IllScarlett

IllScarlett were one of the nine bands scheduled to play at the inaugural Sonic Boom modern rock festival in Edmonton put on by Sonic 102.9 and The Union. Flying into town a day early, the band took the extra day in Edmonton to talk to some people about their upcoming new album, 1Up! – set for release on September 29th. While most people have already heard the lead single Take It For Granted, not much else is known about the record yet. I caught up with the band to talk a bit about the record, to find out what we should expect from the record and their opinion on being used as the first song at somebody’s wedding.

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Bobby: Tomorrow’s the Sonic Boom festival, are you guys excited to play that?

Johnny: Big time.

Will: Yeah, it’s gonna be awesome.

Bobby: So far I’ve seen you guys at three festivals. Virgin Fest in Vancouver a few years ago, Warped Tour in Calgary and now Sonic Boom tomorrow. What do you guys prefer doing? The big festivals or club shows at places like the Starlite Room?

Alex: Each one is kind of cool. We like playing all sorts of shows. Club shows, it’s a different energy you have to work with. Big festival shows its harder to really get a vibe going compared to a more intimate place. Is that quantum physics? I think it might be, like energy fields and stuff like that. But at a big festival, if you can get that energy, it’s that much bigger.

Bobby: Also, at a festival, there’s a lot more bands and  people who don’t know who you are, so you have to fight to win them over which can be difficult at times.

Alex: Right, and at club shows, people are there to see you.

Bobby: After this show, you guys are doing a few university dates in Ontario and then you are doing a tour of the States with Pepper. Are you guys excited for that tour?

Alex: Hell yeah.

Bobby: You guys are definitely well received in Canada with All Day With It having gone gold, do you guys get the same reception down in the States or are you still trying to break in there?

Alex: We haven’t really pushed the States as hard as we have in Canada.

Swav: Every time we’ve played there though it’s always been a very good reaction. We just did a Warped Tour date down there, like the opening date of Warped Tour; and as soon as we started playing there wasn’t too many kids there and then all of a sudden kids hear the music and the style of it and before the end of the set we had a healthy crowd in front of us. Any kind of support we’ve done down in the States, it’s always been a good reaction.

Bobby: So people hear it and start coming for it. I gotta also ask, what was it like opening for Blink 182 in Vancouver and Toronto? That must have been a lot of fun.

Swav: Yeah, that was one of the craziest shows we’ve ever played. Probably the biggest in our career. Just to play with Blink 182 on their reunion tour was a big honor.

Bobby: How did you guys get involved with that show?

Swav: Well, our manager, Andy, he’s a hardworking guy and he definitely did a lot of work to get us there. There was about thirty bands that were in the running for each one of those shows and somehow we beat them out.

Bobby: After you guys tour the States, you guys are coming back across Canada in November. Do you know who you’re touring with yet?

Will: To be determined. Yeah, the tour should be starting around the end of November or middle of November and then going through to December. We have another tour in the States that we haven’t announced on our website that’s going to be the first half of November going down towards Florida.

Bobby: So it will be Florida and then back up to Canada in the freezing cold weather.

Will: Yeah, yeah. We’ll probably go from Victoria over down to Toronto.

Bobby: I guess the big news is that you guys have a new album called 1Up!! coming out on September 29th. Now, 1Up!, when I hear that title, I automatically think of Super Mario Brothers. Where’s the name from?

Will: Super Mario Brothers. *laughs*

Bobby: Are you guys big gamers?

Swav: No, not at all. Well, actually, I’ll speak for myself. I am not a big gamer at all.

Alex: I’m a huge gamer. So if anyone out there wants to face me on Call Of Duty, EllaPhantom is my call sign on PS3.

Bobby: So Playstation and not Xbox?

Alex: Yes. Sony Playstation. Best system ever.

Bobby: Why did you pick 1Up! as the title?

Alex: It sounds good. Going back to Mario Brothers, that’s the first time anybody probably heard the expression one up. You can one up somebody, you can one up yourself, its an extra life. So for us, this is like a next level. We feel we’ve made the best record of our all records so far. We’re trying to just keep pushing the bar higher, just one higher. It goes to eleven.

