Carnivores: Radio Aftermath Eat The Buffalo
As the decade of 2020 reaches its season finale, it's great to hear from a band I wrote about back in May releasing their second single. Radio Aftermath released their first single 'Kiss From A Rebel' when the world was in a more optimistic state regarding...basically everything. But luckily, music will always be here for us in our time of need.
'We Eat The Buffalo', the band's new single gets off to a flying start with some phased guitar and a solid beat from Jack Craven on drums. Originally a quartet, the band's lead guitarist Matt King has departed leaving this configuration of Radio Aftermath as a trio for the time being. In his absence, bassist Rob Burns has filled in these lead guitar parts, the recording having taken place at Home Brew Music in Leeds where the band resides. The guitar sound on this recording certainly hasn't suffered, with excellent crunchy rhythm tone. Chris Dennett, as well as playing guitar, is also the band's vocalist. Though at times his vocal is doubled, his delivery maintains the raw sound you'd expect from a band with no frills. The sound is tight. Craven's attention to detail in his synchronisation with the guitar lines is a special feature of this track. It's a shame a band that is this rehearsed can't currently go out and play some gigs, but their time will come. In the meantime, read on for a thorough Q&A with the band, be sure to check out my previous article on their first single (mentioned above) for more information too!
Image Credit: Jim Vickers
1. Your new track, 'We Eat The Buffalo' is Radio Aftermath's second single, how did you guys write it? Was it the result of jamming it out?
Chris Dennett: It’s a song we’ve had written for a while to be honest, and it’s been our set opener for a few years. It was originally called The Concept, which was a working title that just stuck… We tried recording it last year, and quickly realised it wasn’t single worthy as the song was. We gave it a makeover, slowed it down slightly, I rewrote some lyrics and gave it a new title. Rob recorded the lead guitars for this track due to Matt having to depart, which for me - no shade on Matt, he’s a great player - but Rob improved the song. His unique and interesting writing shines through and makes for a much more interesting track in my opinion.
Jack Craven: Since I have been involved, we kept jamming it to make small changes to get it where it is now.
Rob Burns: We’ve periodically gone back to it and changed parts up here and there since I first joined the band a few years back, structural changes like doubling a chorus length, adding a pause etc. The little things that people don’t tend to worry about when listening to a track, but that you’ve agonised and had long heated practice sessions discussing what to do.
2. How did the dynamic change when recording your new single as a three-piece?
Chris: Less people means less opportunity for things to go wrong, right!? Not much changed, both Rob and I, up until recently predominantly shared the song writing anyway, so when it came time to record WETB I just said you take lead guitar duties for this one, make it your own.
Jack: Yeah it was a bit strange and sad to see Matt go but Rob stepped up and we just carried on.
Rob: Structurally the song was already there, and the drums were set. What really changed was I provided the lead guitar and the bass work after Matt’s departure. I approach guitar playing in a different fashion to how Matt does – he is a big fan of Alice in Chains/Pearl Jam et al and his lead work reflects that, whereas I tend to go more math and post rock, and like to create melodic lines out of chords etc that sit under the verse rather than dedicated big widdly sections in the song. I also like abusing my reverb and delay pedals for ambient chordal parts.
The second verse of WETB certainly reflects this guitar wise, and when I wrote my guitar parts I realised that I’d created a lot of space, so I then got the chance to go back and busy up the bass as well.
3. What was it like recording at Home Brew Music for this single? Is that where the rest of your upcoming EP will be done?
Chris: James who owns it has done a great job turning a little rented office space in Burley, Leeds, into a recording space, and it is little! He is a genuine fan of the band and he knows us and what we want. We’ve been going for the best part of 6 years, and it feels like for the first time, with Kiss from a Rebel and We Eat the Buffalo I truly believe we’re starting to develop our own sound.
We are contemplating going back there to record the EP early next year, but never say never - we don’t know what other opportunities may come our way between now and then.
Rob: We used James at Homebrew to mix Kiss From a Rebel, so we already have a working relationship, which meant that any ideas he had, or criticisms of how bad a take might be were easy to broach between us.
Jack: Yeah it was good. It’s nice to see new studios popping up in Leeds. James had a really nice set up and worked well with us. As for the EP we are still discussing and planning things so we will see where things take us.
4. Staying on the recording process, do you record live as a band and add overdubs or is it more methodical with one person at a time playing to a click?
Chris: We have yet to try recording live as a band, I’m definitely more in favour of the methodical way, build the song bit by bit, adding 20 layers of guitar tracks to make it sound huge! You nearly always end up writing something new for the track that way as well, when some bright idea pops into your head last minute.
