Yes, Maybe, No: A Chat with LAURA

After a busy year in 2007, Melbourne instrumentalists LAURA disappeared from local eyes. Touring up and down the country with ISIS, Cog, and on their headline tour promoting last year's live album Re-capitulate, it was time to bunker themselves away and get creative again. I sit down to breakfast with LAURA's drummer and businessman, Dave Gagliardi, who assures me that six months out of the public eye hasn't meant an idle band. "The truth is we haven't been quiet at all, it's all been behind the scenes" Dave laughs.

Late last year, Laura's second album Radio Swan Is Down was released in Japan on the Happy Prince label December just gone. Since then the band have been planning their first jaunt offshore, touring Japan in late June playing four shows in the country in support of the release. It's something to be excited about, but it hasn't been without a lot of work. "It's come together well... it has. I'm exhausted. I kind of can't believe that in two weeks time I'll be packing my bag to get on a plane, and it won't be til I'm sitting on the plane taking off that I'll actually relax.. and go ok we've got everything.. here we go.. let's just go and play a whole bunch of shows."

With a pro-active label on the ground, we discuss and agree on the fact that it is becoming rather affordable to fly to Japan these days thanks to competing airlines and that it's a viable option to tour Japan once a year. Culture wise, Dave says it's the record stores themselves that are the taste-makers over there as there's very little radio and television. He recalls a rather excited email received from the Japanese label earlier in the year along with photos showing the band's album covering a whole shelving unit, and window display in a Japanese record store. Quite the coup, he agrees. The record store is the hang-out in Japan, with many music lovers spending countless hours hanging around, discovering new music. It's somewhere the kids go to find something new, whereas the culture here in Australia, and perhaps most other countries, is that we usually go to the record store already knowing what we want thanks to the radio, television, internet, etc. So to have the band's album so prominently displayed is a massive step in the Japanese market.

So things are looking good for Japan, how about the rest of the world? The offer came in January from Joe at Elevation to record an exclusive EP for them, which is limited to a couple of thousand copies worldwide. "So the whole point of Elevation is... They’re a bit more of a boutique kind of label. They release limited edition EPs, with past releases such as Nadja, and Blood Meridian which is 2 or 3 guys from Black Mountain, so that was cool to be kind of like the.. fourth or fifth band in that..." With the offer though came the mad rush to write new material. With only one new song under their belt between Radio Swan Is Down and the time the offer from Elevation came, it was time to knuckle down in the rehearsal room and studio and begin crafting.

For the recording of Yes Maybe No, the band, who had recently lost their long time rehearsal and recording space at Rancho Cumbo, decided to try out the acoustics of Soundpark Studios in Northcote. Recorded over a weekend, Dave reflects glowingly on the experience: "The experience was the best recording experience I've ever had. Was just great. Just so easy. Everything happened in one take, you know.. which never happens, you know? It was so much fun. I just spent the whole weekend running around like a little kid, so excited about how much fun I was having. Something I'd never experienced before in the recording process." It's an energy definitely felt on the EP. The decision to keep it short and precise was made and kept in mind when considering it was a definite "...foot in the door for the overseas market. For America and for Europe, as it's distributed worldwide."
More about the EP for the moment, I was curious to find out how the song titles had come about, and learn some of the amusing stories behind it all. Bobik is in Amerika gives a little nod to the cold war and space race between Russian and the USA of the 50's and 60's. Bobik, being the dog the Russians had spent years training to be the first dog in space, went missing the day before the launch. On the day, in a last ditch effort to not have wasted all that preparation, the Russians simply found a replacement dog, any random dog, and threw it in the shuttle. I laugh and say there must be some term or saying for such a thing... to spend all that time in preparation only to end up flying blind, as it were, on the day.

So where did Bobik go? 'To America' is LAURA's joke. Probably not far off the mark. Z.I.B. which names three tracks, 1, 2, and 3, simply means 'Replacement for (Z.I.) Bobik (B.)'. These short passages of sound and texture that hold the EP together have been cut from a rather lengthy improvisation the band recorded at the end of its weekend recording session. Seems this was the first time the band had actually completed the music before any words came to the table, and over the table it was "...Sitting down with pen and paper over drinks, tossing ideas around... Something that's a little bit more creative to do with words, because you know.. there's not a lot of words involved with LAURA"

Having just completed the Yes Maybe No EP, seems offers are slowly but surely floating in from all over the globe. Later this year sees a 7" Vinyl release of single Widow's Son, taken from Radio Swan Is Down, on a French label. Still a bit hush-hush at the moment. Europe is obviously in the minds of everyone in LAURA? Hope is definitely there to solidify the band's position in Europe with a release, and give the chance to tour, play some festivals, support some larger bands, and expose themselves to newer audiences who will undoubtedly lap up the sonic excess and beauty of LAURA.
Much lays ahead for this Melbourne sextet. Plenty to keep them busy. But immediate plans for after their return from Japan? "Rest." Still, Australian audiences can look forward to a national tour before 2008 is over and out. In the meantime, catch the band for two last Melbourne shows before their tour of Japan: Friday June 20th at Peninsula Lounge, Moorooduc, and Saturday June 21st at The Corner Hotel, Richmond. Limited copies of Yes Maybe No available at both shows.

www.myspace.com/lauranoise

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