Project Description

Interview With

BOMBS AWAY

Interviewer: Jemma Bird

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Last year, Bombs Away re-imagined themselves within the Australian dance scene with their crossover single ‘Like You’ featuring Elle Vee. ‘Like You’ was a big step in a new direction for the Queensland-based duo and was the first look into their forthcoming debut album ‘Fragments’. Now, Bombs Away are set to release the second single off the near-future LP, ‘Let You Down’ featuring Sunset City, launching the guys further into their new sound.

With a career spanning eight years, the duo have purposefully taken their time to craft their debut album, and it has been well worth the wait. Announcing today, the release of ‘Fragments’ on Friday 26th June, Bombs Away have carefully and expertly curated a 13 track LP, including an intro and intermission, with features from an array of local and upcoming artists such as Sunset City, Elle Vee, Shadow Aspect, Backchat, Sru and Myah Marie. ‘Fragments’ is a radiant body of work that truly highlights their refined production techniques and how they have developed into the charismatic artists and songwriters they are today.

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Hi Sketch and Tom, how are you guys?

We are good, how are you?

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Well thank you! So before we talk about your latest release, ‘Let You Down’. I just wanted to delve into your background a little bit. I know you guys have been on the scene for around 8 years now. You have had huge success with ‘Super Soaker’ and ‘Party Bass’. But this is just a question I love to ask everyone, because the responses are generally so interesting. Was there a specific time or event that you could pin-point when you decided that music was something that you wanted to make a career out of?

Tom: Yeah I remember seeing Michael Jackson perform and there was no band, he was just singing. I remember asking my mum where the music was coming from. She explained it in a really weird way, that they have this box full of wires and that’s where the music comes out. And that’s how I got into music production. What’s yours sketch?

Sketch: I like that one! Mine isn’t as cool as that. I just played guitar a lot and didn’t have a band around me so I would record the guitar’s and make mix tapes for friends. Then I realised that it was a job and people really liked what I was doing. Not as early on as Tom’s MJ story though.

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They are both so interesting and it’s nice to get a bit of an insight of how it all started for you guys. You have been making music for a while now have you got the writing process down pat?

It’s definitely different each time but there is processes and approaches that we use as tools and especially when you get stuck on something then you can use those tools. I think as we have done more songs, our writing process has evolved. When we first started we were just seeing what happened and it still has been a bit of a trial and error process but it’s always very experimental.

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When you get stuck on a song or idea is that when you go to each other for help? Or do you mainly work together on everything?

It’s a bit of both really and usually different every time. We do a lot of writing when we are travelling so we just have a big list of notes where we have idea’s and one-liners or even jokes that we turn into an idea or a lyric. We usually start with music and then look back and see what we have around it, that will suit it. With the ‘Fragments’ album, especially with songs like ‘Let Me Down’ the vocalist is also the co-writer so it was really interesting to work with other people.

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You worked with Sunset City who was the vocalist for ‘Let You Down’. How did this collaboration come about?

We actually had been working with him on a few projects and he actually came to us with this one. He already had some of the lyrics and once we had the music we knew the direction we wanted to go with this one, quite quickly actually. We just had a day session actually and then just had to smooth it over.

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Is that how long it takes usually to finish a song? A day is pretty quick to smash out a song!

The more musically based they are, the quicker they are for us but they can definitely take longer. Some songs can take years. Some of the songs that are on the album were started four or five years ago and have been re-written six or seven times. So I guess, a day is amazing. Those kind of songs tend to resonate a lot better with people as well as they seem less forced I guess.

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So when you have had a song for four or five years and are on your seventh or eighth version of the song, how and when do you decide whether to keep working away at it or to let it go?

There is never a point where you feel you need to give up because it’s always there as ammunition for something else or other songs. When it’s right, there’s definitely a point when you know it’s finished and that’s what you work towards.  

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Can you tell me a little bit about the meaning behind the song?

We try to not make it to obvious. For us it is obvious, but we don’t want everyone else to think it’s obvious because it’s not necessarily telling a story to evoke a reaction. People tend to relate their own experiences and lives to the song which we have actually tried to work on a bit more lately. Everyone has their own life experiences and different journey, so when they hear the song different lyrics resonate with different people about different things.  

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How did the idea for the video come about?

We worked with a guy from Italy on this video. He is an incredible artist and works in stop motion. A lot of people think that this video was animated but it was actually all with paper and it was a big art piece in itself.

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You’ve kind of reinvented yourselves in away with the release of Like You and Let You Down, which are both singles off your forthcoming debut album Fragments. Was this a conscious decision or a natural progression of who you guys are now?

It’s definitely more of a natural progression and how we want to express ourselves now. There is still so much more that we want to express. Maybe the next album will be a different genre, who knows. This question comes up a little bit but the answer is that we write and tour music because we enjoy it. This album is just what we were feeling at the time and maybe we got better at writing music and maybe we now have an audience that we can get through to a little bit more with more complex themes. Without going over the top, a lot of our music is about having fun and enjoying yourself. There are some party songs on the album that you can put play on a saturday night.

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Is the album full of vocal tracks or do you have interludes and instrumentals as well?

That’s a really good question, no one has asked that yet! We actually do have an intro, an interlude and an outro. For us, that is one of the most exciting parts to put out to the world. You never really get to release music like that as a single. It’s something that you can only kind of listen to in full as part of the album. That’s the reason we are releasing the album as a CD as well, nowadays people have such short attention spans, including ourselves, and people will stream a playlist and then come back to an artist. The song’s will hold their own individually but it’s designed to be listened to as a body of work with the intro and interlude as well as a story throughout the whole album.

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So it’s an album that needs to be sat down and listened to from start to finish in order to understand it in the way you wanted to portray it?

Yeah hopefully. Individually the songs are good and we are really proud of them but in a perfect world we would want everyone to listen to the album as a whole. Hopefully people can relate to it. There’s a lot of light hearted stuff that will reflect on what they’ve been going through in their life. A big thing that we have become more aware of is how much impact we have on people’s everyday lives and it’s sometimes easy to overlook. People message us saying ‘Hey, guys I just wanted to say thanks. I’ve been going through a really rough time lately and your music has helped me see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel’. We don’t approach our music directly in this way but we want to approach it to show that there is good stuff out there and there is that light at the end of the tunnel.

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You guys have put so much work into your music and for people to say that it had really impacted them must be so nice to hear!

Yeah exactly and it even comes from the party songs as well. I think some people see our music as an escape from reality.

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Are you going to tour this album? Do you have anything planned?

Yeah we are kicking off the tour at the end of April and we are touring around Australia every weekend until September and a few European shows as well.

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