It’s been nearly three years since Mystery Jets’ critically acclaimed record, Radlands, was released, and the band are finally about to drop their follow-up, Curve Of The Earth. It’s the band’s fifth record and front man Blaine Harrison tells us about how it all came together and what we can expect from the band in the new year. “We’ve been off the touring circuit for a couple of years and we’ve just been in studio mode for two years and it’s crazy; you forget that there’s a flipside to what we do, which is touring around and playing shows. I’m really excited about getting out on the road and playing this record because we’ve put a lot into it and I can’t wait to show it to people,” he said.
The band haven’t just been in ‘studio mode’ though, since their last record they’ve actually built their own studio in London. Harrison says they were motivated to create their own space after years of collecting and building their own gear, from there the band eventually decided to self-produce Curve Of The Earth. “We had a couple of producers visit us in the studio and I remember showing them around saying, ‘Okay this is the room we want to do it in and here’s the songs, so how should we do this?’ And they were like, ‘You’re already doing it, you don’t need us!’ So it wasn’t even a conscious decision to produce it ourselves, but that’s how it turned out.”
Reflecting on the decision to self produce Harrison says the whole process was a learning curve, “I realised on this record that production is as much about working with people as it is with sounds. So much of it is about getting the best performance out of a person, or yourself. Producing a record is about making the person behind the microphone feel like they’re Michael Jackson, making them feel like an absolute legend as soon as the record button goes on.”
Curve Of The Earth doesn’t drop until January 15th, but the first single “Telomere” is out now, complete with a video featuring Harrison completely covered in clay. “The idea with the clay was we wanted to create a sort of abstraction of the human form because the song deals with the idea that we’re moulded by the experiences that we have in life and using clay to form and change the shape of the body,” said Harrison.
Harrison explains that “Telomere” is about life quite literally from a microscopic perspective at life. “Telomeres are the caps on our DNA holding the strands together, so I think that song really is about looking at the human essence, really looking at life itself, very close up. Asking questions like where do we come from, do we have a predetermined fate and what characteristics do we inherit from our ancestors.”
Thematically, it sounds like Mystery Jets have really delved into some interesting and personal places. “An important lyrical theme for Curve Of The Earth is scale. Looking at life from different perspectives, there’s songs like “Telomere” [and then] there are songs which zoom further out and look at our experiences of life almost from the perspective of looking down at it.”
Harrison is hopefully optimistic about a return to Australia following the albums release in January, “We’re already talking to somebody about coming out in spring and I really hope it comes through because I love touring Australia.” Fingers crossed we could be getting a taste of Curve Of The Earth very soon, Harrison says he is keen to get out into the regional areas so perhaps a Groovin’ The Moo appearance is on the cards? “I’d love to explore some of the smaller towns, I love playing in the more remote places because I grew up in the countryside and always remember feeling so excited about when a band came to town and there’s nothing that quite beats that,” he said.
Looking ahead to what 2016 will hold for Mystery Jets, Harrison is excited at the prospect of producing new visual elements for their show. “We’ve always wanted to make a record that would give us a chance to really play with visuals. It’s our most personal record and also feels like the record that would be most suited to using projections and using imagery. I don’t want to say too much about it because it’s in the pipeline, but expect a show you haven’t seen before from us.”
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Curve of the Earth is out on January 15th via Caroline Australia!
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