Interview from Jan '09 Courier Mail

Yves Klein Blue are about to head off on The Big O tour; an orientation week festival hitting universities in each state. They're also getting ready to release their debut album in May, and as a sneak peek of things to come, you can download a free copy of their current single, Polka.

They're obviously pretty busy at the moment, but lead guitarist Charles Sale took the time to answer a few questions for BrizBands:

1. You're named after a type of paint who knows enough about painting that you were able to come up with Yves Klein Blue as your official band name?
Well, someone owned a calendar which featured prominent 20th century artists. None of us are particularly knowledgeable in the field or art history, but it sounded nice!

2. What's the first album you bought that really got you considering music as a career?
Personally it was The Living End and I would have been about 10 years old when it was released. I then became thoroughly obsessed with the band for about a year, and would draw the Living End as if they were animal cartoon characters. I have no idea why.

3. What band or musician, alive or dead, would you like to meet?
I have been in the presence of a few people who were influential to me in the past, though I never say anything to them in fear of being an annoying fanboy. For the sake of the question… I’ll say Alex Chilton.

4. If you could ask them one question, what would it be?
It’d probably be something along the lines of “OH MY GOD PLAY A SHOW IN AUSTRALIA.” Though hopefully not that out of control.

5. Do you guys ever get nervous before a show?
Occasionally, though most of the times my senses are dulled by 4 different factors.

a. Too much alcohol, this can happen and it’s not a good thing. Be responsible!
b. Fatigue.
c. Bloating from bad food.
d. Completely forgetting to either restring my guitar, or just completely forgetting the guitar. That has happened, twice. On the same occasion. With the same guitar.

With these factors in place, I often even forget I have a show to play before I’m onstage.



6. If so, what do you do to ease the nerves?
If I’m nervous I will just listen to aggressive music loudly and have a drink. That tends to ease things a little.

7. What are the best and worst parts of a tour?
The best part is when you’re onstage and it’s wonderful and the crowds are great and you meet cool people. The worst part is having to then lug 100KGs of gear into a waiting van and then get up at some brutally early time and go on a flight and your head hurts.

8. What's your favourite thing to do on the weekend?
Well, when we’re generally on tour we’re playing shows! Otherwise I will stay at home and do very little. That’s usually the case, though sometimes I’ll venture out of my bedroom into natural light to forage.

9. How will you be celebrating Australia Day?
Probably going to the coast with my girlfriend and having a BBQ. There is nothing more Australian than cooked animal, apparently.

10. As a fairly successful local Brisbane band, what one piece of advice would you give to emerging bands?
Work hard and play shows, and if you can’t get shows, throw a party and then play at it!

taken from: http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/brizbands/index.php/couriermail/comments/yves_klein_blue_interview/

KEEPING THE BEAT

AS THEY EMBARK ON THE TOUR CELEBRATING THE RELEASE OF THEIR DEBUT ALBUM RAGGED & ECSTATIC, YVES KLEIN BLUE FRONTMAN AND SONGWRITER MICHAEL TOMLINSON AND GUITARIST CHARLES SALE TALK TO STEVE BELL ABOUT CONFRONTATION, ISOLATION AND COMING OUT ON TOP.

It’s been a steep learning curve for aspiring Brisbane rock quartet Yves Klein Blue, but from afar it seems that they’ve managed to cross every hurdle placed before them with relative ease. In the past two years they’ve toured extensively overseas, played a host of high profile supports, strutted their stuff on the stages of the big Australian festivals and even had songs soundtracking high profile commercials, and all on the back of their presciently-titled debut EP Yves Klein Blue Draw Attention To Themselves.

Now they can add to their catalogue the remarkably assured full-length effort Ragged & Ecstatic, a diverse collection of songs that they recorded in North Hollywood under the watchful eye of American producer Kevin Augunas (Cold War Kids). While justifiably proud of the final product, as the band members explain it the road to the album’s completion wasn’t all smooth sailing.

“It’s been a long time,” Tomlinson reflects on the album’s genesis. “For us it’s been almost a year of continuous slog. We started the demos mid last year, and we didn’t finish the record until this March on the first day of the Laneway tour. Then it was getting mixed while we were overseas on tour around America and the UK. We’d wake up and go sightseeing, then we’d play a gig, and then we’d get home and as we’d get home as the sun was rising and the mixes would be there waiting for us. It’s been flat out – not only the writing process, which went on indefinitely before that, but also the whole recording process was incredibly intense for a long time. Seeing the album finished is incredible. This is the first time that we’re able to have a definitive record of what we’re about. It’s all been leading to this for us.”

