Circa Survive

We recently sat down with Circa Survive, prior to their sold out show at London Underworld, to discuss the band's recent third studio album, Blue Sky Noise, switching to a major label, and burning down villages. Act appalled.

Denis@RRR: Welcome to the UK guys, how are you feeling today?

Brendan Ekstrom: Pretty good

Nick Beard: Yeah, not bad

Brendan Elcstrom: It's nice to be in London

Denis@RRR: Earlier this year, you released your third album, Blue Sky Noise. Tell us about the writing process for the album…

Brendan Ekstrom: There's a lot of ins and outs and ups and downs that we went through.

Nick Beard: It was the longest we've ever spent just purely writing an album. I think we just gave ourselves as much time as we needed to feel like we were done. We'd never really done that before.

Brendan Ekstrom: It was a big goal to make sure everybody was allowed the opportunity to bring in their song.

Denis@RRR: So it was a collective writing process?

Brendan Ekstrom: Yeah, we wanted it to be much more collective and I think that the end result was better and that everybody was happier in the long run. Like, Steve would bring in songs, and we'd work on songs that didn't end up on the album for three weeks, just one song that you guys are never going to hear. We busted our ass to make sure that everybody got their input in.

Denis@RRR: Were you constantly improvising?

Brendan Ekstrom: I think in a way, a little bit less than on other records, because a lot of songs came straight from improv. on the first two records. We would record just us jamming and then I would go and listen to a tape, and listen to riffs, and see like, how can I make a song out of this, and then a song would actually come out of that sometimes, and this time, it was much more like…

Nick Beard: Anyone would bring in a riff or something

Brendan Ekstrom: For the most part, it was an idea brought to the table first

Denis@RRR: What about the recording process? You worked with producer David Bottrill… how was that?

Brendan Ekstrom: You're actually the first person that ever pronounced the dude's name correctly [laugh]

Denis@RRR: Well, I interviewed Moneen, whose record he also produced, so I remember from that interview how his name is pronounced!

Brendan Ekstrom: That's actually, honestly I think, a bigger reason why we went to David Bottrill, because Moneen was working with him, and their singer Kenny [Bridges] kept emailing me,'we're working with the guy that worked with Tool, and it's an amazing experience, I think you should add him to the list of producers that you were thinking about'. We had maybe two or three producers that we were really interested in, we had a long list, and we whittled it down to that, and then as soon as we met him, we were like, 'that's the guy, no question'. He was super interested in our music. We played some stuff at the record label, where we met with him, and he was singing along with the songs, and you could just tell he wanted to be involved and he wanted to make the songs better. It was awesome.

Denis@RRR: What about the general recording process? How did that go?

Nick Beard: It was awesome. Definitely, it was super stressful, like any recording's going to be stressful, but he's just so calm all the time, he just never loses his cool…

Brendan Ekstrom: Except for twice a day… well, never at the band!

Nick Beard: Never at the band!

Brendan Ekstrom: Never at the band, just out of nowhere, he'd be like, 'motherfucker!', and we'd be like, 'Jesus, what's going on!?', and it would just be like…

Nick Beard: It'd be like, 'my fucking email stopped working!'

Brendan Ekstrom: Yeah, just something like that – completely irrelevant

Nick Beard: Yeah, totally irrelevant, but every time we would have heart attacks, thinking he had erased the whole session or something. That's the kinda shit it would sound like. But he would never get mad or stressed at any of us, or at the process. Like, even what I was bugging out, someone would do something, and I would be like, 'oh my god, are you fucking serious', and then he would just be like, 'no, no, it's fine. Let's think about this', and we'd break it down, and…

Brendan Ekstrom: I think his patience was the key to the completion of the overall process, honestly, because we get out strung in the studio, like you were saying, every recording is going to be stressful – unless you just don't give a shit – but we give a shit, about every little thing, so we're in there and we're like, 'fuck, was that good enough?' or 'am I good enough?', 'did I play that well enough?', and he's like, 'it's fucking great!'.

Nick Beard: Any other recording I've ever done, I've been involved with… at least in my experience it always seems like whoever's in charge, I usually find that they're ready to cut off things first, I'm like, 'I want to keep trying something', and then they'll be like, 'no, no, that's it, that's it. Let's move on'. But it was totally opposite with him – I found myself like, 'alright, yeah!', and he'd want to take the time, like 'wait a minute, wait a minute'.

