Welcome to In Conversation, a special interview column on the site where we sit down with artists and dive deep into everything music. This week, Max spoke with Meyrick de la Fuente to discuss their latest self-titled record, self-producing and Tech-Fest.
Max: How are you doing? Are you feeling you know, albums a couple of weeks out now?
Meyrick: Yeah, good just trying to keep up with everything. I’ve just been updating some ads sorting some shit out tiny some bits up. Blah blah blah. Got rehearsal tomorrow for stuff and then filming something a little bit cheeky little thing on Sunday.
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Max: I’ve listened to this album now for a few weeks and it’s fucking sick.
Meyrick: Cheers, man. Appreciate it. I’m glad you glad you dig it. I haven’t listened to it at all, I try not listen to it. I only listen to it when I’ve got to do something. Otherwise I just pick it apart forever. Otherwise, there’s something constantly wrong with it. It’s done, and it’s sent off, then I don’t listen to it.
Max: I think that’s like a thing though, isn’t it? I feel like especially if you self produce, you can like sit there and pick apart the individual details of everything. I should just change the levels a little bit on that a million times over and you’re never gonna be happy.
Meyrick: I promise I’ve already done that a million times over before I’ve delivered it. Then I’ve delivered it, and then I’m still doing it. So I just don’t listen. Once it’s delivered. It’s done onto the next one.
Max: There are some heavier and more technical songs on the record, and in your back catalogue like “Casting Eyes” or “Invisible Lines”, but I remember you saying it was unlikely you’d play them live, which is a shame.
Meyrick: We’ve played more harder to play songs live. It’s more about where we’d put it in a set. Like if we did like a longer set, then maybe it’s worth doing. But because we’ve been around a while like there’s we’ve got a balance. There’s some songs that we just have to play. Like some old ones as well that we can’t get we can’t get rid of “In Hindsight” that’s by far the most listened to track. “Satellites” too, we can’t not play them.
All the singles and things like that and the stuff that people can like, I don’t know, just like move to and sing along to and stuff, and the thing is with that one is it’s fun, but it’s very like techy. It is. It’s got some like sort of, anthemic-ish bits, but it’s very techy, and takes a lot of focus on playing. Not for me, it’s actually quite easy for me. It’s cool for me that I’m just like singing little pop melodies, while they play horrible techy riffs.
Max: This is your third or fourth full-length now?
Meyrick: Something stupid like that. It’s kind of weird, because I guess. Yeah, Triptych is a full length. It is in a physical format. But if I can be part so yeah, fourth. Technically Dream Sequence is an EP, I think of that as an EP, because, like, the strange thing is because I self-produced everything. It’s like it, it makes very little difference for us, if we’re doing an EP to put two extra songs on it. It doesn’t really matter that much. So it’s kind of easier for us than most just doing music and put it out. And that’s got its its its upsides and its downsides. But that’s just that’s just sort of how it is.
Max: Is there anything that you went into this album, doing differently than you did the previous stuff?
Meyrick: I’ve got different methods of tracking, my tastes kind of developed as well. And so it’s kind of like an ongoing process. It’s constantly, like, new stuff. My perspective changes on things over time. So I think about things differently. It’s quite hard to sort of list down actual like, these are the things I did different this time, these are the things I did different this time.
There are things where I was like, “Okay, I need to make sure that I do that on like, the technical side of things“. I wanted to make sure that like when we were tracking drums, I got certain things, and made sure that I had what I needed. And what the vision was of how I wanted the drum sort of sound in the end. All of that kind of thing is hard to put into a tangible list of stuff, but there’s always different things. And that’s, that’s kind of what it is. It’s kind of a part of finding our sound as a band is also the same process as me finding my sound as a producer. It’s the same process. They’re inextricably linked just because they’re inherently the same process, and by the time we come to do an album that’s normally like a sea change moment in the way I’ve been thinking about music, they’re kind of bookends of my production career with extreme albums.
Max: Looking back then, is there anything that you think you would go back and change about previous releases?
