More about: Planet
'It’s been a long time coming'
Being left in limbo with numerous tour postponements and cancellations back in early 2020 following the release of EP Maybe Someday, Sydney-based shoegazers PLANET decided to reflect on past works and what lay ahead for the band. Going onto sign for Modern Sky records, the time now seemed right to collate tracks new and old and finally put together their debut record Information Overload. Frontman Matty Took sat down with us to give us some insight into the album and the lead up to its release…
After years of grinding away touring and building a loyal fanbase at home in Australia as well as abroad in the UK, it was time for PLANET to move things to the next stage. Fan favourites such as ‘Northern Skyline’ and ‘Aching Dream’ have played a big part in getting the group to where they are today and it felt only right that they made their way onto the record and reach a wider audience.
On the composition of the album...
It’s pretty surreal. It’s been a long time coming. We’ve been waiting for a while on purpose until we felt we had enough songs out there and had a bit of a following so that the album could have a really good push...and finally with the backing of a label it feels like the right time to do it.
We have included some of the older songs on the album to give them the justice that they deserve. It wasn’t always the plan. We definitely had enough written to fill out the album with 12 new songs but once we were deciding on the track listing I said I really want to have these songs on there.
From a fans point of view as well: they go 'oh cool, there’s ‘Aching Dream', ‘Northern Skyline’' and it maybe gives them another push to buy an album that’s not completely unknown territory. We didn’t do any re-recording on those songs, we kept them the same as when we recorded them four and five years ago which I think is a good thing as we weren’t trying to re-invent them.
On getting to it after lockdown...
It was after that first cancellation and trying to get all the refunds back and all that shit and just like grabbing the shit from the ashes, we were like: 'okay, we need to record this. We need to get this done.'
As soon as Adrian Bushby reached out to us we got together a lot of demos and made a rough track listing. And then after that, we were like, 'cool'. And it all came really quickly after that. The whole recording process was probably done in about four to five months because it was just very finicky because you had to do it in all these different little places.
On piecing together the album all over the world...
Adrian is based in London so we recorded the demos at my home studio in Sydney. Me and Tom (lead guitarist) are big into production so we do most of our recording ourselves. We recorded most of the acoustics and vocals here and then we recorded the drums with Lachlan Mitchell who we originally worked with on ‘Northern Skyline’ and ‘Aching Dream’. Then we ended up at a music college called AIM (Australian Institute of Music) which was a funny one because we’re not students there.
I have a mate who works there and he managed to sneak us in: we got to work with some amazing recording desks and microphones and shit which was really helpful. We recorded guitar, bass and grand piano there, and then all the strings on the album were recorded by a group in Manchester which was a really cool touch.
It's been so long since the album was actually mixed and mastered, so I've listened to it so, so, many times. It is sort of how I wanted it to flow in that there's lots of the older songs sitting in the middle, which is what we normally thought of. We thought that ‘Lost My Honesty’ as track number one was a cool one because it starts off with acoustic, very much like our older stuff and then it cranks in pretty hard. And then the last song, ‘One To Keep You’ is sort of a tip of the hat to saying “this is what our next album is going to look like”. It's going to be a bit more Verve inspired, with ‘Lucky Man’ sort of vibes but with orchestra in the background and then also experimenting with more synthesizers and arpeggiators. Keeping it quite folk at heart but expanding it a lot more.
On the tracklisting...
It's been so long since the album was actually mixed and mastered, so I've listened to it so, so, many times. It is sort of how I wanted it to flow in that there's lots of the older songs sitting in the middle, which is what we normally thought of. We thought that ‘Lost My Honesty’ as track number one was a cool one because it starts off with acoustic, very much like our older stuff and then it cranks in pretty hard. And then the last song, ‘One To Keep You’ is sort of a tip of the hat to saying “this is what our next album is going to look like”. It's going to be a bit more Verve inspired, with ‘Lucky Man’ sort of vibes but with orchestra in the background and then also experimenting with more synthesizers and arpeggiators. Keeping it quite folk at heart but expanding it a lot more.
On the album visuals...
We're sort of sharing what we liked the best on the album and what it means to us and sort of going in depth with it. I hope people have really liked it. It's what I would find interesting whenever I was thinking of a band, and if I liked an album, they told me how they were inspired, what's their favourite bit in it? What psyche were they in? How did they get to record it? I'd find that really interesting. So that's why me and Tom were like, “let's do this…”. It's really interesting hearing yourself speak on video as well and going back to the album and looking at it all, it’s been cool.
The video for ‘Resign’ was actually all shot on Tommy’s phone. It was pretty funny because the label were like “you need a video…” and we were like well, we’re in lockdown and weren’t meant to go outside - this was at the start of the whole pandemic. But then we were like, “fuck it”. So we went out into the alleyway next to my house and shot it all in one take. Then we chucked it into Premiere and bounced it out and that was the clip.
On performing Information Overload live...
‘Hard To Come By’, which is track number four, is a really big ballad and just like quite poppy, but it has this big chorus that cranks out. I really liked writing that song and the lyrics behind it. That definitely. And then number 10, ‘Pulse’, which is very piano based. The whole thing is pretty much piano the whole way through with this little melody and then it cranks out into this big sort of smashed out chorus with a cross beat, drum rhythm and all that. At the end it does a key change and goes into this big anthemic outro. That's going to be so much fun to play live, I can’t wait, it's just going to be really cool.
Information Overload is out now.
Issue Two of the Gigwise Print magazine is on sale now! Buy it here.
More about: Planet
Photo: Press