Brendan Ekstrom: A lot of producers or just people that you work with in the studio almost create pressure, and he diffused the pressure, all the time

Nick Beard: Exactly

Denis@RRR: You've talked about the producer for five minutes, so I think we'll move on! How do you feel the album was received, by fans and critics?

Brendan Ekstrom: I've only read one review, because I stopped reading reviews after our second review. It's just stressing and overall, I don't give a shit what critics think really. And most critics, honestly, these days, most critics and just some guy that knows very little. Being a critic used to be a prestigious thing in the 60's and 70's, and now it's just bullshit, so I couldn't care less what some fucking guy thinks about our record.

Nick Beard: Not all, not all!

Brendan Ekstrom: Not all – honestly, sometimes you read a really good review, and there's insight into the record, but sometimes it's like the guy didn't even listen to the record. I think the most telling thing, and the thing we care about the most, is when we went to play our first shows after the record was complete, and we played “Get Out“ for the first time, and the fans were singing louder than I'd ever heard them sing a song before a record was out. That was just the moment, 'alright, we worked this hard, this is what we did it for', and it was amazing.

Denis@RRR: The album was fairly successful, it hit #11 on the Billboard charts, yet to be released in the UK, but 27,000 copies sold in the US. You pleased with that?

Brendan Ekstrom: Fuck yeah! I mean… what was our first record on the Billboard?

Nick Beard: Our first record was like, 126 or something like that, we barely sneaked into the 200

Brendan Ekstrom: And then On Letting Go…

Denis@RRR: On Letting Go sold 24,000 first week

Brendan Ekstrom: That was nuts

Denis@RRR: And Blue Sky Noise sold 27,000 first week

Nick Beard: We upped it, two years later, when record sales and probably down by like 50%. It tells a lot, you know? If record sales stayed constant, it would be even greater.

Brendan Ekstrom: Numerically, it's interesting that our first record was on the charts at #100, second one was #24 I think, and the third one was #11, so our fourth record should be #-2 on the charts. It's going to be awesome. It's pure math, you know? Can't fight it.

Denis@RRR: In-between records, you changed record label, from Equal Vision Records to Atlantic Records. Why did you feel a change was necessary?

Nick Beard: Our contract was up with Equal Vision, so we were…

Denis@RRR: Good label?

Nick Beard: They were great. They did amazing things for us, in the States especially. I think the biggest problem we had with them was that, that was the only focus area, the States, and every time we would come over to the UK, or anywhere else outside the States pretty much, it was just like, 'we haven't gained any ground, it's not working the same way that it does in the States', and when the contract was up, we all knew we wanted to branch out internationally and be able to obtain the same success we have in the States everywhere else. We knew that.

Denis@RRR: So how did the signing with Atlantic Records come about?

Brendan Ekstrom: We met a bunch of interesting guys

Nick Beard: Yeah, we just met a bunch of different labels, and they were the ones that seemed to be the most geniunely interested

Denis@RRR: All major labels?

Brendan Ekstrom: No

Nick Beard: Not all of them

Brendan Ekstrom: And we went back and spoke with Equal Vision extensively, because we respect them us much. Atlantic is close to us, so we feel like if anything goes wrong, we can go over there and talk to them.

Denis@RRR: How did you know Atlantic was the right choice for the band?

Brendan Ekstrom: We went through hell, we really did, debating. And I honestly think that in the end, Anthony was like, 'I just really feel right about this', and we decided to listen to him.

Nick Beard: We were split. Half of the band was split.

Brendan Ekstrom: And even people that had no sides, still weren't sure what was right. And there was no right answer, just different ones. I think things couldn't be better right now, we're getting to do a lot of things we wouldn't have been able to do on other labels, like tour Europe, and play shows for kids for free and stuff like that, go to Germany and play free shows? Never would've been able to do that before.

Denis@RRR: How does being on a major label affect your record cycle?

Brendan Ekstrom: We haven't gone through a full record cycle yet, so…

Nick Beard: I mean, it doesn't really feel much different, besides the fact that I constantly hear about things that are getting done. It's just bigger…

Brendan Ekstrom: We're working radio harder than we've ever done that in the States, and going to radio stations and playing acoustic songs and stuff like that for the station. We're working harder and the label has more power behind it, so it's really interesting to see it happening.

Denis@RRR: For the record, you originally had sixteen songs, and you had to cut down to twelve. Why was this, and will we ever hear the other four songs?

