Music Machine

It doesn't matter what time of day it is, you'll probably find The Morning Night frontman Adrian Hoffmann scribbling down song ideas or strumming away at his guitar. The problem he faces with such a productive creativity is the delayed period between writing music and the time it's released into the world, especially when his band doesn't take shortcuts. The end result of the group's perfectionist nature is ten well-refined “works of art” that weave between one another to create a solid album.

“I'm hoping that people will really enjoy [Otis] and take it seriously as an album, as opposed to just a single or an EP. I want people to sit down and listen to it start to finish, because it's designed for that. It's definitely like a story. That's the way I see it, so I hope people get that and take the time to listen to the whole thing,” Hoffmann says, as the call ironically gets disconnected. A minute later he returns to continue, “It's written in a way that people can take their own meaning from it.”

Producer Ricky Maymi (once from The Brian Jonestown Massacre and close friend and collaborator with The Church's Steve Kilbey) played a huge role in Otis. He wasn't just a seasoned musician providing some direction; he became the sixth member of the band. “When Ricky came over he joined the band for a few months, even before we went into the studio. He played guitar at a few gigs and came to rehearsals, so when we came into the studio he was like a band member to us and we all fed off each other and liked each other's suggestions and it just worked organically,” Hoffmann describes. “We called the album Otis because [Maymi] was in Perth at the time, he lives in San Francisco, because he was having a kid called Otis. We wouldn't have done the album at that time and in that vibe and it wouldn't have sounded like it did if it wasn't for Otis being born. We feel like Otis is a big part of the album.

“He comes over a lot, so we've seen him quite a bit and we've already done another album. We've got another one ready to go after this one. It's really strange actually. The first one took so long to do and we were so precise and the second one just went smack bang and is pretty much finished already. We took so long at first, now we're ahead of time,” he laughs. “The two albums… I know I shouldn't be talking about my second one,” he laughs, again. “They're totally different and they both have their own themes.”

Mystery takes control of Otis allowing listeners to form their own meanings of songs; even their latest music video Calm Me Down, which on the surface seems simple enough, can be read a lot deeper. “There's a few ways that you can perceive that video,” he says. “It was directed by Aaron Moss and David Smith. They came up with a great concept of an older lady realising she's old but saying 'I'm not going to worry about that I can still do what I did when I was younger' and she throws out the age thing and gets up on a table and starts dancing. It's about realising that life's not all bad. You can down a lot, but you've just got to break out of it and be young and enjoy it,” he explains. This is exactly what The Morning Night plans on doing for the rest of the year. “We're just really excited about exposing the record to people live and we want to do as many shows as we can and have fun and just get the album in peoples' hands before the next album comes out, probably towards the end of the year.”