SOURCE – The Long Dream I is out now! For those who may not have checked it out, what can we expect from this release?
Jake Ewings (guitar) – It’s a 60 minute progressive metal concept album, but we hope it really subverts the expectations associated with such a wanky release. While we tried to explore some pretty complex rhythmic and harmonic ideas, we are all still punk kids at heart, and we want our music to be accessible, so whether you’re into heavy riffs, catchy melodies, stupid chords, or polyrhythms you should be able to find at least something you love.
SOURCE – Are there any kind of particular points of inspiration for these tracks that you would like to discuss?
Jake Ewings (guitar) – Musically we usually draw inspiration from exploring a music theory idea, Explosions After Dark started because we wanted to play with chromatics, Patting the Black Dog was born of the idea to play with a 4 over 7 polyrhythm, things like that. All of the tracks on the album are where those ideas worked our and sounded good, all of the ideas that didn’t work out (and boy were there a lot of them) lived and died in a guitar pro file buried in the depths of our Dropbox.
SOURCE – Do you feel that The Long Dream I is the most eclectic album that Ebonivory have ever made?
Jake Ewings (guitar) – Definitely, I think progressive music in 2020 is really opening up to a really broad definition musically, people all over the planet are drawing influence from pop, latin, trap, hip-hop, and everything in between, I mean half of Leprous’ new album wouldn’t sound out of place if it was released by Billie Eilish. This has really opened us up to a lot of sounds and styles that maybe we would have found too adventurous, even for a 60 minute progressive metal concept album, so the result is that we get to spread our wings and expand our musical vocabulary, and the album is certainly more eclectic for it.
SOURCE – You’ve just released the video for album track Introvection. Can you tell us a bit about the song, what it’s about and the video’s themes?
Jake Ewings (guitar) – We had a massive, high-budget film clip planned for this, but the whole thing got derailed when Covid appeared and luckily Adrian Goleby (Guitar for Caligula’s Horse and legend of a film producer) jumped in and made this art video! Without giving too much away it’s generally about mental health and insomnia, and the isolation and impacts of those two things.
The concept of the video was that a protagonist would be chased across multiple locations and times by an unknown entity, searching for occult clues to lead their escape both away from the entity, and to time and place where they needed to be. The art video Adrian put together used some of the concept art we had in mind to back the song and give it that mysterious time and space vibe!
SOURCE – What have Ebonivory been up to over the last few months of 2020 isolation? Have you done anything via the ever growing social media live circuit?
Jake Ewings (guitar) – We did a full live playthrough of The Long Dream I, which was a crazy thing to organise and rehearse for remotely, we shot it during a period when restrictions were briefly rolled back a little which was very lucky. It was a great experience though, and I think it’s really interesting to see the way different bands are engaging with their fans throughout this.
SOURCE – Do you feel platforms like Spotify with their playlists have helped progressive music reach a broader audience in recent years than say, traditional radio?
Jake Ewings (guitar) – I think yes generally, I look at our Spotify for Artists statistics and while we can see a little spike in our listeners after one of our tracks gets played on the major stations over here in Australia, it’s pretty clear that the vast majority of new fans are finding us through playlists or their discover weekly. It’s definitely how I personally find most new music I listen to, at least for now. 15 years ago it was all about MySpace, then it was YouTube, now it’s Spotify, in another few years we’ll probably be beholden to a secret algorithm on some other platform.
SOURCE – How would you describe the metal scene in your part of Australia? Do you think that the bands, promoters, venues, and fans all work together to keep the scene together and alive – and if you could change anything about it, what would you change and why?
Jake Ewings (guitar) – I think the metal scene in Victoria is incredible! I think it just comes down to how culturally important live music is for all of us, and there’s so many great bands and great organisers that everyone stays humble and keeps their egos away, and whatever we all do we do for the good of the scene. I think the only thing I’d change is the job security issue, I’ve never expected to make good many playing guitar for a living in a progressive-rock band, but I’ve got a lot of friends who are stage hands, lighting techs, sound engineers, etc. who are so far up shit creek right now it breaks my heart. The DIY scene and DIY culture is incredible, and it’s important to keep our music independent and honest, but at some point some money needs to start coming in for the people who are trying to pay their bills with it.
SOURCE – With the current situation across the world that has affected touring, how will Ebonivory plan for 2020 and beyond?
Jake Ewings (guitar) – We’re working to reschedule our US tour with Caligula’s Horse and Moon Tooth, along with a couple of other tours we didn’t even get to announce, but with how things are going, and without getting too political here, how it’s being handled abroad, things are very shaky to make plans on. I think a lot of people underestimate the hours of work and financial outlay in just planning these things, visa’s have application fees, venues need booking, busses need hiring, etc. and until the industry as a whole can be sure we’re not throwing our money into the void because politicians would rather listen to corporations than doctors it’s hard to say anything for certain.
We will tour again in Australia soon, hopefully, we all miss each other dearly, we miss performing live, and we’ve got a lot of friends around the country that we miss as well. Also, I really miss drinking rider beers.
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