acts like The Raveonettes and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Recently they signed to US label Mexican Summer and are about to embark on a national support tour with The Cult. We chatted to Scott Von Ryper about the ride so far…

The last couple of months have been pretty exciting for you guys with the new album and label signings, did you expect the level attention the album’s received?

No I always thought it would go a bit under the radar, particularly at home. I was pleasantly surprised when it started to get the attention it did – being put in Rolling Stone’s albums of 2009, things like that. I never expected that kind of awareness of the album.

Have you received much radio support for the album?

I think that FBi has been supporting it and I imagine that some other community stations have been as well. I don’t think it has received any airplay at all on TripleJ so I guess thats another reason why we are quite happy with the attention as its happened without any airplay at all, its really been a word of mouth thing.

There seems to be a strong community around shoegaze/psych/drone stuff in Sydney at the moment…

Yeah there is and we’ve definitely noticed the change. Comparing a few years before The Black Ryder to where we are now there are definitely a few more bands that are playing music that we are into and theres a community around it that didn’t exist before. We’ve had two members of The Laurels playing in our band at different times and its funny how some bands completely go under the radar for them and other bands they’ve discovered by digging around and researching certain things that happened in the 90s and when they were too young to experience it the first time. They’ve taken those influences and formed their own sound around it.

In terms of musical influences growing up, what bands led you to make the specific music you are creating?

I’m a big fan of Ride, The Church and Brian Jonestown Massacre. We’re both big fans of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. We are into a lot of other things though, what you’d call dark country music and I think that comes out in our music as well. I don’t think you can just label The Black Ryder as a shoegaze band or a psychedelic band, there’s quite a bit of variance on the album which is probably one of the reasons we are so proud of it. That’s also one of the reasons why it has got some attention because its doing something different, even though its carrying on from a certain theme. We are both fans of My Bloody Valentine, particularly the Loveless album and there’s a lot of production on that I found incredibly intriguing when it came out and I’m sure a lot of it translated into some of the production we were doing along with some of the Ride sound.

Sonically the album sounds fantastic, it is big but it isn’t loud and brash if you know what I mean. Did you have that specific sound in mind when you were first writing the songs?

No, not at all. The process was that we were kind of writing it as we were recording it. We didn’t realise it at the time we were recording an album, we thought we were recording some demos of something and we just used the recording process to write. At some point we realised we weren’t going to re-record it and we just continued to add more and more on top of it and work on the production of it more. I spent a lot of time mixing it as well, some of those mixes went on for over a year. I probably heard some of those songs in the thousands before they were released. We worked on them for a bit and then left them for a month or two and then came back to them with fresh ears or possibly with another person who might show some interest on playing on it and you get back into it and sometimes you change the direction of it or you just keep add layers. It is a very layered and textured production and I’m sure that the time we spent on it is because of that. It is hard when you have your own studio to not fiddle with it and its hard to know when to stop. People would say very early on that it was finished and then you continue working on it for another 6 months. We kept thinking it needed to sound better or different, it was always niggling at us.

Would you use the same process next time?

The process was partly due to our circumstances. We didn’t have any money or a label. We thought early on that we’d hand it over to someone else in a big studio to mix it. It just never eventuated. If circumstances were different we might change the process but I’d be a bit concerned that the Black Ryder sound we created is because of the way we did it. It would be a nervous experience to hand over the reins to someone else. It could be great but it could suck if we move away form the unique sound we’ve created.

Until I read your bio I hadn’t realised the extent that the band is a collective of sorts, revolving around the two of you. Was that always the intention?

It was never the intention on the recording. We started the recording project and then thought at some point we thought we’d put a band together and tour it overseas. It was always going to be a band of people from other bands. It was never going to be a full time thing. I guess we’re involved in a network of other musicians we wanted them to play with us. It just evolved from there. People would just be staying at the house or hear something and want to play on it. We never really went out and approached people and asked them to lay down tracks on it. A lot of it at the house or in the case of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club the drummer did some parts in NY before she was in BRMC and sent that stuff over. Peter did some stuff when they were in the studio recording one of their albums and sent that through. It was really easy being able to video skype and talk about a track someone sent over 5 mins ago form the other side of the world.

How much of the other musicians own style and personality did you want on the record versus a specific sound you were after?

We wanted people to add their flavour. If they were going to play on the album it was because we enjoy what they do. Ricky Maymi (BJM) probably contributed the most to the album because he was staying with us at the time. I just love his style and he always came up with something that worked on it. That is how it added colour I think. Because we were working on it ourselves we never had that extra pair of fresh ears to come in and make comments or do something. That was nice to have people listening to tracks and coming up with something you hadn’t thought of.

Was it easy to translate the songs to the stage with a different live line-up to the record?

It was a bit daunting to think about how we were going to translate something live that had 12 guitar tracks on the record. We did start with 3 guitars and now we’ve got 2. When we started playing live Aimee and I were fresh guitarists, we’d only really started playing. Over time we’ve been able to work on that and using lop pedals and other stuff we are able to create more texture than we could in the early days. It just seemed to work. The first time we played live was in Melbourne supporting BRMC, a pretty amazing first gig in front of 1000 people at the Hi Fi Bar, I don’t think they even knew that until he said it was a good show and I told him it was our first show.

Most of the larger support shows you have done have been with like-minded bands and audiences who appreciate your the type of music you play. What are you expecting from the Cult shows?

I think it will be interesting. There is a harder element to to what we do as well. I’m not concerned that we’ll be facing an angry mob or anything. I really think it’ll be a good blend of people that will pick up on what we are doing and enjoy it. I was probably a bigger fan earlier on of Electric than their Love album. I always thought Electric was the goth version of Back In Black. There are definitely going to be the rock vs goth parts of the crowd and different ages and fashion tastes in the audience.

Signing to Mexican Summer must be exciting, what plans have you got for touring and releasing the album overseas?

The album is going to be released over there pretty soon. We are just wrapping up some of the business stuff with them. It’ll probably be released on vinyl over there which we are really excited about. They tend to do that – vinyl with a digital download. They have some great bands on their roster so we’re really stoked to be joining them. They have a great setup with a warehouse/office space in Brooklyn with a studio in there for their bands to use free of charge plus a record store downstairs.

From the album artwork to the video and your press photos there is a strong visual look, does that come from the two of you or do you work with other people to bring that together?

Michael Spiccia [director] approached us early on and wanted to do a film clip with us but we politely declined as we didn’t have any money. We kept the relationship going for a year or two until we could do this film clip for Sweet Come Down which we are really proud of. I couldn’t imagine it being any more perfect. He also worked with Aimee on the artwork with a photographer friend of his and put it all together. It’s really a collaboration between Michael’s genius brain and ideas from Aimee and I.

Plans for the rest of the year?

We just had to write and record another song for the album which is being released in Japan shortly. There’s a tradition over there that you have to include bonus tracks so we had to go back into the studio which was a bit weird because I’d been living in there for so long and then had such a break. It would make sense that we’d be recording some new stuff toward the end of the year. After The Cult shows maybe we’ll do some of our own shows here and then try and get overseas and tour there and play around the album releases.

An edited version of this interview first appeared in The Brag.