Stop The Press

It's been a while between releases for World's End Press, their last being the most excellent Faithful EP, put out at the end of 2010, which was produced by Cornel Wilczek (aka Qua). “He did the job on that one,” WEP frontman John Parkinson reminds. “He's a lovely chap and I think he's one of the most hard-working people I've ever met. He's a workhorse.”

The wait for the band's debut album continues. “The album itself obviously won't come out for a while. I think it's gonna be um, well, dare I say it,” Parkinson hesitates. “Next year? We will be releasing stuff during the year from the album but, I dunno, I think it's just more like we haven't released an album for so long we might as well get this one right.

“We're actually just about to go overseas and record it, 'cause we've got all the songs ready. We're hopefully gonna do it the classic, old-school way of going somewhere completely isolated with no distractions, living together and recording it. Only because we haven't got the signature on the dotted line, I can't actually say who it's with but I can say that it's overseas and it's gonna be in a remote…” Area of England? “England, yes. Oh well, Wales in particular.” When asked how he's gonna manage when reading Welsh street signs, Parkinson chuckles, “Yeah, the street signs are longer than the streets! But a lovely turn of phrase, the Welsh people have.” So how long are World's End Press planning on spending abroad? “Four weeks. We're gonna try and get all the tracking done within the month.”

An example springs to mind of how a lengthy span between releases doesn't necessarily negatively influence its performance – Cut Copy's In Ghost Colours, released March 2008, which shot to number one in the ARIA Singles Chart despite dropping almost four years after its predecessor, Bright Like Neon Love, released April 2004. “That's what we want from something that's taken us so long to make – that it kinda resonates,” Parkinson observes. “And we're reaching a time where the live performance is probably more valuable than releases, so we're not really worried. Nothing good's ever really made in a rush.” You don't want to settle for near enough, because then you're stuck with the finished product for life. “Yeah, it follows you everywhere,” Parkinson agrees.

On their latest single, Second Day Uptown, World's End Press worked with Cutters frontman Dan Whitford. Are there likely to be more collaborative/production credits for Whitford on the forthcoming debut longplayer from WEP? “No, that was just on the single we've just released. He and us went off to this fairly enchanted space in Melbourne – it's this warehouse a few friends have and it's used for all sorts of storage purposes, but in the middle of all this clutter there's a little place where recording stuff's set up and, yeah! That's where we recorded together. We actually did three songs together with the idea that we were only gonna use one and we just decided that Second Day Uptown would be a good starting point. Something good to set the palette.”

So was this warehouse the same as the one Cut Copy recorded Zonoscope in? “No, not that one. It's literally smack-bang in the middle of the CBD – sort of off Flinders Lane, a bit further towards Queen Street way. It's a secret, maybe I should keep it under wraps [laughs].” Sounds like Parkinson should move in there permanently. “It would get really cold I 'spose, 'cause the ceilings are really high. It's not very homely, but, the part that we used, a few friends of ours have made it very, very warm and friendly, lots of pictures on the wall, rugs hanging everywhere – there's a vibe there, a very nice one.”

The last time this scribe caught World's End Press live was as part of the lineup that played the opening night of Melbourne Music Week at the temporary riverside venue KUBIK, on the banks of the Yarra. “That was good,” Parkinson recalls. “It would've been awesome if the cube changed colours, that would've been nice, but the thing looked amazing and we had fun.” The “thing” of which Parkinson speaks was an enclosure built from large, plastic, water-filled cubes with the potential to glow, change colours and pulse with light. “We played at the start of [Melbourne Music Week] and they were warming up to this frenzy of colours at the end of the week. I think I walked past it a week later and the whole thing was just like Tron or something – a multi-coloured, kind of technicoloured paradise – but for us it was just these soft blue lights. But that's okay, we got to play in this futuristic sort of space capsule.”

The crowd went wild. So much so, it looked suspiciously like rent-a-crowd. “We do definitely encourage that kind of behaviour at our shows. It sort of feels a bit wrong if there's not people who are up for it – or if people are not really outwardly responding, but they might be appreciating. But I suppose when you're up on the stage you need big gestures coming from the audience, as much as you're giving [laughs].”

Recalling the band's first-ever gig, Parkinson laughs: “Well, let's not mention where our first gig was.” And then artfully changes the subject when asked to elaborate. “Um, ah, I formed the band with Rhys [Richards, synths/electronics] years and years ago, like, probably even ten years ago when we were in school. 'Cause we started playing music together in Year Eight and we were in the same music class from about Year Nine to, well, through to the end of school. We've been around in Melbourne for quite a while, changing lineups a few times, but Rhys has always been there with us and only sort of in the last two years have we had the unchangeable bunch of friends that are playing in World's End Press now, which is just the four of us.” The other two permanent members are bassist Sashi Dharann and drummer Tom Gould and Parkinson adds, “It's just this absolute connection in what we're doing. We hang out together, we go out, we rehearse together – we don't actually have any other friends, haha. Wait, we're socially retarded.”