After decamping to America to record the album, the band found themselves confronting a very different recording experience than the one that they had initially envisaged.

“There was an agenda for what we wanted from the album going into the studio, but it got changed as soon as we got there,” Sale recounts. “It was, ‘Why the hell are we here? What’s the point of this? Why are we booked in for a month just to go in there and play the songs?’ At the start we thought that we were going to go in there and do it live, but once we got there we realised that we weren’t good enough to just fire it out and needed to spend some time on the songs.”

“Because we’d been playing together for two years we had a number of songs, so the most important thing for us was to make the best possible record with the best possible songs that we had,” Tomlinson continues. “We wanted to show the full range of songs and give the record an ebb and flow, and make the record like a record that we would love to listen to ourselves. We wanted to make it an experience, a sit down pop record with ten to twelve great songs. We thought what we’d do is tour the fuck out of it and then cut it live, but in the end we wouldn’t have got the record that we ended up with – and the record that we’re so proud of – if we had done that.

“So we got to the studio thinking that we were going to cut it live, and Kevin Augunas – the producer that we worked with – said, ‘What song do you want to start with? What song are you excited about?’ And we started with a newer song called ‘Soldier’, and we listened to the demo and he said, ‘Well, this song needs a lot of work’. And we’d been thinking that all of these songs were perfect and ready to go. So he began to rearrange it by stripping it back and we immediately realised that the drum beat and the bass line weren’t lining up, and that was a fucking awful moment for us. It was a really challenging moment – we were four cocky guys who thought we had it all, and then we realised that we still had a ways to go. Kevin’s contribution to the record was that he said, ‘Is this good enough?’. And as soon as that seed of doubt was planted by an objective third party, we knew we had to work really hard in the studio. The result is just that five percent extra – in grooves, arrangements, lyrics and everything – which has made this record better than what we thought would be possible.”

Being confronted in this manner, while somewhat threatening at first, was ultimately an invaluable lesson in the eyes of the band.

“It was definitely tough to face at first, but once we realised that Kevin was right it was awesome,” Sale offers. “We had a love/hate relationship with Kevin at times, but he did some really good shit and he changed our way of thinking, and we’re way better off for the experience. Hopefully next record will be even better again.

“We learned a great number of lessons about the music that we make and the music that we like to listen to,” Tomlinson agrees. “To become an editor of your own work takes a huge amount of discipline, and I think Kevin taught us a lot about discipline by being so uncompromising. In the end Kevin was right some of the times, and sometimes we were right, but there were two people going head to head and this synthesis – this huge dialectic.”

The impact of this clash of ideas on the young band was magnified by the fact that they were overseas and out of the confines of their natural respective comfort zones.

“At times we felt totally alone and isolated, and we had no choice but to face the confrontation,” Tomlinson continues. “I don’t think we would have been so receptive if we were in Sydney and could just get on the phone to our friends and family – if we had our support systems we wouldn’t have had to face it. So in many ways I think that was crucial to the whole thing – that we were away from home trying to stand on our own two feet. It was too important for us to fuck up – that was the main thing. There was no way we could fuck this up because there was too much at stake, and if we ever gave up we’d just be screwing ourselves over, so we were determined.”

It’s apt then that the album’s title Ragged & Ecstatic is taken from a passage of iconic Beat author Jack Kerouac’s legendary travel tome On The Road.

“In On The Road Kerouac talks about ‘the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being’ – which is something that my little brother suggested we call the album after I recommended that book to him. Immediately I felt that it summed up what our band was like – a little bit of a shambles, but maybe like a well-oiled shambles,” Tomlinson laughs. “We’re just thrilled to be doing it – we aren’t the best and we aren’t the worst – but we’re trying our hardest. The experience in the studio was one of absolute despair and absolute triumph, and the lyrical content of the album is all about finding out about the world by living and experiencing defeat. I guess the mantra of the lyrical content is ‘hope not defeat’, so it seemed to be really fitting and indicative of both the band and the album.”

WHO: Yves Klein Blue

WHAT: Ragged & Ecstatic (Dew Process/Universal)

taken from: http://www.timeoff.com.au/html/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2951:yves-klein-blue&catid=11:features&Itemid=29

Blue about the future

Yves Klein Blue sing About the Future

Noel Mengel
June 25, 2009


"WHAT this generation needs is a war," Michael Tomlinson croons on a song called About The Future.

