Schools Of Thought

Here's a paradox for you. Melbourne folk-meets-bluegrass band John Flanagan & The Begin Agains have concocted a new EP and called it Young Minds. But they've chosen to couch their anthem to the power of youth in a studio where technology is close to antique – 8-track tape (something better understood by old, or at least older, minds) – whilst the young minds get on with mixing and recording on their laptops. We won't even mention the cover of Belinda Carlisle's Summer Rain in their live set. It seems quite a contradiction between message and method, as Inpress reasonably points out to band founder and lead singer John Flanagan.

“It wasn't specifically that we sought out doing the EP on tape, or deliberately decided to do it in that way,” Flanagan retorts. “What I did was look at what albums I liked, and was considering what I wanted the EP to sound like. I came across Liz Stringer's recordings. I'd known about her for a while and found out her album had been produced by Matt Walker. I thought what he captured on that was a great sound, a sound I wanted for us, so I tracked him down.”

Matt Walker's studio, the 8 Track Shack in leafy Upwey, embraces all that is warm, analogue and 8-track tape – hence the name. “That's how he works,” Flanagan explains. “Matt works on an old tape machine. I think it adds a kind of warmth. Personally I don't know a lot about the sound stuff, I'm better on the songs.”

The aesthetic cooked up at the 8 Track Shack continued into the mastering suite at Sing Sing. Even here, amongst, one imagines, the finest laptops known to mixer or masterer, Flanagan's young mind turned to the beauty of old-fashioned hardware. “We mixed at Sing Sing studio, and even there we weren't doing it all on a computers – we were using hardware. The idea behind that is similar; they have a huge mixing desk and it all goes through hardware, gear, rather than just being through software in a computer. Everything we used was hardware, compressors, reverb.”

Audiophiles amongst his esteemed advisors agreed with his ideas. “People who know about audio say they can hear the difference in the record. I guess I don't really know what to compare it to, but it's got a great warm sound and an old-school quality to it. I wouldn't know how to describe the difference if I had to, though.”

Flanagan doesn't buy the contradiction between these 40 year old methods and the messages within Young Minds. “What I say at gigs is that Young Minds is not about age. When I say old, it's about a way of thinking, a way that people are doing things. Old thinking is about doing things the way they have always been done. Things like climate change, for example – it takes so long for people to accept change. When I talk about Young Minds, what I mean is people open to new ways of doing things, new ways of seeing the world. People generally want to do what's most convenient, the easiest thing. As a vegan, I've really become aware of how people react when someone's a bit different. Noticing that has made me think... and I feel strongly about the idea of keeping a young mind.”

Whilst Flanagan has put his passion to paper on this EP, he doesn't see it as a political manifesto – perhaps more a social observation. He declares he's not a political animal. “There are messages there but for me it's not about punching people in the face with it. I have something to say but it's more philosophical I think. I'd like to try and help say something, make people listen. I have always liked songs that had something to say, opened people's eyes.”