Sights & Sounds – Andrew Neufeld
Posted on June 27, 2009 at 12:00 am by Luke

Sights & Sounds

During their stop in London, Ontario this past May, guitarist/vocalist Andrew Neufeld of Sights & Sounds and I took a stroll into the parking lot of Call The Office and conversed about all things Sights & Sounds. This new band takes huge ideas from different minds and countries and puts them into music form, through the medium of post-hardcore that is. So here’s my chat with Andrew about his goals for this well equipped band.

WayTooLoud!: How did this band begin and how did everyone find each other?

Andrew Neufeld: This band is me and my brother Joel [Neufeld], who plays drums, one of my best friends Matt [Howes], who plays bass, and are other guitar player Adrian [Mottram], who’s known Matt for a long time. When we just had written one song, Adrian flew… we were in Winnipeg at the time, and Adrian flew from Toronto to hang out and we ended up recording on his laptop, using ProTools, just the one song, and he helped with guitars so we were like “Hey, join the band!”. It worked out ‘cuz we were all over the place anyway as far as where we live so it wasn’t too much of a stretch to have another long distance member.

WTL!: What’s it like having a brother in the same band?

Andrew: It’s so cool! I remember being so young and watching his bands play and loving it so much. Because of him I was so motivated, even before I was able to play music, just watching my older brother play music and play in bands was kind of the motivation for me to start doing this. Now I’ve done it since I was twelve years old, or something, and now I can make somewhat of a life out of it, so it’s really cool to be playing with him, we’re like best friends too!

WTL!: No feuds of any sort?

Andrew: No, not really. It’s really cool ‘cuz we can give each other shit at the right times and criticize each others faults on music, but then we really admire each others talents. We want each other to be better all the time! I think that’s important for musicians that are playing together, just to always be pushing everyone to the best that they can be, in a nice way.

WTL!: You just reminded me of something, when you said you we’re doing this since you were twelve, so just for the record, I haven’t been able to find anything on Wedged!

(Laughs)

Andrew: We had a song on a comp a long time ago… how did you know about Wedged?

WTL!: You told me last fall when you were here with Comeback Kid!

(Laughs)

WTL!: “Monolith” just came out, did you have any goals in mind when creating and recording the album?

Andrew: Pretty much the album that we made was what we were going for. With our EP, it was kind of demos just to get the basic idea of our songs, we just recorded it ourselves, just tryna figure out what the band sounds like. With “Monolith”, it’s the kind of record with the drums, guitars, bass, vocals, just a rock band but there’s a lot more elements and layers that we added to the music like lots of samples, lots of eastern samples, a world influence, it’s really cool just to be thinking about basically any kind of ideas and at least giving them a shot! Ideas that we think are cool and being open to new things to make a really, really big and powerful record. Big sounds with lead guitars and some cool effects going, just all the cool fun stuff that we like doing with production to make a big powerful record that’s focused and heavy, but a record that can breath with mellow songs, and it has really heavy songs. It’s just a really different thing, I don’t know too many other bands who are doing it.

WTL!: It’s a far cry from what you’re use to with hardcore, so where did the inspiration come from for this band and this music?

Andrew: I think the inspiration is just always wanting to do music and be able to do more melodic music ‘cuz I’ve done hardcore bands for so long, it’s time to expand a little bit. I love hardcore and I’m gonna keep on doing that, I live through that all the time, I love the band and I’ll keep on doing Comeback Kid, but there comes a point, I’m getting older, and I wanna try out different kinds of music. Just be able to have a little more free space to create, to try different kinds of things.

I used to play guitar in CBK, originally when I stopped playing guitar in CBK I didn’t want to just stop being a guitar player, I started singing in CBK and if it wasn’t for Sights & Sounds I wouldn’t be playing guitar, I wouldn’t have a reason to. I’m a guitar player and that’s what I want to do!

WTL!: I remember you saying that before, about playing the guitar! It must be nice to be back playing your guitar in a band!

Andrew: Yeah! It’s my thing!

(Laughs)

WTL!: I was talking with Adrian earlier about the album name and it was very interesting what he was saying about it, can you tell me anything else behind the title “Monolith”?