Bobby: You guys co-produced it with Robert Carranza. What made you decide to co-produce it?

Alex: I guess because, first of all, he doesn’t like being called a producer. He’s an engineer who has a good ear for recording stuff. We did our own demos, so we had our own ideas about what we wanted to do. We did our own pre-productions in our basement.

Swav: Compared to our last record where we went out to LA, it was our first big record and we kind of let the producer take control of the situation; maybe because we were still new to these big studios and Los Angeles and all that stuff. So we kind of let that happen. This time around, we wanted to make a record that we wanted to make and have a little control over it. Because the last one was successful, the label and everybody gave us control just to go ahead. I think, like Alex said, it’s the best record that we’ve done for sure. Song writing and production wise and all that.

Bobby: What made you guys decide to go with Robert? I mean, he’s worked with bands like Mars Volta, Mindless Self Indulgence, Jack Johnson, Beastie Boys, and Matt Costa which are all quite different from you guys. What made you decide to go with him for the record?

Will: Well, the one thing we did this time around was we met a bunch of producers and the initial meeting with him, right away we got really good vibes from him when he talked about the way his recording style was. Also going all in, like he did the engineering and he also did the mixing, so having someone who’s right involved in the project from the beginning right to the end; someone who will always be there for it you know?

Bobby: So somebody who knew it all as opposed to just one aspect of the recording process?

Will: Yeah, he put his heart in from the beginning and followed it through until the end.

Johnny: And when we also first met with him, he knew the most about our band too. He did his homework.

Will: He checked us out on Youtube and stuff like that.

Bobby: How did the recording session go? Were there any cool stories when you were in the recording studio?

Swav: It was probably the most laid back recording I’ve ever experienced in my life. We went in there with a preconception of “go into the studio and work, work, work.” As soon as we got there it was just like…

Johnny: Lunch break!

Swav: *laughs* Yeah, it was work for fifteen minutes and then “alright man, chill, just relax.” Sitting there, twiddling our thumbs. I’m used to get into the studio and in two days the drum takes are done and this guy stretched out into a week. “Just relax man, everything will be all good.” It ended up working out. I wasn’t used to it, I don’t know if any of us were used to it. But maybe a new way of approaching things makes for a better record, that’s what happened this time around.

Bobby: So far from this record I’ve heard two songs: the single, Take It For Granted, and Milkshakes and Razorblades. Both have quite a drastically different to them, so I guess my question is what can we expect to hear from this album sound wise? What type of sound have you guys gone for?

Swav: To me actually, personally, I think it gels really well. The songs might sound a little different because one’s a little more rocky and one’s reggae and a lot of that’s over the album but as an album as a whole, it just flows really nicely. If we had a bunch of songs that sounded like Take It For Granted or a bunch of them that sounded like Milkshakes, it would be boring.

Bobby: And be repetitive.

Swav: Exactly. This way, the first song is Take It for Granted and it moves very nicely.

Bobby:  Take It For Granted, it is not necessarily what people have come to expect from you guys; especially with the keyboard introduction. It’s a bit more heavier than some of your older stuff, so why did you decide to pick that as your lead single for the album?

Swav: To be honest, we wanted to go more so with a reggae single because there’s a lot more reggae on this album than the rock whereas last time was more fifty-fifty. But the label pushed for us to go out with a rock single just because I think last time around the big song was Nothing Special and that was full on rock. So that’s where that kind of came from. But when you hear the album, I think it’s like seventy percent reggae compared to the rock.

Bobby: Do you think that having a rock single could turn off some of your fans? I know one of my friends was like “well, I like it, but where’s the reggae?” That’s what he liked from you guys so now he’s unsure of what to expect from this album. Do you think you could turn off some of your fans with the rock as a lead single?

Will: Maybe at the beginning, but people are going to know what the record is. Word of mouth is going to get around and you’re going to hear more songs from it.

Swav: I’ve read some on the internet, like reviews of the single on iTunes or even on YouTube and that’s the exact same thing that people are saying. “Yeah, it’s a cool song but what about the reggae?” It’s just the single. You gotta wait for the record to come out to give it the actual chance.

