If You Want Something Done Right You Have To Do It Yourselves

A perikope, pronounced perri-co-pee, we're kindly informed - "everyone calls it Peri-cope" - is an extract of text that can be read as a whole in and of itself. In Amber Isles' singer-songwriter Max Fotheringham's case though, it's the name of his solo album. Or his ex-solo album - the project has grown some in recent years.

"I had a lot of solo material that I - I wanted to sit down and see what I could do on my own just entirely within my own limits, with a view to presenting the ideas to a full band at a later date... I wanted to keep everything solo at the beginning and then expand it, or evolve it, into a band." Fotheringham relocated to find the right people for the job. Having grown up for the most part in Belgium, he'd "always wanted come and try and live in Australia", so he quit his job and looked south.

"I put [the album] out under my own name and then we formed the band to play those songs. So Amber Isles got together and we started playing songs from Perikope while starting to write new stuff. So it sort of evolved into Amber Isles."

The evolution included a marked shift from folky post rock to something almost shoegaze, a richer, deeply layered sound and a new co-written full-length, Running.

"Part of me wasn't sure where it would go and that was kind of what was interesting to me - was in presenting a loose idea for sound to other people and then making it something that belongs to all of us and we'd just run with that sound."

"We just like to do whatever we can in-house with our resources... we try to do as much DIY as possible."

The band now includes a bit of "a rotating roster", orbiting "four or five core members". But there is another, more literal, architect behind Amber Isles sound - Fotheringham's long-time collaborator and sound engineer, Wouter Gordts, who relocated to Australia From Belgium for a year to help record Running.

"He arrived and we had the luxury of this very huge garage in our new house and he sort of walked around and pondered a little bit and he said, 'We'll just do it here. We'll build a sound booth,' he said. So he did, and he's very technical like that. I mean we helped him, but he built it... it's this big cube, which he built with frame wood, and then we put some doors on it and we treated and insulated all the walls. And so pretty much the whole album was tracked in our garage."

Is the landlord a fan? "They've seen it - our real estate - they've checked it out and they sort of looked at it and said, 'Wow, wow this is cool,'" laughs Fotheringham. "I think they were just kind of, surprised by it. But it's a freestanding object, so it can be completely taken down. I mean, it's a fair bit of wood... but it's not built into any of the walls."

Partly as a result of Gordts construction skills Running came out "pretty moody, pretty dense". "'Cause we had a lot of time to just - we didn't have any of the usual stresses of studio time and money. So we had a lot of time to make everything really dense and smooth out all the detail."

The DIY method is close to the band's heart. They've been gigging independently for two years now, even organising their own upcoming national tour.

"We just like to do whatever we can in-house with our resources... we try to do as much DIY as possible, 'cause you know it feels good. It's rewarding. It's a lotta work, it's a lot of work, but it's definitely rewarding."

"In terms of booking it's a shitload of emailing, but that's ok - I didn't mind that. When we were building the booth I was getting stressed out that it would fall down, but [Gordts] assured me of its structural integrity, and it's still standing and it still looks very pretty, so... It's mainly just been a lot of fun.