12. Sound Of YellBrocken Spectre
Stevie [Jones] was 12, I was 15, we used to skate together. I think he played bass in my first ever band. [They later played together in El Hombre Trajeado and Jones appears on ‘Sandwalks’ from Thirteen Lost & Found.] Sound Of Yell’s been a long time coming. Stevie’s played on a lot of other people’s records, and although he has a lot of other people involved with this one, this is his thing. Even with El Hombre Trajeado, that was always a democracy.
Most of me is really happy and I’m really proud of Stevie for making this album, because it’s a beautiful, strange record. But then there’s a dick-ish part of me that’s like, fuck, I need to work harder [laughs]. It’s all surprising to me. It sounds like him, but I’ve never, ever heard him playing anything like this before.
It’s such a hard record to describe. It’s traditional instrumentation, but it plays with tone in a very interesting way, and it’s a deliberately very full record – there’s not much space on it – but everything’s considered. I mean, I’ve tried to take it apart, and that way madness lies. Everything has a very specific purpose, down to the lengths of reverbs – it’s very precise but very organic sounding, and I just don’t know how he did it. I don’t know how he made this record without going absolutely insane.
Even though we’ve known each other, and been making music together, for all of our adult lives, I heard this and I was like, "Where the fuck have you been hiding away doing this? I thought I knew you."