Rob: I also like the one by one approach. In bands I have been part of in the past we have tried the live route and what invariably happens is; 3/4s of the band will perform a perfect take, and one of us will have an absolute clanger that can’t be covered up so you have to go again. And then the rest of the band will never be as tight as they were the first time. Red light fever is a real thing!
We have some punkier numbers in our repertoire that I was pushing to try the live approach once more, but the more I think about doing this, the more anxiety it gives me. Slow and steady definitely wins the race!
Jack: For this single we overdubbed stuff, starting with the drums and working from there. This way we can get a good performance and take from everyone but I would like to do a live band session in the future.
5. Artwork for 'We Eat The Buffalo' is by Jim Vickers, did you give him much direction on what you wanted?
Chris: I had the idea to go for a graffiti street art kind of vibe this time around, we have our logo with the radio tower and I love it, but I knew I wanted something fresh and different this time as we’ve been plugging the radio tower/post-apocalyptic/atomic bomb vibe since we started.
It made sense to go along with the buffalo imagery for the title of the song. We’ve learnt to trust Jim as he’s been doing our artwork for the last 3 or so years; we give him a brief idea of what we want, some examples, and let him do his thing. He never fails to disappoint, he’s a very talented man!
Rob: Beyond this initial info dump we tend to let him have free reign to do his thing. He’ll periodically check in to ask us what we think, and we’ll tell him it looks excellent and let him get back to it. Like Chris said, he has provided a lot of artwork for us over the years and we trust him to produce the goods.
Jack: He did his thing with a few back and forth conversations about ideas and I was really happy with what the final result was.
6. When we last spoke, you were working on an EP. With Matt's departure, does the band need to re-write the old songs in order to make the EP?
Rob: Matt leaving was a spanner in the works, and then it feels like quarantine’s ups and downs have thrown the remainder of the toolbox at us for good measure!
Lockdown has made it hard and slowed down the process but we have been auditioning new members where and when we were allowed and finally have a new guy who fits in with us musically and personality wise called Sam Moran. He says hi.
Chris: There will be some rewrites, some tweaks, and some meddling for sure! We’re re-recording a few old songs from our EP demo “SURVIVE THE BOMB” which are live fan favourites, which is actually still on our old Soundcloud account somewhere should anyone wish to look!
With Sam joining the band we want to give him a chance to flex his creative muscles and have some real input on the EP. What we’ve worked on so far has us all really excited to get it finished and recorded.
Rob: Our original plan we drew up in February (which now feels like a decade ago), was to release Kiss from a Rebel, which we did. Release an EP, a bridging single, and then a second EP. Obviously the world had other plans and we’re now picking ourselves back up.
We have now finalised which tracks we plan to include on the EP. So now we need to get Sam up to speed on these songs, we need to re-learn them after so long of not rehearsing, and then we should be all good to go in early 2021!
Jack: There might be a few changes here and there to the odd song. We are always open to changing the songs if it’s going to make them better.
7. Can fans expect a lockdown-style music video for this single?
Chris: Probably not, I think everyone could do without being reminded of this shit show of a year, myself included!
Rob: With the current tier lockdown system in place (at the time of writing) filming a traditional performance video is currently out of the question unless we space out in the woods somewhere.
We all had ideas for the original video, I wanted a performance video with a claustrophobic close-up feel – think something along the lines of the Ignorance video from Paramore, but I also wanted to include a buffalo head to wear for a Minotaur vibe. Thinking on it now it would probably be far too horror for the actual music we’re making! I also liked the vibe of Jamie Lenman’s recent single Like Me Better, I especially liked how in discussions he said it took about ten minutes to film and was cheap as Hell. Which when you’re operating on a zero budget like we are is very enticing! And in spite of that it still looks cool and encapsulates the song.
The other idea would be to simply film all of us in the comfort of our home and jamming along to the track. But I feel that we’ve seen so many other bands putting those videos out now that it feels played out. Also the optimist in me would like to think that eventually things will return to some semblance of normality in which case the video will become instantly dated.
We’ve asked Jim to look at animating a video and have given him a brief to work off of. He’s very excited and is currently in his words, “deep down the rabbit hole of possibilities”. We’ll be unveiling more details on that when we have them!
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Follow Radio Aftermath on facebook @radioaftermaththeband, on instagram @radioaftermath, and @_radioaftermath on twitter.
For more information about Home Brew Music Leeds, follow them on facebook and instagram @homebrewmusicleeds.
Check out more of the artwork of Jim Vickers on his official website here.
