SinSin - Sparklers and Chord Bombs
Author: Richard Thorne
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There’s talk of a new Motocade album waiting in the wings, for a time when the stars and the band members re-align, but in the meantime the band’s guitarist Geordie McCallum has slipped out his own recording entitled ‘Layers’, under the band name of SinSin. He talked with Richard Thorne about the EP’s decidedly low rent and drawn out recording process, video making frustrations and good fortune, and about finally getting his own band together.
Production credits inside the atmospherically bleached out cardboard cover of SinSin’s debut EP ‘Layers’ are pretty thin – ‘All tracks written and recorded by Geordie McCallum… mastered by Dale Cotton’. The only other (actually longest) line of credit acknowledges that Emma Rosenberg wrote and sang the lyrics to track two, the idiomatically-named, Sorry But I’m Falling Down Again.
Being the guitarist in Motocade for the last five years (including two albums and three EPs), hasn’t exactly made Geordie McCallum a musical household name. Media’s coverage of Motocade has typically found it hard to see past the charisma and songwriting genius of frontman Eden Mulholland, currently working in Australia.
It doesn’t take The Mentalist to figure that the genesis of SinSin probably lays right there, and sure enough McCallum says there has previously been discussion within Motocade about him co-writing, “… but when it came down to it, it didn’t actually happen for some reason.”
Having kicked off his solo project with a performance at Camp A Low Hum in early 2009 (he was wearing a bunny suit and Matt Swain, the drummer from OdESSA joined him on stage), McCallum says he’s had about five incarnations of a band – mostly under the name Geordie. But all, “for whatever reason”, haven’t worked out.
“Commitment-wise, I think has been the problem. Most of the time I’ve got artists from other bands to help and said, ‘Let’s just do this one gig and see how it goes,’ and then it hasn’t gone any further!”
Having kicked off his solo project with a performance at Camp A Low Hum in early 2009 (he was wearing a bunny suit and Matt Swain, the drummer from OdESSA joined him on stage), McCallum says he’s had about five incarnations of a band – mostly under the name Geordie. But all, “for whatever reason”, haven’t worked out.
“Commitment-wise, I think has been the problem. Most of the time I’ve got artists from other bands to help and said, ‘Let’s just do this one gig and see how it goes,’ and then it hasn’t gone any further!”
The EP release’s publicity sheet has it that ‘Layers’ came together in the last 18 months. It also rather cleverly paints SinSin as being a trio with McCallum on guitar, keyboardist Harry Champion and drummer Hamish (H.) Walker – which is at least partly true. If you get to see SinSin play live in the coming months (and on the strength of this EP you should), that will likely be what you get. McCallum is justifiably excited about having this band, but as we talk they have been rehearsing together for only three months, and their future togetherness is already in jeopardy, with Walker due shortly to tour Europe with his established main band Kerretta.
McCallum’s fizzing to now have the versatile up-and-comer Champion (who until recently was playing keys and other electronics with Zowie) and the experienced Walker on board, and short of bagging any previous playing partners, has high praise for both.
“Harry was able to just listen to the EP basically and come back, with no direction needed, with all the parts sorted – three keyboards, Ableton Live and a mixing desk, and it was all going. He’s a freak! Having worked with so many others and having to go laboriously through the teaching process with them, that was just awesome.”
“Harry was able to just listen to the EP basically and come back, with no direction needed, with all the parts sorted – three keyboards, Ableton Live and a mixing desk, and it was all going. He’s a freak! Having worked with so many others and having to go laboriously through the teaching process with them, that was just awesome.”
Debut EPs are often used to showcase a new band’s versatility, and while this recording has had nothing to do with the band (or vice versa) the five tracks here are certainly diverse. Guitar- and piano-based instrumentals sandwich three quite differing lyrical tracks that atmospherically drift, trip or drive through space. Apart from the Rosenberg’s vocal parts, McCallum wrote, played and recorded all the EP himself, saying that was just the way he found it easiest to do it. Working as a guitar tutor at the time for Auckland’s School of Rock, his teaching room became his recording room after the students left.
There are a variety of reasons why it has taken him three years to complete this five-track EP, but working on his own and using rumpty recording tools in a non-studio certainly goes a long way to explaining it. What it doesn’t explain so well is just how he ended up with such an appealing and good sounding record.
“It’s a bit embarrassing, this album, how it was recorded. Gareth Moore, my boss at the Auckland School of Rock, gave me a mic that had fallen out of a truck – and this whole EP was recorded with that microphone and one other. I think the room there was really good, it was small and must have reflected the sound a lot. The drums would have that mic on the kick, and one other over the top. Except for Layers, that’s been the latest track, and by then I‘d bought a tube mic and an Apogee pre-amp and got a bit more flash.”
The recording was via a soundcard onto a PC laptop running Logic 5.
“It actually had this bizarre latency that meant I had to guess how far to drag the track back in order to hear any take that I wanted to check. I just couldn’t have recorded other people – you can imagine how difficult that would have been. ”
“That set up’s now all gone,” he hastily adds to assure that he has moved on from those days.
He did record Emma Rosenburg there, and says despite having a great voice, she was so shy she wouldn’t have him in the room while she was singing. She’s also told him that her lyrics to Sorry But I’m Falling Down Again have no real meaning, but McCallum confesses that at the time they were partying quite a lot, and on occasion literally falling down stairs.