Meyrick: Everything? More or less everything? No, there’s some bits. I wish I was better at what I do when we did them, because I think they’re really good songs. I think like, compositionally, they’re great. I just wasn’t as good on the production side of things, so I wasn’t able to fully bring it to life in a way that I wanted. We’ve thought about the idea of doing like remastered versions of things at some point, potentially cool. The idea both sounds great to me, but also horrendous, but at the same time, because I’d have to go and like, dig up old files and redo it.
Max: In terms of re recording, like, I feel like it’s a cool idea on paper, but then like, in practice, when you actually start doing it. I feel like you naturally start asking yourself, how much can I change?
Meyrick: Probably wouldn’t. Rather than a re-record, it would be like a remaster. It’d be like, this is how it’s recorded. These are the takes, but I’m just gonna make it sound better. And bam, bring it into this era. I was going to do something like that, I definitely wouldn’t re-record it. I think that just sounds like a nightmare.
Another thing that shifted in my head is shifting back then I was very much trying to make it sound relevant into the into make it sound of the time rather than their own thing, rather than my own thing. But, is this gonna sound good in 10 years? Rather than just trying to be like, oh, well, the new Architects song sounds like this now, so I need to do like that now, or whatever it might have been.
With age is that’s just as you stop giving a shit about like, oh, the 19 year olds at the time, is this going to be their favourite record? When actually my thinking now is much more, what if we make the record that we think is the best record? It’s like, without really considering anything else, and just let what we listened to and what we encountered absorb into us, and then just make music how we want to make it. Because you find people are then more your fans. That’s what they want to hear.
Max: Until they get it, basically.
Meyrick: They don’t know what they want. But it turns out that that is what they want. They want they want you to do whatever your your thing is. Then obviously there’s a technical thing on my side of it of that obviously, it’s got to sound it’s got to stand up do other things. It can’t sound shitter than everything else, that can’t happen. So that’s a that’s a technical question at that point. It’s hard to put into words. It’s quite an intangible thing.
Max: How did you get into self producing? How was it?
Meyrick: I remember my first band when I was in, like, I was like, 15-16. We saved up a bunch of money twice in two different bands to go to the studio. Two different studios. One of them was a proper studio and we spent around 1,500 quid for a weekend or some shit something stupid. I can’t remember what it was, I know something awful. We saved up and it was like, “Yeah, let’s do this.”
We were like 15-16. And obviously we like saved that we’d like like, borrow money from parents that are working like little fucking weekend jobs and shit. And then went and did it. And I remember just being like, this sounds nothing like how I’ve wanted it to sound.
All this money, and then he was like, oh, yeah, no, I don’t do mastering. I didn’t really know what that was. But then I figured it out and I’m like, okay, cool. So then you’re honestly suggesting that we spent 1,500 quid and now we’ve got to go find someone to master the files. Okay, fine. So then I started looking into it myself. So that was one thing. And then we did another experience where it was less money, but still money. About a year or so later in this went to another studio a bit more of a DIY producer type vibe. Same thing. I mean, it was better. But it was like, wasn’t quite the one, I was like, this is a bit shit. I was listening to my like, Killswitch Engage records. And obviously that’s like Andy Sneap and all the sick stuff, but like, it just wasn’t even in the same ballpark. It wasn’t even remotely close. Obviously. Partially, that was us just being 16 years old and shit, of course.
Max: But you still want to be like, Oh, why? Why doesn’t that sound like them?
Meyrick: And why doesn’t it even sound remotely close? Why is it you’re not even in the same time zone of like, sonics. And then after that, I was like, okay, well, I see this last guy we went to, he’s like a DIY producer, does it in an outhouse. I could probably do that. I started thinking about that. And then I started doing demos myself. And the demos I was doing myself were like, as good, certainly not £1,500 worse than the other recordings that we did. From just like really basic crap mics, everything, like tiny little interface, little M-box thing, like, all of that, and it wasn’t like that much worse than what we paid loads of money for. And then I just went down the rabbit hole for time. I was doing demos for my own band, demos for other bands, and like singers and friends and stuff like that.
