Shrugging Off The Shackles

The last time Brisbane saw Nikko, purveyors of apocryphal Gothic Australiana, they were winging their way down to Melbourne at the tail end of last year to air their wares on a larger audience. Six months on, three quarters of the band – guitarist/vocalist Ryan Potter, guitarist Jackson Briggs and drummer Blair Westbrook – are back in the sunnier climes of the Sunshine State.

“It was…debaucherous,” remaining Melbournite, bassist Sam Whiting, laughs.

Westbrook shakes his head. “I got into a real bad routine. I need to have things happening – I can get four hours sleep a night, then I need to be doing shit all day long. Instead, I got stir crazy. I put on about eight kilos.”

“I lost seven kilos!” Briggs counters. “I didn't get a job and spent every cent I owned, and ended up having to do a tax return while I was down there which I have never done before.”

“We had one gig a week to look forward to, and in between… everyone went a bit astray,” Potter says wryly. “It was around Christmas time, we had a lot of people visiting us, people we hadn't seen in ages, everyone was drinking – it was an extended holiday really.”

Resolute after the experience, the quartet have focused on the release of their second longplayer, Gold & Red, and it's a triumphant testament to their growth in stature and prowess. The record feels like a massive progression from 2010's debut release The Warm Side, with much more emphasis going on the structure and atmosphere that they are able to generate.

“We just got sick of being called a post-rock band,” Whiting opines. “We had all stopped listening to that kind of stuff, we had moved on. It was still a pretty natural progression, there was nothing forced, but it was a general consensus on where we wanted to head.”

That said, the songs on Gold & Red are unlike anything that the quartet have put to tape before. Handing the production and mixing duties over to Aaron Cupples (The Drones, Snowman) and Nao Anzai (Laura, Because Of Ghosts) respectively, the album comes across as an epic affair, filled with the kind of glossy sound that has previously been unattainable. Such a difference from recorded output to the live experience potentially opens up new doors for the band.

“A good example is Dark Eyes, because we changed things up a lot when we recorded that,” Whiting explains. “It was at Aaron's suggestion that we have lots of multi-tracking on the vocals, and that we got Jacinta [Walker – Keep On Dancin's, Tiny Migrants] in for back-up vocals and harmonies. It is important to have the recordings separate from what we do on stage, because then you aren't just replicating it. It allows each to be their own separate beast.”

“We never met Aaron (Cupples),” Potter continues. “He's based in Europe now, so he sent us draft mixes. We never really sent him in any particular direction, we just said for him to do whatever he wanted, with a few tips on minor things with particular songs, but he pretty much came back at us with this big sound, which was really different for us. We got the first mixes back last year, and at first felt a little weird…”

“It's so big, polished, professional, and how I think we like to be heard,” Westbrook counters. “It seems like the next logical step for us. And that is going to be even more obvious on the vinyl release. It was still us playing live in a room, in a rehearsal hall at the Old Museum, there has been so much overdubbing that it could have been done in a proper studio, no question. It's pretty impressive.”

An important factor to the brilliance of the album's overall aesthetic is the inclusion of unofficial “fifth member”, violinist Adam Cadell. His contributions on Gold & Red elevate every track he appears on, a force of nature that Nikko are happy to include whenever they can.

“Adam has no interest in the writing of songs or rehearsing,” Potter deadpans. “He's been rehearsing his entire life. The stuff he does with us is a chance for him to get up and just play, do something he enjoys doing. All of Adam's parts on the album are improvised. He is a perfectionist, and amazing at what he does. No matter what he does, it always makes the band better.”

The recording (with Incremental Records' Cameron Smith) was the most painless one the quartet has ever had, even when some things didn't go to plan.

“We were playing Dark Eyes, and this alarm went off somewhere in the building that was the exact pitch and tempo as what we were playing at the time,” Whiting clarifies. “So me and Blair didn't stop playing, whilst Jackson and Ryan had stopped, so on the recording it feels like this natural break before they come back in. Then Jackson played that pitch in one of the overdubs so that it is kind of covered up, yet it totally changed the structure of the recording which was pretty amazing.”

The way in which the record is structured took a lot of democratic discussion.

“We all picked a personal track listing and went over to Ryan's house to sort it out,” Westbrook states. “The whole album was meant to emulate what our songs are like, that kind of build then drop off, grow, build, drop off, that flow and ebb that we tend to create in our songs across the entire album. Some end soft and some end loud, so we wanted to have that experience across the entire record.”

Another highlight from the album is Never Danced, a swirling number with an emotional punch that stands as a beautiful counterpoint to much of Nikko's moodier oeuvre.

“It's one of the earliest songs I wrote after the songs that made The Warm Side,” Potter explains. “We put it on our live recording (2010's Live At The Tote) but after then stopped playing it as much; I didn't want to get sick of it too quickly. There are tracks that are good to leave rest for a while then come back to, see how things change. Originally I had written Never Danced as a dance song; I just had electronic beats with melodica. It didn't really work though, so I thought, 'Ah well, I may as well try to make it a Nikko song!' and it worked out all right.”

Nikko will be playing the following shows:

Thursday 6 September - The Phoenix, Canberra ACT
Friday 7 September - The Lass O'Gowrie, Newcastle NSW
Saturday 8 September - FBi Social, Sydney NSW
Thursday 20 September - The Empress, Melbourne VIC
Friday 21 September - The Old Bar, Melbourne VIC
Saturday 22 September - The Metro, Adelaide