It's not so shocking as it reads in print, as he goes on to sing about the ills and dilemmas facing his generation – he's 22 – part-serious, part-mocking.

Those ills, it turns out, aren't so very different from the problems every generation of youth faces: Where do we fit in this big world, how can we best make use of our allotted time in it, why the hell are we so apathetic in the face of the challenge?

About the Future is a fantastic song, one among numerous gems on Ragged and Ecstatic, the debut album by Yves Klein Blue.

"Ragged and ecstatic" is a phrase borrowed from Jack Kerouac but it neatly sums up the pop thrills on the Brisbane four-piece's debut album, recorded in Los Angeles earlier this year.

About the Future is a big topic – Tomlinson, guitarist and chief songwriter, isn't afraid of those – and it's delivered as a simple but energetic acoustic guitar tune.

As with the band's best-known song to this point, Polka, there is something old-timey about it, like some escapee from a particularly black stage musical.

"It's difficult to know what phenomena are unique to your generation," Tomlinson offers. "You know how in the '60s people had a movement and something to get behind, bucking the system? Today everybody is doing their own thing. It's very easy to feel little about everything."

Tomlinson is sitting with guitarist Charles Sale, his musical collaborator since they met at high school in Brisbane.

Their conversation is as entertaining as the band's colourful songwriting, bouncing ideas and asides off each other in the way that old friends can do.

Tomlinson: "The first time I played guitar was at my grandma's house. It only had two strings on it and I wrote this really crappy song. Then I wrote a song about a rapping chicken. And one about eating vomit for the primary school talent show in grade seven . . ."

Sale: "At high school, you interviewed me. You were, 'So what music do you like?' And I was like, 'Led Zeppelin'. You were, 'Cool. See you later'. That was it!"

Tomlinson: "We had a rocking high school band called The Mighty Morphine Powder Railers. Not that we did morphine at high school or ever, except for the time I got my arm broken and . . ."

Sale: "We didn't sound too far off what we do today but there were more Strokes references and Stooges references."

That band fell apart after school, Sale and Tomlinson continued their university studies while spending plenty of time in a home studio working up new songs.

With the addition of bassist Sean Cook and drummer Chris Barnham, Yves Klein Blue was born.

Independently recorded 2008 EP Yves Klein Blue Draw Attention To Themselves certainly did that – as did the youthful fizz of their live performances.

The band signed to Brisbane label Dew Process, home of The Grates and The Living End.

Chief among the EP's pleasures was the daffy, scuzzy Polka, which also appears on the new album. It starts with a bouncy, polka-ish rhythm before exploding into a howl of, well, ecstatic guitars.

Clearly Tomlinson is a songwriter who enjoys exploring deeper than last year's pop charts. Summer Sheets has a ska beat; Gin Sling is an authentic slice of country-rock; Make Up Your Mind and Getting Wise are delirious pop tunes.

"Polka," Tomlinson reveals, "that's all about listening to (gypsy jazz legend) Django Reinhardt. That's the rhythm I was apeing but obviously it's not what came out. I also listen to old blues guys, crooners, old cowboy songs.

"I just love songs and melody.

"When I was younger I messed with the sound of guitars and synthesisers but doing this record I realised, I don't listen to music like that. I listen to Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, The Clash.

"It seems like the most important thing is not changing the order of the parts or making a huge art show out of it, but just having those incredible parts and arranging them in the classic way.

"That seems to me to be the most beautiful form.

"We don't think about styles. If something's cool, we don't care if it's a ska song or a country song. We like The Specials and we like Neil Young, so what's the problem?"

And the LA experience, recording with producer Kevin Augunas?

Tomlinson: "The level was intense. We were in a two-room apartment that was 10 minutes walk from the studio. There was nothing else for us to do but obsess about the music . . ."

Sale: "Michael is definitely obsessive."

Tomlinson: "It's also fun for me to be obsessive."

Sale: "You can't have fun unless everything is being obsessed over."

Tomlinson: "That's true. That's what I get a kick out of I suppose."

With Ragged and Ecstatic, there are plenty of those kicks to share around.

Ragged and Ecstatic (Dew Process/Universal) is out tomorrow.

Yves Klein Blue play Bon Amici, Toowoomba tonight; Powerhouse Theatre, Brisbane tomorrow (sold out); Sound Lounge, Gold Coast, Saturday; Woombye Pub, Sunday.

taken from: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25684824-5003421,00.html