Then I went to uni. I didn’t do anything music. I went to uni and did psychology. I basically went to uni purely because you don’t really know what you’re doing when you’re 18. But what do I want to do? Psychology. 70% Girls. Awesome. Let’s do that. Yeah, I went to Sussex University, which was like, also like very, the highest percentage of like, 80% girls on the course. And I was like, Yeah, that sounds brilliant. When I was at uni, it was in Brighton. So it was like lots of bands and stuff. And I was doing lots of music stuff doing lots of recording. And at one point, I was like, I started charging, like little demos and things for people. And I was just getting more and more people coming in to do demos and stuff just in like my, my student accommodation bedroom. It was stupid.
And then yeah, and then, in the last year of uni, I basically just like I was working three part time, jobs, same time. And one of them. One of them do basically just didn’t pay me because the floor was dead, it was cash in hand. And then the pub or worked in the manager who was like, absolutely, like mental like, like, crazy, crazy, dude, he was like the landlord of this pub. Proper weird guy. And then some fight kicked off when I was in the pub, or whatever. Got him out in the end. And then the next day, the guy was like, that fight was your fault. So that at that point, I was like, you know, fuck this, quit all my jobs while I still have student loan, which, I mean, very, very bold decision. Very bold. Like, fuck this, I’m not doing this. And then after uni. So then I just started doing sort of like a student loan, topped up with doing demos for musicians in Brighton, and then went back to live with my parents for a bit after uni, and started working out what was a gym in their back garden. For a little bit just doing like, again, demos, but like better and better demos, and then just sort of build it from there. That’s how I guess I got into those bases of frustration with paying loads of money just sounding like shit and being like, I can do better than this fact that yeah, took me like, five, six years, at least to actually do something better than that.
Max: One thing I’m actually I’m really interested in is given that you’ve been a band for so long, you know, you’re I’d say in terms of the fact you self produce everything obviously. Obviously, you write everything Yeah, yourselves basically in that fucking room. What brought on the the idea that this was gonna be like, the self titled record like this is now us.
Meyrick: Basically. This thing was we did. Because it debris, we had James in the band. James left, all kinds of shit happened. Didn’t do much for a couple of years. And then we did Triptych. We did like a couple of singles, who did like satellites glow Lola. And we had two other singles that we haven’t released behind the eyes of one of them, actually, but we completely reworked it. Those were the first ones we wrote in Mikey. And then. So we did those songs with Mikey and the pandemic came, meant we had to split it up. And it was like 18 months from when we finished it to when we released something. So that was just, that was frustrating. That was long, that took like a lot of time out of what we were doing killed a lot of momentum.
We were all a bit like, wow, it was fucking that was annoying. And then we started writing again. And the reason and then we kind of decided once we kind of written everything we basically mostly through halfway through doing all the vocals. We were we kind of just decided like, well, actually, this is going to be the first proper release as an album with Mikey, on with this lineup that we’ve done most of our touring with. Most of our big shows have been with this lineup. And this is the first lineup, the first release that’s not had any sort of procedural issues get in the way. And we kind of just wrote it quite naturally. And yeah, so just kind of just kind of felt right. And also, we couldn’t think of a good name. I feel like with a self titled thing, it’s like it’s inherently pretentious. Like, it’s massively pretentious. But like, it just is what it is. It’s sort of like, no, this is us. This is what we do.
For the first time it’s the most like, self assured, in it’s in a sound that I’ve been that we’ve been as a band. We know what we’re doing, sort of, we know what we’re trying to achieve and what are sort of our plans are. Whereas it’s always vague before and we’ve tried stuff and we’ve always struggled on different directions we struggle to position ourselves because that’s the other problem with like, being self produced and stuff. We kind of just write on a whim. So if I’m if I’m really into super poppy stuff one year, that’s what the album is gonna be.
Max: There’s no like guiding producer?