Bobby: Yeah, you can’t judge a book by it’s cover type of thing. On the song Milkshakes and Razorblades, you guys have a guest appearance by Kardinal Offishall. How did you end up working with him?

Will: We used to chill out back in the day, we’re old homies. *laughs* No, seriously we really wanted him on the record. That part of the song had a big opening for it. We got in touch with him through his management and it was pretty much the last song we were recording and he was into the track. Swavek emailed him kind of what it was about and six hours later it came back.

Swav: Very talented guy.

Will: Very talented guy, it sounds great.

Bobby: You guys have also had some unique additions to your songs, like the violin on Next Time Forever, the turntables on your first EP and, like I said, the keyboard now on Take It For Granted. What other instrumental additions have you guys got in store on this new record?

Johnny: Twelve-string guitar.

Swav: Yeah, twelve string guitar.

Will: Organs and keys. There’s a lot of key stuff.

Swav: We went with different sounds. Whether it was a clav, an organ or piano or whatnot, it’s very key heavy. We have a new touring member in the band now who’s with us for all our shows. It bulks up the sound so much more, for reggae and all that kind of music, it’s just a very needed kind of instrument.

Bobby: On your bio for the record, it said that you guys wrote a “plethora” of new songs for the record. Now, its hard to say exactly how many a “plethora” is but I’m assuming its more than twelve songs. So were there a lot of songs that you recorded that ended up not making the cut?

Will: Two but you’ll see one on iTunes and you’ll see the other one probably surface some other time.

Swav: Well we had seventeen songs going in and we did cut actually three of the…

Will: Rockier ones.

Swav: … the really rock kind of songs.

Will: We didn’t actually record them though. We have demos though.

Bobby: I know you guys also recently filmed a music video for Take It For Granted. When do you think we’ll see that video?

Swav: A couple weeks?

Will: A couple weeks. It comes out September 8th that’s like the… maybe this week?

Alex: A couple days! A couple days! *laughs*

Will: Wow, it just sneaks up on you doesn’t it?

Bobby: I’ve seen some photos of it, and I gotta ask, how hard was it to get all that paint off of not only yourself and your hair but your equipment? I just saw you guys covered in paint.

Alex: Well, it’s all smoke and mirrors you see. It was children’s Crayola washable paint.

Will: It came right off.

Alex: It comes off just with water and the equipment was dummy equipment so it wasn’t actually our equipment.

Johnny: Except for Swavek’s drums.

Alex: Except for Swavek’s drum and we paid our drum tech a hundred bucks to clean that. And then we had like five identical outfits and they had showers. So you’d do a take with the paint and then you’d run and have a shower and then you get a new outfit on.

Johnny: We showered like six times that day. It was pretty epic.

Will: Squeaky clean!

Bobby: It just makes up for the times on tour when you can’t shower.

Swav: Yeah! There you go.

Bobby: Condense it all into one day and you’re good for two weeks.

Swav: I was actually taking paint out of my ears for two weeks.

Bobby: You also said on your Twitter that you guys were planning on releasing 1Up! on vinyl eventually. Any word on when you’ll eventually do that?

Swav: No, it’s just something we’ve been talking about. We’re putting 1Up! and also the first CD we’ve ever put out – iLLP. That’s something else we want to do as a collector’s item. There’s no specific date for it happening, it’s just always in the talks like “we should do it.” Because the physical thing just looks really nice.

Bobby: And vinyl is becoming a lot more of a collector’s item. People do like it more, even though digital is coming up, people still like the physical format more.

Swav: Exactly.

Bobby:  I was listening to Sonic the other day and they had a caller call in. He said he was engaged and about to get married, I think he said in Hawaii. And he was trying to get, for his first song on his wedding day, your guys’ cover of Rhianna’s Umbrella.

Will: That’s funny.

Bobby: Did you guys ever think that, when you started this, that somebody would be using a song that you guys did for such an important thing like their first wedding song?

Swav: Definitely not.

Will: Wow.

Alex: I know kids get high to the songs, I didn’t think anybody would get married to one of our songs; well, cover. That’s cool.

Bobby: I guess that’s about it, thanks a lot. Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?

Johnny: Smoke weed everyday.

Will: September 29th. 1Up!!.