The Ghosts of Sola Rosa

Beginning his musical career as part of guitar band Cicada, Andrew Spraggon re-invented himself as Sola Rosa four years ago.  His second album 'Haunted out-Takes' is due out in July.

Spraggon self-released the first two Sola Rosa EPs, 'Starter For Four' and 'Entrance To Skyway' before becoming the first, and to date the only, local electronic artist to sign directly to a major label when he joined Festival Mushroom Records. FMR released the debut Sola Rosa album, 'Solarized' in 2001, selling a healthy 5000-odd copies.

Spraggon has adopted a looser, more organic approach for 'Haunted Out-Takes', which he recorded in his Pt Chevalier home studio.

"I've been quantising everything a lot less, not putting everything in order so much," he says. "I've been a lot lazier and slacker. I wanted it to sound emptier and not so regimented and tight. That's the way that things feel when you've got a live band, they feel slacker. A classic example would be P Diddy's Bad Boys For Life which is such a slack, lazy, weird loop. I tried to do a lot more of that kind of stuff with the beats. It's a hip hop pot smoking thing."

Since releasing 'Solarized' Spraggon has listened to more hip hop and R&B than the quirky downbeat electronica which inspired his debut. "I don't know what electronic music is anymore," he admits. "I don't even buy anything electronic nowadays. I've been buying so much hip hop because there's so much good hip-hop coming out. You don't really hear much of what people like Howie B and David Holmes - people who I respected and who moulded my sound (on 'Solarized'), are doing anymore. I listen to Doctor Dre, Timbaland and the Neptunes and, to me, that's electronic music anyway. I've never really bought a lot of techno and house."

'Haunted Out-Takes' he says, is a warmer, more organic album.

"I just wanted to empty the record out more and that's what I've done. I've made tracks and then gone through them and taken out any unnecessary sound effects that are just sitting there, not really doing much. I tried to give the music more room to breathe. Producers like Timbaland and Dr Dre introduced me to that. Just making really good strings, drums and bass and making them work the groove. I spent a lot of time working on the drums."

Spraggon recently incorporated a pair of turntables into his musical set-up.

"I bought two 1200s and there's heaps more turntable experimentation and dropping samples into songs on this record. I'd find some really weird samples and loops that I wouldn't normally pick out of the library or whatever. And because you're playing a record along with the track you're writing, if you hear something good, you can keep playing that particular sample over and over."

Spraggon also worked with a number of live musicians on 'Haunted Out-Takes'. Brassouls' Kingsley Melhuish contributes trumpet to Sleepwalker, Pluto's Mike Hall plays bass on Terrorgosa and Andy 'Submariner' Morton plays moog and adds some extra beats to Sugar Lines, which also features Don McGlashan on euphonium.

"I came to work with Don through Tom Miskin, who was working at The Lab at the time," says Spraggon. "I originally tried to record the part with Kingsley on trumpet but then realised that trumpet was the wrong instrument for the job. Tom suggested euphonium, which turned out to be perfect for that particular part. Don came in, whacked it down like a true professional and was a bloody nice guy to boot."

'Solarized' was released in Australia and Spraggon also sold several of the album's tracks to international compilations. FMR will release 'Haunted Out-Takes' in Australia later this year but Spraggon remains free to license individual tracks and indeed the album itself to other labels in territories like Britain.

"If it's a strong enough album, hopefully someone will pick up on it. But then again, not many copies of 'Solarized' are out there in the world. I didn't send out heaps of CDs to people because you get a 5-10% response rate. I'd like to do something in Australia with the band this time but it costs more to get everybody over there."

Rather than DJ-ing, Spraggon will be performing 'Haunted Out-Takes' tracks live with a band that includes Ned Ngatae (gat/hand percussion/ scratches), drummer Willy Scott and John Highsted on percussion.

"I can see from the people I'm playing with what could happen and people do expect that nowadays. I realised after doing 'Solarized''s release party that I'd undersold people. All I'd ever done was DJ with a few effects and samples so I continued doing that. People turned up and they felt a bit ripped off and fair enough.

"All I wanted to do (with 'Solarized') was to get tracks released on compilations overseas and then people would go 'that's cool', get in touch with me and check out the album. Eventually somebody would release my stuff in different territories like the States and the UK. It was cool having good labels like Guidance, Stereo Deluxe and Different Drummer put my tracks on their compilations. Hopefully with this album, a bit more of that will happen, and I'd like to travel more."