Have You Heard: Bolt Gun

What was your vision for Bolt Gun upon starting it as a solo project three years ago?

Bolt Gun started as more of a homage to bands like Whitehouse and Brighter Death Now and Einstuerzende Neubauten, but I eventually found myself wanting to expand the sound a lot more and see how those ideas could add to a more black metal/doom type sound. Three years later and its definitely still a work in progress.

What prompted you to open the solo project to collaboration with Jonathon Carroll? There must have been a great creative chemistry then, and now, as he has since moved to Melbourne?

Jonathon and I had played together in another band (Memoria) for several years and realised we had a lot of similar ideas that weren’t really going to work with that band. So it was just a natural progression really, to take those ideas to another project. We’ve always worked well together and shared an interest in more experimental music so it wasn’t a hard decision for us, even in spite of the distance.

What nuances does the long-distance collaboration bring to the music?

The long distance is a problem in that we are used to writing together in a studio. So now it’s more of a drawn out process of me uploading some tracks to Jonathon, and then he records some ideas and uploads them to me, and on the process goes. By the time we get to rehearsal together it’s just a matter of refining the sound. It’s pretty tedious, but it means we spend a lot of time with the material individually and put a bit more thought into it.

A live Bolt Gun appearance is a rarity. What's the lead-up and preparation like in bring it into the live sphere?

The hardest thing for us to play live is finding a drummer and bassist, and since the songs are so long it’s a lot to learn, fortunately Val and Shaun from Population Control were up for it, as well as being great musicians they’re easy guys to work with so it was a pretty smooth process.

Looking into 2016, what are the future plans for Bolt Gun?

Hopefully recording a new full-length and doing some live shows. If I can pull that off, I’ll be pretty happy.

Originally published in X-Press Magazine