Andrew: He just suggested it one day in the studio. The central thing for this record is we’re all coming at it from different places and we’d kind of meet up and write at different periods, it was really like a big focus in our heads, I don’t know if you’d say obsessed, but all of us were really, really focused on this band and what we wanted to do with this band! It was kind of a “monolith” in our minds! It was such an important thing for us to do, as musicians and as people we really wanted to do this record together.

WTL!: What do you like to write about now?

Andrew: I’m just kind of writing about different things, experiences. I travel a lot and I write about that, and I had a relationship with a girl in Australia for the last three years, there’s crazy stuff that’s happened with that. Just writing about traveling and having different experiences, hanging out with friends, shit going wrong, going to far sometimes and feelings fucked up sometimes. There’s some songs about America’s horrible foreign policy, right now my oldest brother is a Canadian and works in the States, and his wife and oldest kid are Canadian as well, but his youngest kid is American and his wife and oldest are having legal troubles, so the family’s all separated right now, and I actually wrote a song on the record called “Borderline” about a different situation, he had a wife and kid in the States, he just had trouble getting into the States, I wrote about that and the same thing happens to my brother, it’s really crazy!

This world is… there’s a lot of things to write about in this world, and [I just wanna] try and get better at writing lyrics.

WTL!: The lyrics and songs seem emotional and expressive, do you have a personal favorite song on the album that means most to you?

Andrew: Probably the first song on the record, “Sorrows”, it’s a two-part song that encapsulates and brings together what we wanted to do with this band. The ambient sounds and heavy sounds and lighter sounds, it brings it all together, I love it!

WTL!: How did you guys hook up with Devin Townsend for production, he normally works with heavier bands doesn’t he?

Andrew: I just emailed him out of the blue. I know some of his old stuff, but I didn’t know what an awesome producer and musician that guy is! After we talked a little bit I emailed him some of our songs and he seemed interested and I think he had a vision like we had. We talked on the phone, we talked about all the crazy shit that we’re into and that we wanted to make a really intense record, and he was on board. He’s really awesome at creating things on the fly and adding cool little sounds and subtle things, you know the kind of record you listen to in your head phones and you have a little flutter in your right ear.

(Laughs)

WTL!: I wanna know more about the crazy cover art, ‘cuz Adrian mentioned something about his girlfriend taking a picture with her cell phone in another country?

Andrew: Yeah, and I just fucked with it in iPhoto. I boosted the sepia and color all the way to nine and that created this crazy looking thing! Pretty awesome! The old singer from CBK, Scott Wade, did the layout and we used different photos, it turned out really well. You like it?

WTL!: Yeah, its totally different!

Andrew: As simple as the concept was, it turned out pretty cool.

WTL!: Tell me about the video for “Reconcile”, who came up with the idea for black and white pictures glued together for a video?

Andrew: We have a good friend who’s a photographer out in Winnipeg, his name is Jon Schledewitz and he took lots of black and white pictures, it’s all done on film, he developed all of the pictures. We came up with the story line, we’d do seven second intervals of playing or acting and he’d take pictures, so I guess it was like seven seconds maximum, then start where we left off and he’d keep going. It’s just us playing and it followed a story of this guy that gets a little too overboard and gets facedown in the dirt at the end of the night.

WTL!: How long did it take?

Andrew: One day of live stuff and then one day of outdoor and story stuff. We had a couple friends helping us, an editor named Randy Frykas in Winnipeg, he edited it all up and a friend got us all the locations. It’s really cool, we’re gonna get some of those guys to do another video for us!

WTL!: It’s pretty cool, I don’t think I’ve seen anything really like it.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s pretty original! John had done a video like that before for a hip-hop artist, so that’s where we got the idea from.

WTL!: I was wondering ‘cuz most people search for a director, you guys searched for a photographer.

Andrew: I seen a video that he did and thought “John, this is great! Can we do something a little bit different?”, so the same concept but different [video].

WTL!: The album just came out, you guys are on tour, what’s next for Sights & Sounds?

Andrew: Hopefully tour more. Right now we’re kind of in the process of signing to six different labels, we’re not tryna get a big label or anything, but we’re just hooking up with smaller labels; one in the US, one in the UK, one in Europe, Japan, Australia, and they’re all gonna release the record between now and summer, and our plans are to try and hit all these countries pretty much in the first year of the record coming out. We’ll try and do Canada and the US a whole bunch of times, Europe maybe a couple times, Australia once, maybe Japan once. It’d be kind of cool if we could cover a big amount of space in a short period of time. That’s the plan for the record.

