Interview with Darren Inwood of Heat Like Me
Been around since?
Heat Like Me formed about this time last year.
Current line up?
The lineup changes quite a lot, we're forever adding and subtracting "band members" which is our secret code for synths. (In case anyone isn't sure what a synth is, it's a fancy name for a keyboard.) If we were a rock band, Brenny plays drums, I play bass, Rachel and James play guitar. We all sing. It's really quite a stock standard lineup, despite the intimidating mountain of electronic gear we play with!
Where are you based?
We're based in this tiny room Called 'Casa Del Sintesis', in central Wellington. Sadly we couldn't avoid being upstairs – cos the entire city of Wellington is built on hills, as a musician you get used to lugging equipment up and down stairs.
Musical history? What were you listening to back in high school?
When I was a kid, I was a Black Sabbath fan, and I didn't even know it at the time. I had this mix tape of my favourite songs I'd taped off student radio, but didn't know what they were; over the years, every now and then I'll find another song that was on that tape. One of them was already a Sabbath track, I discovered that one many years ago, but a couple of weeks ago a friend played me another Sabbath track that was also on that tape.
What are you currently listening to?
Live music! Whatever's going, on any given night.
The state of music in NZ is..?
We have a country with a population of a small city anywhere else in the world, and look at the amount of cool music that is constantly coming out. Any genre of music that you care to name, I am quietly confident that someone, somewhere in NZ is making it and doing a great job of it.
What's your favorite place to play?
Totally house parties. We love playing house parties. There's a different set of rules at a house party, people know they're not going to get kicked out for being intoxicated and dancing crazy. And we're all about the dancing crazy.
What was your favorite show?
Heat Like Me has played some really kickass shows! I think my personal favourite is a tossup between the audio-visual installation show we did last night, and the show we did with Charlie Ash and Cosmic Rays Of Death on the weekend. Cos we write new material quite quickly, and consistently we think the new stuff is always another step forward, each show we do is another opportunity to play our newest tunes to people. So for me every gig has been better than the last one, and I expect that to continue indefinitely!
What is your recording process?
The eventual recording process will be 100% analog. We're passionate about analog. Analog synths, recorded on magnetic tape, mixed on analog equipment. The idea is to get the sound all the way from our analog synths onto vinyl, without anything digital ever touching the sound. It's how things used to work in the 60's and 70's, and it sounded amazing - have you listened to Dark Side Of The Moon on vinyl?
What's been your best recording experience?
What's been your worst recording experience?
We record things as we write them in one form or another, and being that we don't need to put microphones in front of our instruments, it generally sounds exactly how we want it to. This is probably a recording engineer's dream band. We can plug into my mp3 player and it still sounds great. Recording isn't a problem, the fun part is getting stuck into production – choosing and tweaking the sounds themselves until they're just right. Rachel did lock us out of the studio once tho, we had to carry a ladder across town from Casa Del Sintesis and use it to break in thru the window! Yeah, that was pretty cool.
Favorite radio show/station?
Pitchfork TV.
The Future holds…?
The future holds new songs, darker songs. We're recording our next EP this weekend at James' parents bach in Te Horo, we're going to Melbourne in a few weeks, we're releasing a 7" vinyl, and we're writing our album. We're playing some sweet shows coming up, we're doing this one gig on the moon, it's going to rule. Those moon men won't know what hit 'em.
Our EP, 'You Want It' is currently available by emailing
heatlikeme@gmail.com for $10 plus postage and packaging.
ENDS
