Our sound has just evolved really, but right from the first rehearsal, we kind of had it in the bag.
Oceansize finally burst onto the European scene last year after a period of continual touring in the UK, as well as the release of their debut album Effloresce by Beggars Banquet in August, ’03. It has been a steady and impressive rise from this Manchester band who now find themselves in the position of being one of the Britain’s most powerful rock bands currently, producing a unique taste of loud rock.
And powerful their sound is – performing the delicate balance of mixing the gentler moments of tracks like ‘Massive Bereavement’ with some vicious progressive rock on a track like…well, ‘Massive Bereavement’. But that’s the life of an Oceansize song. They take you on a journey, as if the music is a winding road on the edge of a cliff for the first time. You know you’ll get from A to B, but you have no idea what is around the next bend, or even if you’ll be thrown from the cliff along the way. Each track is built up with multiple layers of guitar and manipulations, meaning there are always new aspects to discover on each listen, and despite showing such complete control of execution over their instruments, the raw energy and noise emanating from them is much more wild and dangerous than you would expect, making Oceansize the perfect band if you appreciate a good slice of noise terrorism.
The band are no overnight flash in the pan, though. It’s taken years of slogging for the five-piece (Mike Vennart – guitar, lead vocals, Steve Durose – guitar, vocals, Gambler – guitar, Jon Ellis – bass guitar, Mark Herrin – drums) to achieve their current level of success, and in particular to raise their profile outside of the UK too. A factor which should impress because it has required a level of time and effort that is enough to destroy most bands before a debut album is ever recorded, yet Oceansize are merely starting out on the grand scale, hopefully with a strong future already ahead of them.
And this is where we join Oceansize – months on from the release of Effloresce, but still in the heat of touring and promotion. On March 25/26/27 they return to the Netherlands for three dates including a prestigious London Calling show at the Paradiso, which could potentially launch them onto an even bigger European audience. Previously, though, I spoke to guitarist Steve Durose briefly when they visited Utrecht with Aereogramme in December 2003, to find out more about the Oceansize view of life.
Incendiary(IN): Was your first tour of mainland Europe as successful as you hoped?
Steve Durose(SD): Yip, it’s gone really well. We’ve had an overwhelming response from the audiences. We had no idea that people turning up for Aereogramme would also know all the words to our tunes. We even get more people singing along here than we have done in the UK.
IN: You’ve had some interesting tour supports in the UK that have helped your profile – Cooper Temple Clause, Biffy Clyro, and now Aereogramme over here. Is there any other band in particular you would like to hook up with?
SD: We’d love to be on tour with anyone really. We haven’t had that much luck with tour supports really. The Coopers thing came about from us just giving them a CD, and with Biffy, they were on one of the Coopers tours. We became friends with them and they took us out on their tour too. Perhaps a perfect tour would be with the Foo Fighters or something big like that.
IN:Are you looking forward to being the headliner again now?
SD:Yeah, well we love touring, so we look forward to playing in general no matter the circumstance. Aereogramme have been really good to us in that they’ve given us 45 minutes each night. Generally we get given half an hour on a typical tour, and you know, that’s just four songs for us. It’s tough to give the right impression in such a short time. It will be nice to return Britain, though, if anything just to see if we’ve gathered more fans.
IN: Are there any tracks from the album that you never perform live?
SD: We haven’t played the segues like ‘Rinsed’ and ‘Unravel’… yet. They were mainly put in there as breathing space between the other songs.
IN: When will the touring stop?
SD: Because we’ve had a good response over here, Beggars would probably like us to come over here more often and headline. Hopefully we’ll be going to America too, and we probably won’t be recording anything again until August. We really want to pursue this album because we worked for four years, and we don’t want it to be quickly forgotten about.
IN: Has the musical direction changed since the band started?
SD: Our sound has just evolved really, but right from the first rehearsal, we kind of had it in the bag. We were on mushrooms and just jammed for ages, and then we listened back to the tapes. About three songs from Effloresce were born in that one rehearsal, and we just realized we had something special happening. Everything comes from jams, though. That’s the way we write.
IN: Is it then difficult to orchestrate the jams into the songs with complex time signatures?
SD: A lot of that is down to the involvement of the drummer. Mark’s very into strange beats, so what will start off as a very simple idea, once it`s been through the Oceansize washing machine will come out as something sounding quite bizarre.
IN: Is it intimidating to produce the new songs post-Effloresce?
SD: Well we have some new ideas, but it’s going to be hard work. You just do what you can. You really want to look back and enjoy where you’re at. If you look back and think, "Oh God, we were completely stressed about having to write and record all the new songs," then you realize you hated every minute of it. We’ll work hard and we’ll be in the rehearsal room writing every day, but there’s no point getting too stressed about it.
IN: How was it working with Chris Sheldon (Foo Fighters, Biffy Clyro, Therapy?, The Almighty etc) as the producer of Effloresce?
SD: Really good. He’s a great guy. We heard of him through Biffy and we thought he could get a good sound for us. You’ll be singing a line or something and he’ll just burst out with, "That was great!" and then casually say, "now do it again, one more time." He never says, "no, no, try again." He just keeps you motivated. You think you’ve done it first time, but you have to keep doing it again, only he makes you feel great about it.
As far as being the producer, he was more of a person we needed to make sure our songs ended up on CD sounding good, rather than someone with ideas to start changing bits. We didn’t want that influence. We wanted it to be how we wanted it to be, but we needed the expert to get it down there and listenable.
IN: As a producer, he’s almost underrated in a way…
SD: Yeah, he is good. He does his job well and really fast. Also he won’t ask for unrealistic amounts of money. He’ll work with bands because he likes the music. He really could be a huge producer and he isn’t as big as he could be purely because he chooses what he wants to do rather than just accepting all offers. He’ll always want it to be an enjoyment first and foremost.
IN: Have you enjoyed the extra dynamic of making music videos too?
SD: The most recent ‘One Day All This Can Be Yours’ wasn’t really planned actually. We just had loads of extra footage, so we decided to dump it on top of that song. The ‘Catalyst’ video was the real business, though. We hired out this drama studio and had all these swinging ropes and allsorts happening, with us playing behind screens as silhouettes. It was just brilliant because we’d never done anything like it. I just loved the experience. Now we get to put them onto the next EP, which is nice because it gives people a chance to see them properly as they won’t have high rotation on TV.
IN: So do you feel satisfied with all that Oceansize has attained up to this point?
SD: Absolutely. I don’t know anything else now so what more can I ask for? I don’t have a normal job, I’m on tour in Europe, I’m playing live every night, and also people are buzzing about the album. But we get instant feedback when we’re playing live. You don’t really get that when you put out records, so it’s fun to play live because the reaction is spontaneous.
Words by: Steven McCarron