Mental Powers interview

If you live in Perth and go to decent gigs semi-regularly, then surely you are familiar with these guys.
Mental Powers started some years ago, first as Microwaves. As a matter of fact I organised their first show at the Hydeys back in the day. They had Claire (now in Golden Staph) and Jacob Smith (currently not playing in bands, as fas as I know) and they were awesome.
Soon they changde the line up and the name and started playing more and more show, with each show getting heaps and heaps better. Now, yes, I've seen them a couple of times when they were so-so, but then I've seen them at least ten times when they were brilliant. Brilliant, I say!


How to describe them? See the review below. A bunch of nice guys with clear idea in mind of what the band should be like/about. It took them a while to reply to my questions, but here is the interview, finally:


When Mental Powers first started as Microwaves, everyone involved was studying Art at university – did you all meet at school and decide to pursue musical adventures together? At that time could you see yourself still making music some years later?
Microwaves and Mental Powers could be seen as separate ventures. Mircowaves started out playing at a party, the line-up changed a few times but it we didn’t really think to hard about what we played or practice that much. By the time we christened ours MP we got a bit more focussed and started to see ways we could develop. It is right that we all went to Art school, but none of us really studied together, and we didn’t all go to the same Uni. We knew got to know one another outside of our studies.
Lewis become associated with the band a bit later on. Since then the evolution of our music has slowly been taking place ever since and now we seem to have settled into some kind of vernacular. So I suppose whenever we found ourselves looking to the future it was always in terms of the next gig, or how we could develop a new song, or working on a recording or whatever. We have just stuck at it to be honest.



Mental Powers seem like a strong collective of individuals where the whole band make decisions together. Is this the case? Please describe your creative process. How do MP create songs?
I guess it is true that we are a strong collective, we collaborate on equal terms, nobody takes on the role of leader. Our music grows from week to week, we are a once a week band, every Saturday we get together, that’s band day. We meet at Jamie’s, have a cup of tea, listen to a bit of music, watch some TV and then we have a play, a break, play some Frisbee, play a bit more, talk about what’s working and what isn’t that’s pretty much it. Some have described us as a band that always sounds different to the last time they saw us, that’s not surprising considering the way we work. We allow ourselves the space to vary what we do within a song, there may be rough parts and rough structures but it’s not important that we get it perfect because we never become attached to some ideal way a song should be played. We do latch onto ideas and sounds that stand out as interesting or exciting, and those ideas or sounds are what make up the meat of a song, but nothing is ever locked in solid. Its an unusual process in many ways, it may be born (in part) out of our lack of technical proficiency, and also the trance-y, repetitive nature of our music, but its also to do with our desire to develop the music week by week rather than say “right, that songs finished we can put that into our bag of tricks and start on the next one”. No Mental Powers song comes to fruition in a day, we seem to have a beat or a guitar part or whatever, some nugget that we like and then we keep playing it each week trying out new things are adding things, removing things, thinking up a change or a movement within the track, get a sense of where it starts, where it goes and where it ends. Slowly it forms, sometimes very slowly, but that’s the only way we can do it. With some of our recent songs we have been keeping it pretty simple in terms of structures and the complexity of the main theme/part. Once we have a simple central idea we find a way of playing it that is self-perpetuating, parts flow well, and the song has drive, that involves organising ourselves and the song more than some people might think. There is a lot that goes into a song of ours that might appear to be something we are just jamming out, a cacophony of sound, even an auditory assault in some cases, but there is a particular quality we are looking for, its subtle and we may not always hit it. Most of the time its about momentum, we’re very rhythmic, especially these days.



How much is MPs music improvised live?
I wouldn’t say we play that much improv live. Some tracks are a bit looser, but again we may like it that way for whatever reason, but we still try and considered what each instrument is doing. We might play something for longer at one gig, than shorter at another, maybe a little faster, slower, we might hang onto a part of a song for a bit longer where the rhythm is a certain way, there may be subtle shifts in the rhythm that we couldn’t have predicted, but that is more to do with the feeling at the time, the energy of the music at the time, rather than some predetermined decision to variate or improvise.

Was your CD recorded all live or all instruments separately? How did MP handle the studio and do you feel it is different from practice/live show.
The recording process went surprisingly well considering we were a little out of our element. We recorded a certain way based on suggestions from our recording engineer for the session Jay Brandner. We did record some instruments separately and used a few overdubs on some of the tracks. It was a good process for us to learn about, the music became a little leaner, a little tighter than normal because we were working out the bugs slowly, and making sure we had good takes. We are glad we approached the recording process in this way for the first time proper, jumping into the deep end so to speak. Before we went to the studio we rehearsed the 3 songs we wanted to record, two of them were pretty new at the time but we liked them enough to record them.
In a way we treated the recording session like a gig, except the gig lasted a whole long weekend. It was raining a lot of the time outside, be were bunked down so we didn’t notice, it felt like we were down there until the Monday evening, so that was a both fun and but also intense thing for us able to work on something together for that long. Currently we have been working on recordings at home, utilising a combination of all live and overdubbing techniques and learning a lot as we go. We have recorded at home before, hopefully this time we will only be better at finding out what works.

How do you see MP in the not too distant future.
We see the band chugging along as usual. Playing shows here and there, hopefully we will have a couple of recordings out. At the moment we are looking forward to playing our first gig in awhile.