“What I took out of it was that… sometimes when you are going out you should have a set of sorry cards and give them out to people first, then you won’t feel guilty it in the morning! (Like I say, this is three years ago now, so… I definitely don’t act like that anymore!)”
“What I took out of it was that… sometimes when you are going out you should have a set of sorry cards and give them out to people first, then you won’t feel guilty it in the morning! (Like I say, this is three years ago now, so… I definitely don’t act like that anymore!)”
His own songwriting clearly begins with instrumentation, lyrics being “… a kind of second thought”.
“I really tried to steer clear of obvious clichés and tried to keep the next lyric as a bit of a guess, rather than being obvious, which irritates me.”
“I really tried to steer clear of obvious clichés and tried to keep the next lyric as a bit of a guess, rather than being obvious, which irritates me.”
The title of the EP and track one, the almost industrial instrumental Layers, is self-explanatory for any self/home-recorded musician.
“What I enjoy about writing music is doing the layering – that’s how music is constructed by so many musicians and the end product after that process is a really good feeling. I tackle each song differently, but having the core of it as something that sounds really good and is recorded well is key for me. The guitar at the beginning was all I had – from ages ago. When my poppa passed away I grabbed his old Technics keyboard and put a Big Muff on it and that’s the sound of the melody line that runs through it. It was really cool to get that piece of equipment involved.”
“What I enjoy about writing music is doing the layering – that’s how music is constructed by so many musicians and the end product after that process is a really good feeling. I tackle each song differently, but having the core of it as something that sounds really good and is recorded well is key for me. The guitar at the beginning was all I had – from ages ago. When my poppa passed away I grabbed his old Technics keyboard and put a Big Muff on it and that’s the sound of the melody line that runs through it. It was really cool to get that piece of equipment involved.”
Speaking of quirky instrument choices, mostly-instrumental Aussie trio the Dirty Three are a considerable influence, both in the creative choice of sounds and in the musical journey-taking.
“They are easily able to take you somewhere with their songs, and that’s something I tried to do with this recording.”
“They are easily able to take you somewhere with their songs, and that’s something I tried to do with this recording.”
Making his own music videos is something else he’s tried, and the EP comes with two videos included.
“The one for Layers is footage from my aunty’s wedding. My dad is in the video as well. He’s since passed away, so it’s really cool to see footage of him, and them all, dancing around. My uncle was doing peace keeping for NZ and after the wedding took the Super 8 camera with him and finished off the reel of film over there. I didn’t intentionally do it but it looks like he went to war and dies, but she was happy with me putting it out in that sense cos it gave a bit more drama to the track.”
The grainy, flickery, sun- and time-bleached footage hasn’t been further tampered with – and has also been used for the EP’s cover art.
“It’s such a gift, I didn’t have to do anything. I’m really lucky I guess.”
“The one for Layers is footage from my aunty’s wedding. My dad is in the video as well. He’s since passed away, so it’s really cool to see footage of him, and them all, dancing around. My uncle was doing peace keeping for NZ and after the wedding took the Super 8 camera with him and finished off the reel of film over there. I didn’t intentionally do it but it looks like he went to war and dies, but she was happy with me putting it out in that sense cos it gave a bit more drama to the track.”
The grainy, flickery, sun- and time-bleached footage hasn’t been further tampered with – and has also been used for the EP’s cover art.
“It’s such a gift, I didn’t have to do anything. I’m really lucky I guess.”
The other video, for the closing piano instrumental Responding To Drama was an unexpectedly epic undertaking.
“My first solo video clip. I wanted to produce a video with a piano in it, cos a friend had one in his backyard and it was just beautiful. It was all coming to bits, the keys were all lifting up and it looked amazing. I had that piano track on there and thought it would be perfect for it. But that ended up being a three month break-the-bank kind of affair.
“I went through two pianos, one fell off a trailer in Rotorua when I had the camera op and director [Sam Handley], a boat [paddle steamer actually] booked and everything. Luckily Sam’s parents put it back together for me in about three hours.”
“My first solo video clip. I wanted to produce a video with a piano in it, cos a friend had one in his backyard and it was just beautiful. It was all coming to bits, the keys were all lifting up and it looked amazing. I had that piano track on there and thought it would be perfect for it. But that ended up being a three month break-the-bank kind of affair.
“I went through two pianos, one fell off a trailer in Rotorua when I had the camera op and director [Sam Handley], a boat [paddle steamer actually] booked and everything. Luckily Sam’s parents put it back together for me in about three hours.”
Now 31, Geordie McCallum is perhaps unlikely to ever become a prolific songwriter or recording artist, but you can tell he now at least has the bit between his teeth. After playing live to air on bFM’s Freak The Sheep show recently he says the first comment was that it ‘… sounds just like The National’
“That’s a good comment! They don’t sound anything like this [CD], but maybe live that’s what it’s going to sound like.”
Whether like The National, the Dirty Three or like SinSin, plan for an intriguing and worthwhile excursion.
“That’s a good comment! They don’t sound anything like this [CD], but maybe live that’s what it’s going to sound like.”
Whether like The National, the Dirty Three or like SinSin, plan for an intriguing and worthwhile excursion.
