Blank Realm Wanted To Try Punk, Rock, Ballads And Noise On Their Record

The heady brews concocted by Brisbane outfit Blank Realm have recently lifted the quartet to a whole new level of global recognition, their increasingly accessible brand of psych-tinged rock really touching a nerve on recent releases Go Easy (2012) and Grassed Inn (2014). Years of toil suddenly manifested into Glastonbury and Meredith slots, AMP and Queensland Music Award nominations, and basically a whole new level of recognition for the hard-working band. Of late they've been ensconced in Brisbane's The Plutonium studio — their first experience in such an environment — and the result of their labour is the gorgeously eclectic Illegals In Heaven.

"We just wanted [to try] all of the different styles that are on there, with punk and rock songs as well as the ballads and some of the more noisy things."

"It's the first time that I've been totally happy with a record that we came up with," admits vocalist/drummer Daniel Spencer. "The others I've been pretty happy with, but this time I feel like it's exactly what I wanted it to be when I thought about it beforehand, which hasn't really happened before. We just wanted [to try] all of the different styles that are on there, with punk and rock songs as well as the ballads and some of the more noisy things — we wanted to tie it all together into this suite. We didn't know how we were going to do that when we went into the studio but when we finished it all kinda made sense, which is a nice feeling."

Given their recent victories did the process seem different with the added weight of expectation? "Not really, I think we're always just going to do whatever we want to do," Spencer reflects, "which is kind of good and bad. We're already working on the next [album], and I think it's going to be pretty different. I feel like this one is the culmination of a trilogy of records, which started with Go Easy and then Grassed Inn and now this, and it feels like this is actually as far as we can go with that sound. I definitely see it as a continuation of that, but [Illegals In Heaven] feels like the best version of that sound that we can do, so I don't know what the next one's going to be except pretty different."

Spencer explains that besides using the studio, hiring a producer (Brisbane sound guru Lawrence English helmed the album) also impacted Illegals In Heaven's sound. "It made us think more about our ideas because we knew that we were going to be working with Lawrence," he continues. "He had a lot of good ideas and could tell us which songs were not working when we probably didn't realise ourselves. And also Tim [Morrissey] from The John Steel Singers was the engineer and he was really helpful in the same way, telling us what worked and what didn't. It was good to have those collaborative voices in the studio as well helping out — when it's just us in the room I'm always wondering if it's good or bad, I have no idea, so I felt it was better at the end of it having other people involved."