Wild Nothing / Wednesday 13th February / Belgrave Music Hall

SUPER Friendz presents
Wild Nothing
Plus special guests
Wednesday 13th February 2019
Belgrave Music Hall
£12
8pm
14+

Tickets on sale Wednesday 12th September at 10am from DICE - UK, USA & France, Crash Records, Jumbo Records

“Our
technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created
them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about
human beings.”–Ray Kurzweil Although civilization’s transition
into a cyborg world seems inevitable, there are still those
who recognize the beauty and power of a human touch to
complement the circumvention. Jack Tatum understands this
balance, and through a decade making music as Wild Nothing he
has learned to embrace both sides of that dynamic—but perhaps
never as distinctly as on Indigo, the fourth Wild Nothing
album. On one hand, it is a return to the fresh, transcendent
sweep of his debut, 2010’s Gemini, and on the other, a
culmination of heights reached, paths traveled, and lessons
learned while creating the follow-ups, Nocturne and Life of
Pause. Indigo finds Tatum at his most efficient, calculated,
and confident—resulting in an artful blend of hi-fi humanity
and technology that fires on all circuits and synapses.
Whereas Gemini was the sound of Tatum making the album he
imagined in his bedroom and 2012’s Nocturne was the result of
his first turn in a proper studio, followed by 2016’s Life
of Pause, a multi-studio tinkering odyssey spanning time and
spaces, this 2018 maturation finds Tatum arriving at total
creative openness. “My entire 20’s have been spent on this
project, and in that sense you inherently find the limitations
in what you make,” Tatum says. “With the last record I was
trying to stretch out as far as I could, but with Indigo
I’ve created something that has homed in on its own identity.
My life has become less about chasing these creative bursts
and more about learning to channel my creativity.”Every note,
every sound, every breath on a Wild Nothing release is
intentional, and Tatum admits to exhausting every possibility in
his quest for perfection—an arc familiar to all artists. Like
the novelist who admits to gratuitousness in their early
works, Tatum speaks to learning concision. “I’ve been a
musician since age 10,” he says. “It’s always been fun for
me, and there is always going to be a part of making music
that feels like a puzzle: how do I put these pieces together
to create something?”To make Indigo, Tatum confronted the Man
vs. Machine dichotomy by seizing on the surrounding synergy. In
his studio, he would write pieces of songs on guitars, with
keyboards, “in the box” with plug-ins and programs—whatever
held his interest on any given day. Sticking to his routine,
he built a series of highly detailed demos, intending to
record the final package swiftly with a live band in a studio
and—bucking against the trend of the rougher sound of Wild
Nothing’s peers—in a clear, bright, 1980’s-inspired fidelity.
“I’ve finally accomplished a hi-fi sounding record,” Tatum
reflects.
On Indigo, Tatum balances resources and
influences. “I wanted it to sound like a classic studio
record, as close as I could get it there. It just boils down
to me wanting to fit into some larger narrative, musically,
in terms of these artists I love.” Tatum elaborates, “The
records that have influenced the actual sound of Indigo are by
Roxy Music, Kate Bush, and Fleetwood Mac; Roxy Music’s Avalon
is one of my favorite records ever. I think about how my
music will age. Ideas of ‘timeless’ are going to be
different—so if Indigo is not timeless then it’s at least ‘out
of time.”Finding the right people to work on the album was
integral, as was the proper place to record it. Tatum booked
four days at Sunset Sound’s Studio and hired drummer Cam Allen
and guitarist Benji Lysaght to track the record live while
Tatum played bass. Afterwards, producer Jorge Elbrecht (Ariel
Pink, Gang Gang Dance, Japanese Breakfast) and Tatum built out
the rest of the album’s sound by adding new parts and
repurposing sounds from Tatum’s demos. The pair mixed the album
in Denver in ten days, and Tatum brought it back to his
Glassell Park studio in Los Angeles for polishing. The
resulting Indigo is its own cyborg world, utilizing the artful
mechanisms of human touch with the precision of technology to
create the classic, pristine sound Tatum had been seeking his
entire career. From the opening drum beat, chiming guitar, and
sweeping synth of “Letting Go”to Tatum’s Bryan Ferry vocal
turn on “Oscillation” to the ’80s-heavy blips, clicks, and
strut of “Partners in Motion,”it’s clear that Indigo is at
once vintage Wild Nothing and a bold, new leap into a bigger
arena. As for the album’s title, Tatum points to a lyric in
the new song “The Closest Thing To Living”: “Breathe indigo,
it’s the closest thing to living.”“As I was writing that song
I was thinking about the way we’ve merged ourselves with AI,
seeing that subtle, blue iPhone glow on everyone’s faces, and
envisioning this color being representative of our effort to
embrace this change in humanity. So it’s about the idea of
this backlit reality we all live in, and how to accept
that.”The album ends with the driving, wide-open skies and epic
beat of “Bend,” solidifying Indigo as a grand achievement in
scope and sound by a deft and exceedingly thoughtful artist.
Beyond technique, influence, time, and theme, Tatum has
succeeded in extending himself to his utmost capacity. “I don’t
write songs because I have super specific things I want to
say, I write songs because I really care about the way
instruments work together, and I really care about being able
to think about things as a whole, sonically,” Tatum says. “I
write songs for the whole package.”