Supersweet

Interview

The Black Ryder

The Black Ryder and Little Waits

From their band name homage to Tom Waits, coveted collaborations with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (Peter Hayes, Leah Shapiro) and Ricky Mayami (Brian Jonestown Massacre) to psychedelic shoegaze hostility that could floor the sweet-voiced Raveonettes, The Black Ryder is a bedeviled lady-in-waiting, alluring and expectant to reign British shores any time soon. So before the neat duo package was ready to blow, we snuck in our SS expert to unravel the ties between Aimee Nash and Scott Von Ryper, two years after their departure from The Morning After Girls, burning to introduce their debut album Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride.

SS: You created your new label ‘The Anti-Machine Machine’ through label giants EMI Australia, how on earth did you strike a deal like that? Were there any sacrificial promises made, chants to the gods..?
Aimee Nash (vocals/guitar/keyboards/percussion): No sacrificial promises as such, however we do have a great management team who we work very closely with. We were also very conscious of which approach we wanted to take with releasing our album; this seemed like the best possible outcome we could have hoped for.  
Scott Von Ryper (vocals/guitar/bass/keyboards/percussion): We very much have the best of both worlds, although this opportunity didn’t arrive until very late in the game and after quite a few false starts with other labels, including one of those critical moments where we decided to walk away from a very healthy sum of ‘upfront’ money because the deal didn’t feel right. At that point we really needed that money too and we had no other offers. You might think that it’s a hard decision to make but it took us all of 20 seconds when it came to the crunch. We had faith in what we were creating. The easiest road is not always the best. 

SS: Your new album Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride (named after a Hunter S. Thompson quote) is coming to the UK this year, are you hoping to tour here, or support any particular acts?
Aimee: We’re very keen to spend time this year playing & touring as much as we possibly can. As far as playing shows with artists or bands in the UK, a personal favorite of mine would be Spectrum (Sonic Boom / Pete Kember). We saw Pete’s show last year out here in Australia, which was incredible. I have great respect for him as an artist, so that would be a pretty great tour in my books. 
We’d also love to play some shows with BRMC and Zaza. I’m also digging Wooden Shjips + an artist by the name of Tamaryn, both from America however I hope they make it over your way.

SS: Let’s take a moment to celebrate Tom Waits! You’ve referenced him in your band name (Waits created the score for the opera, The Black Rider), but what’s your favourite Waits role?
Aimee: I think everyone should take a moment to celebrate Tom Waits…I’m not too familiar with Tom’s various acting roles, but I’m certainly a big fan of his music. I saw a Jim Jarmusch film (Down By Law, 1986) not so long ago he was in, but I fell asleep during the movie so I’m not sure how that one panned out!
Scott: I can’t think of anyone with more character in their voice than Tom Waits. It feels like I can hear every cigarette and every woman he’s loved and hurt in every song. I love that.

SS: Standing out, ‘The Greatest Fall’ lends towards sixties country-blues, what was your inspiration to cross genres within this track and contrast to the rest of the album?
Aimee: There wasn’t really any inspiration (or even awareness) to cross genres, the song just came out sounding the way it did, more so because of where my head was at the time. It was late, probably around 2am or 3am. I was sitting up and playing guitar and the song just came about with the melody and words, so I suppose it was how I was feeling that ultimately inspired the direction of the song as opposed to being conscious of what sort of song it would be…that and I think we were listening to a lot of Santo and Johnny that week!
Scott: Yeah, I never thought we were crossing genres because at that point every new song we were writing/recording was different to the last. We knew they were different, but there was this strange connection between them all. We didn’t have a whole bunch of ‘big guitar’ tracks and then write a fucked up country song. Everything happened altogether. I’d be so bored if we just did the one thing. I don’t listen to one type of music, so why do that as a band? Where’s the challenge in that?

SS: Aimee, you’ve joined Twilight: New Moon success singing with BRMC, what enticed you into the project? Have you followed suit in the Twilight obsession?  
Aimee: It was BRMC that enticed me into the project, I had no idea the song would end up on the soundtrack, and neither did BRMC. Peter (Hayes) had very generously contributed some vocals and guitar parts to ‘Burn and Fade’, then, a couple of weeks later, he said he had a song they were working on, which I ended up singing on (‘Done All Wrong’). A few weeks after that, I got a call saying there was a movie wanting to pick up the song, and that’s how it happened.  
I do have a soft spot for vampire movies; however I can’t say that I have any sort of obsession! I thought it was a pretty good line up of artists on the soundtrack. I think it’s great that there will hopefully be a whole audience which has opened up for some of those artists after people hear their music.

SS: What feelings do you hope your album motivates within new listeners?  
Aimee: The writing/recording process was a real journey for us and I’d like to think that you can hear that in the music. Each song has marked a moment in time and I’d hope that listeners can either identify with the moods and tones expressed throughout the album. On occasion, I find myself listening to our music because it soothes me; I’d love it if there were other people who felt the same.

SS: Creating your initial album from a series of demos, to then lose those recordings, was this ever a blessing in disguise in order to evolve to the current release?  
Aimee: Most definitely. I didn’t get too bummed out at the time, even though there was a LOT of material we lost. I’m a believer that ‘all things happen for a reason’, so I had faith in that feeling or moment.  There was something that was inspiring and refreshing about starting with a clean fresh slate, rather than continuing to work on ideas that we’d had for so long.

SS: You’ve decided to not release singles from your album, what spurred you to go in this direction? Instead, are we to expect another video to follow from ‘Sweet Come Down’?
Aimee: I feel like we’ve taken an unconventional approach in many ways throughout this process of writing/recording and releasing our album. Not releasing singles I guess is one of those.

We didn’t feel that we wanted to dictate what song was ‘the’ song that people should pay attention to. As I’d said before, our album really feels like a journey to me, so it didn’t feel right to decide on just one track to go out with first.

We were ridiculously lucky to have met up with Michael Spiccia almost 2 years ago now. He approached us as a fan of our music who wanted to work with us on directing a video clip and talk about artwork, photos etc. He has since become one of our dearest friends and someone we refer to as the silent member of The Black Ryder. Michael had the vision for ‘Sweet Come Down’ and it just fit so perfectly. We’re delighted with how it all turned out. He has another three amazing treatments (concepts) for our songs which we hope to get working on very, very soon.

Words: Gemma Dempster