Wellington Music: New Album - Revulva

When/where was the new album recorded?

We recorded the album over two years (2022-24), mostly at Dr. Lee's Surgery Studios in Newtown for all the main instrument tracking. All the icing on the cake was put together at our guitarist, Zane Hawkins' basement studio underneath his house in Kilbirnie.

Who produced/engineered the album? How did the tracks come together in the studio, or at home?

Dr. Lee was primarily at the helm for tracking the meat of the project, with each of us in the band taking turns at back seat driving. As we went along, we'd all make production decisions, and Lee did a lot of that too in the mixing process. It was great to assemble the rest of the details at Zane's studio to take our time and decide on all the backing vocal layers, specific percussion lines for each song that weren't written yet - we have played these songs for so many years, but a lot was still to be figured out to create the right recorded version.

How did the songwriting happen? Are there any overall themes within the songs/album?

Each of these 10 songs were written somewhere between 2019-2023 in my bedroom on the notes app on my laptop with a guitar. I'd hum to myself what I wanted the horns to sound like, and then I'd bring it to the others at Lily & Hector's make-shift studio in their bedroom at the top of Majoribanks street, and then we'd arrange them to completion together. Each of the band members would always suggest something seriously cool that I would never think of ie. a spoken word poem about landlords, re-arranging Compromise so that the last section only happens once or having the 'break-up' section at the end of This Town. We decided to have this album be self-titled because there isn't really an over-arching theme aside from the fact that this is Revulva to date, a collection of personal songs I shared with this beautiful and talented group of people over 5 years.

Were you going for a different sound/approach on this album?

Each of these songs are so different, a bottle episode to something that has happened to me over those 5 years - the goal was to make it sound like Revulva now, and like it all belongs on the same album. Lee did such a great job of this, bringing together each of the songs with production themes, the more you listen the more you can hear the detailing that connects each of the tracks. We also wanted to capture a nostalgic/older-referenced body of work. Leaning into the late 1970s funk.

Was there any specific gear you used to capture that?

To capture a nostalgic, and older-reference sound we would use vintage mics for the horns (RCA ribbon mics), used Wurlitzer and upright piano for the keys parts, and featured a string quartet on two of the tracks. While also having a modern edge on the vocals. These decisions were also made to capture the spirit of live Revulva as much as possible, ruckus yet refined.

Is there a particular single/track that you feel captures the essence of the album?

Oooh that is a hard one, because each of them are so unique! We are all really fond of Nigel - the last track on the album. We placed it at the end deliberately, as it is more somber, emotional, and far more earnest than our usual style. We wanted to leave listeners on a bitter sweet note, having them guess what will be next for our music making journey.

Is there a physical copy available? If not which digital platforms is it available on?

We were really lucky to run a crowd-fund campaign for 200x copies of vinyl with Holiday Records. We were even luckier to break completely even on it -selling 101 copies before any even heard it. As well as vinyl, we have a run of 100x DIY CDS. For our previous release, Girl's Gotta Eat, I went to the tip shop to buy 100x second hand CD cases so I could put our own liner notes in them with burnt CDs from my laptop - there was a discount going that day and it was only $2, still my card declined, and they ended up giving them to me for free.

Are you working on a video/videos for any of the songs? Are you doing any gigs or promotion for its release?

After four self-funded, self-directed, and self-produced music videos we're thinking it's time for a break before we do another one, haha. But we are touring Aotearoa to get word out about the record, it really is a celebration after so much non-music playing work to get together to play some shows again. We've already played the South Island, Raglan + Auckland, with only Whanganui and a home-show in Wellington to go. We're really excited about the Wellington show at San Fran on the 23rd November, and have some fun theatrical hijinks planned...