Nick Beard: We were debating having ten songs on the record. That's one of those subjects too, where it's kind of like, no one knows what the right way to do it is, but some of us wanted a really short and just like… so easy to listen to all the way through kinda record, and if you have too many songs, it kinda gets… [makes exhaling sounds]… you want to skip tracks and you want to not listen through to the end. We just wanted a tight, concise record.

Brendan Ekstrom: The attention span of the listener comes into play these days.

Nick Beard: We also wanted to be able to release something later with extra songs, so to answer that question, we will release the rest of the songs at some point.

Denis@RRR: When?

Nick Beard: We actually don't know.

Denis@RRR: Colin's not with us… there goes the art question. Anthony's not with us… I'm going to ask this anyway: has Anthony begun work on his second solo record, and do you know how it's going?

Brendan Ekstrom: It sounds terrible mostly [all laugh], no, he's started working on it, and actually, I was talking to him about it yesterday, he's going to start trying to work a little bit more on actually starting some recording around Christmas time. I don't when you guys are going to hear it, I have no idea.

Denis@RRR: I get the feeling he likes to take his time…

Brendan Ekstrom: Yeah, well, the thing is, he doesn't have much time to take

Denis@RRR: In support of the album, you released three music videos. Tell us about the process of making them, and why you decided to make three…

Nick Beard: Two of them, I'm guessing you're referring to “Get Out“ and “Through The Desert Alone“ and “Imaginery Enemy“, well „Get Out“ and „Through The Desert Alone“ were both shot by our homeboy Jamie, who's with us, he was with us the whole time in the studio, and ever since all the tours we've done, he's been with us, just filming everything, and he cut them together using footage from all that, from the studio, and from the road. So those were kinda… I guess you could call them official videos, but they're more or less like, 'we have this dude shooting video all the time, let's just have him make us a video'

Brendan Ekstrom: And also, we like him, we like his eye for video, and we've got a lot of bad experiences with videos already, and so, I think we were just like, 'hey, this is easy and it's pretty sweet'

Nick Beard: The only real one is “Imaginery Enemy“

Brendan Ekstrom: Yeah, and that, that was a great experience. That was, I think, our first great video experience. The director was awesome, and we had a lot of fun.

Denis@RRR: After this UK tour, you're touring all summer, with several bands; Deftones, Coheed And Cambria, a few others – how good is it to be back on the road again?

Nick Beard: It's the best. It's the beassst! Playing shows is really probably the main reason I even do this, personally, if we didn't play shows, I probably wouldn't care to be in the band [laughs], like if we were just a record creating band, I would get tired of it.

Brendan Ekstrom: You have to have a balance between creating and performing, and the performing thing has become like a need for me, because it's my major outlet for any anxiety or anger, anything that I have, it all comes out on stage, just all that energy. And sometimes after the show, you're almost in euphoria, you know? I need that outlet, or else I fucking go crazy and burn villages down

Denis@RRR: Really?

Brendan Ekstrom: I think about it sometimes.

Denis@RRR: Speaking of burning villages down, tell us a crazy tour story.

Nick Beard: Can we tell that one story?

Brendan Ekstrom: I don't fucking know, I don't know man.

Denis@RRR: For the record of the tape, both band members are looking down and stroking their hair

Brendan Ekstrom: Yeah, we don't like to talk about that kind of stuff. Basically because when I look at band, I don't give a shit if they party. I think that a lot of bands come out there, and they're like, party first, music second, and I want to punch all of those guys in the face. I really think that this should be about the music.

Denis@RRR: Next six months. What are your plans?

Nick Beard: We're going back to the States doing a bunch of small shows, and the bigger Deftones/all that stuff, and I think almost immediately after that…

Brendan Ekstrom: We come back here in September

Nick Beard: I don't that's announced yet, but I think it's announcing soon, so whatever, yeah, we're going to be back in mainland Europe and in the UK for some more fun, September-ish

Brendan Ekstrom: I was thinking about it today, we should bring Moneen over here

Denis@RRR: You should!

Brendan Ekstrom: Did they do well over here?

Denis@RRR: Kenny said that there wasn't much of a crowd for them, he said that the kids that were there, were apologizing at the end, because there weren't many people. But you should bring them. That's all from me. Thank you for sitting down with us today, is there anything you'd like to add?

Brendan Ekstrom: [extended pause] No, thank you very much though for supporting our band, and doing this interview and putting it on your website, and everything like that. We appreciate it.

 

Blue Sky Noise is out now, via Atlantic Records. Circa are on tour all summer in the US, and return to the UK in September.