Dead In A Second

In late 2011, during downtime from his day job as guitarist for the band Thousand Needles in Red, Tristan Bouillaut had a vision for a new music project. It was as DIY a musical project as you could possibly get. “I had a real vision for how I wanted the business side of things to run, the music side obviously and also the DIY mentality,” he stated of his intentions. “I don't think it's particularly necessary these days with the tools we have to outsource a lot of the creative work, even down to the graphic design. I wanted us to do everything in-house, not to have total control, it's not about that… it's so that we don't have to wait or rely on anyone.”

Fast forward to June this year and Triztan's, or Trizo, as he's more commonly known was in Melbourne launching Maretimo, the debut EP for his new outfit Dead in A Second. Not only had Triz written the all of songs and played all of the instruments, he produced, engineered and mixed as well, all from home. The one thing he wasn't comfortable with was vocals and brought in friend Rick Hammond to sing and rap. The result is a heavy, rockin' sonic assault to the senses he's proud of.

What Triz didn't know about production during his Maretimo journey, he studied up on using Youtube clips and Google searches. A sound-proof vocal booth was created in his spare room using mattresses in a whatever it takes mind set. The recording process was both indefatigable and pragmatic. “I had my guide guitars on the demo,” he explained of the staring point. “From the click track, you start building the drums and the bass and get the foundations down. Then I like to add guitars and production before the vocals are put down. So all the instrumentation first and all the production, then the vocals and you can just delete what you don't need from there. After the vocals I tend not to want to interfere too much.”

Trizo's talent has not gone unnoticed by the gear companies and he's been blessed with many endorsement deals, all of which he honoured in the production of the EP.

“I used a Faith 12 string, a Faith 6 steel string, a nylon which was great to have some body behind certain notes. For electrics I used mainly PRS, a couple of Gibsons, a 335. There were a few guitars. I know it's hard to tell. When you go that little bit heavier, it's hard to distinguish between them. I used the TC Electronic's Nova System for my compression and delay. I didn't use a great deal of clean guitar. The reverb from the Nova System is insane. Everyone knows TC's reverb comes from years and years of research.”

Working on the EP from home was in one way a blessing, but as time marched on it also became a curse not knowing when to actually call it quits. “It was horrible. I have learned a lot from it though. It was hard because you wake up at four in the morning and you think, I have a record I am working on in the next room. Living and working in the same place is ridiculous.” Despite the Maretimo project consuming Bouillaut's mind, he still made time to attend to his in-home music teaching duties, which ended up being a real blessing as he used his students as a sounding board. “I teach guitar'” he explained. “So I had students I was hitting up on a daily basis for information. I'd ask if this or that was too loud or soft. There was a big age range and they'd give different opinions. They were every honest. The only other opinion I got was from Lucius Borich who came in to listen to the drums and give me some advice.”

As soon as Maretimo had been released, Bouillaut put it out of his mind and began working on new songs, which he will road test when they take Maretimo out live in mid November “I have let go of it now and moved onto the next one. I can't wait to play it live though. We're going to bring in some new age toys to help reproduce some of the sounds. We're not going to go too crazy… just bring the flavour of the songs. Around mid November we hope to get out there for 3 or 4 month around the country.”