WTL!: I like asking Canadian bands this question, ‘cuz I know you’ve toured in the US, have you had the chance to try White Castle?

Andrew: Yeah, don’t like it! Soggy, tiny burgers, not down with that! It’s horrible! That’s what I hate about America, White Castle!

(Laughs)

WTL!: Do you or anyone else in the band have any other projects on the go, like jobs or other bands?

Andrew: I do Comeback Kid; last month I went to Portugal to produce a hardcore band called Devil In Me, their record’s gonna come out in a few months. I’ve done a couple small music things for documentaries. Pretty much when I’m off tour and not doing band stuff I try to find other music related projects to do.

WTL!: What documentaries have you done?

Andrew: One’s called “Face”, it’s just a documentary about a guy who did woo shoo and he was going for the 2008 Asian Olympics. I got to make some crazy music [for when] the guy’s fighting. It’s just about a guy that goes through Canada, it aired on CTV.

WTL!: For Devil In Me, was this your first time producing, how was it?

Andrew: Yeah it was, it was really cool! I know the band so I went there and just worked on the songs and worked on pretty much everything. I was in Europe for a CBK tour so I hung out for a few weeks, went and did the CBK tour then went back and finished most of it up, we’re still working on it.

WTL!: Do you want to produce again someday?

Andrew: I’d hope so! I’d like to, but right now my main thing is I want to be playing in my own band. Maybe one day, or if I could do something like that once or twice a year ‘til I could do it more, that’d make me pretty happy!

WTL!: What have you been listening to lately?

Andrew: The new Greg Dulli record, Greg Dulli from Twilight Singers and Afghan Whigs; listening to a band called The Raveonettes, been listening to Cult of Luna, listening to just a lot of mellow stuff.

WTL!: Last time you said Dolly Parton, ‘cuz of your merch girl!

(Laughs)

Andrew: Yeah, I asked her for sad, country female singers, I’m not into country, and Dolly Parton has that really sad song, that “Jolene” song. It’s a pretty happy beat I guess…

(Laughs)

WTL!: Who would you like to tour with who’s both feasible and not obvious?

Andrew: Mew, that’s one of my main influences and definitely one of my favorite bands! They’re from Denmark, a powerful, heavy, rock band.

WTL!: Same question but minus the feasibility, so you can choose any band from any era.

Andrew: Nirvana, that’s pretty big… U2.

(Laughs)

WTL!: Hey, it’d be arenas every night!

Andrew: Yeah! Can you imagine Nirvana and U2 playing together? That’d be weird! (Laughs)

WTL!: Is there anywhere in the world you’d like to tour?

Andrew: Right now with Sights & Sounds, my main goal is to do all of Europe, the UK, Australia. I mean I’m going to Australia and Europe pretty often already, I’m going there right after this tour with CBK, and my girlfriend lives in Australia, but I’d love for this band to do that! With the new record, that’s what we want to do.

WTL!: I know band name questions get old very quickly, but at the same time the album title and all the lyrics all have deeper meanings, so I’m wondering if the name Sights & Sounds means something as well?

Andrew: The plan that we have for this band, even though it’s a slow build, is a pretty elaborate plan, just the things that we want to do and things that we hope to do. We hope to use images a lot more, like our shows, when we’re not playing first out of five on a tour like this, maybe once a week or so, kind of do our thing. We’d love to have projections on stage, different things going on and we just wanna do really cool things and we all have different ideas of what we wanna do, we’d really like to make this band “sights” and “sounds”. We’re always open to creative ideas and we like to think outside the box.

WTL!: You wanna make it an experience!

Andrew: Yeah, we’d like it to be! Like I said, right now it’s a slow build, it takes a lot of stuff to get to where we want. Hopefully eventually we can talk in two or three years and it’ll be a totally different and better experience!

WTL!: Well I think you might have something here with this band, ‘cuz I noticed a lot of the kids tonight were getting into your performance!

Andrew: Yeah, people have been really nice to us, and it’s also nice to not get heckled off stage!

(Laughs)

WTL!: Thanks a lot for this interview!

Andrew: Thanks!

Sights & Sounds at MySpace

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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