Meyrick: So the album was the first time that we kind of felt it’s kind of weird. Well, previous to this album. I didn’t really get what our lane was. Does that makes any sense? Yeah, it’s kind of nice. I mean, I have a vague concept, I know what EXIM is, but to like me, we do a bit this, and a bit of that, and that’s been our downfall for the most part is because we were like, are you a metal band? Or are you a prog band? But you have breakdowns, so you are kind of a metalcore band, and we always go down really well at metalcore shows. We’re always billed as like a prog band, I realised that actually what the what were our lane is that crossover.
It’s gonna sound really weird. But it’s almost like everything else up until this album has been like, us finding our feet. And then yeah, just fiddling stuff out, because we can just make music and put out music. Yeah. And so we’ve just kind of just done that, and we’ve just been playing around with stuff, and now it seems like okay, actually, having done all of that, it’s the most long winded way ever of saying “finding your feet“.
Max: Across your 10 year career.
Meyrick: Literally completely ridiculous. Lots of bands start off knowing what they’re trying to do. We didn’t do that at all, we didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on, we were just like, oh, we’ll do some kind of tech metal. And we switched it up, and sort of did some more poppy stuff, and we sort of saw what happened and just kind of play it by ear. And that’s kind of how we did it. But now this is like a condensed version of everything we’ve done. And the most true to what we are collectively as a band. And that’s why we went with the self titled now because it’s like, okay, this is us, it’s almost like a fresh start, but that’s completely the wrong word. Because it’s not that, it’s like, it’s a nice cut off. We’ve stepped onto a different ledge, where we’ve got our footing, and we know what we’re trying to do. Now we can have a lane that we can, like, go for.
Max: You’ve worked with plenty of guests on the album too.
Meyrick: Everyone I’ve spoken to were like, we’re actually really surprised that you managed to pull together all these guests of the calibre that they are, and this was like, I mean, this is not the kindest thing ever. This is like some of this is like the second option. Because the first option wasn’t available or something, or something wasn’t able to happen. There are some logistical issues.
Max: Remember, you told me about one, yeah.
Meyrick: There’s another one as well, which is still like, still potential for a future thing. But that was supposed to be the other one which didn’t happen because the band in question go out, they agreed to it before the summer, and then they got offered every single tour and festival in the world, so ended up being away all summer. So it was like okay, well, that obviously can’t happen. I know that if I was on tour, there’s no chance I’d be doing guest a guest spot on anything. If I was on a US tour for a month, I’m not about to go and try and find a studio again. So it’s all a bit mad, but it very much is a like, ‘try and bring together the whole network of people’ thing. And there’ll be more of that to come as well, because there’s plenty of people who are wanting to get on the album that didn’t work out this time. But for like future stuff, quite possibly, I think they’ll probably be a running theme.
Max: How was Tech-Fest for you?
Meyrick: The two weeks run up to it was just stressful as fuck. I was just out because we had to hire in a bunch of extra tech as well, just to make sure it all ran smoothly. We’ve got our own wireless systems and stuff, but we hired like the top quality ones like the ones that Metallica use at fucking stadium shows. Or just because like, our ones work, but like, we just thought what cannot go wrong at that kind of show is like your wireless pack, the lamest thing in the world. So it’s hard to just be like, okay, let’s make sure this works. Nothing goes wrong, obviously. But to build it, we have to program the light show without having the full light set up. Because we’ve been programmed it in like blocks. So we’re doing the thing. And then on the day, is when we got the full light rig because there’s no you can’t like that light rig was huge. You can’t like you can’t bring that in and rehearse. And do like, it’s not like your guys light rig, which is all like quite compact on one thing.
We setup the morning of that day on Thursday in the backstage and and just yeah, we ran the set through without the sound with a nearby didn’t hearing like back in and just make sure that all the MIDI corresponded to the right the right bars. And it did, and then it went well. It was fine. It was okay. Okay, sick. Nice. That just worked. Awesome. Good. That’s why it’s worth taking the time and having that kind of week of stress.
Many thanks to Meyrick de la Fuente for sitting down and answering our questions about the new album. Make sure to check out our full review of Exist Immortal. For all things prog, and Exist Immortal, keep it locked on Boolin Tunes.