GIANT WALKER have been one to watch for a while now, after their debut record All In Good Time. With the meteoric rise of their second album Silhouettes, we caught up with drummer Alex Black about the surprise inspirations, and the ease of writing.
From the first moment, Silhouettes pulls you in with a groove that perhaps more soul than you would normally merit to a progressive sound. That’s the reason GIANT WALKER blow it out of the park for being such an exciting band to add a different dynamic to the music world. Songs like Round And Round We Go and Time To Waste have spades of feel and swing to them that you don’t normally associate with big proggy sounds.
“To be honest with you, that one, that one came together really, really quick from what I remember,” he recalls about Time To Waste. “It’s heavily, heavily, heavily inspired by a GARY CLARK JR tune called Bright Lights, the drum groove in that it’s just amazing. It’s got this, like, swung, swung groove all the way through. We all love that track, and we’ve all listened to a lot, and I’m like, ‘I wish we could have something at that similar tempo; It’s just got such a nice backbeat, you can just follow it really well. And I remember Jamie‘s criteria for it was, ‘I just want to write the sludgiest, grooviest riff where the drums just sit in that kind of groove. So well, yeah, very heavily inspired by GARY CLARK JR.”
“Yeah, no, it’s the kind of writing process and stuff is been, you know, it really organic,” Alex explains about the album coming together. “And it never ever felt forced at all, which was just obviously the best position to be in when you write music. It never felt like we’re banging our heads against a brick wall. Obviously, there was some ideas that took longer than others, some arrangement ideas, things that were talked over. It very, very easy this time around which was nice.”
There’s a heart of connection in GIANT WALKER that blooms into these massive songs. While each member, from the glorious vocals to the riffs and melodies, all prioritise what the song needs, it’s evident they are all coming from the same places creatively when making music. “Well, for starters, Jamie‘s really, really good at bouncing ideas off as well,” Alex tells us about their writing. “He’s secretly a drummer, like he plays guitar, but he’s got a drummer’s mind which is awesome just to collaborate with him and bounce ideas back and forth. I can tell when he likes something and I can tell when he doesn’t, you know? So, it’s we always kind of a gauge what direction to go.”
“Collaborating especially with Jamie, me and him have been playing for a long time together. We kind of give and take from each other, we know what each other’s going to do in that respect. But from a drum perspective, I always try and try and do as much as I can get away with without it being, you know, totally over the top.”
GIANT WALKER’s latest release plays around with huge soundscapes, bold groves and almost psychedelic. Part of that hypnotic element comes from the way the band are able to blend through ideas with rhythm as a corner stone of the way the songs are constructed. “I always kind of enjoy – even if it’s just something subtle – linking up with a vocal hook, or guitar stab or something like that, it just makes it a little bit more interesting, I guess. Plus, I always love to link up in terms of syncopation and rhythmically as well,” Alex agrees. “I really enjoy doing that sort of stuff, and it just makes it kind of more fun to play live as well, if you’re all kind of locked in and you’re all playing a similar rhythm or upbeat or something.”
GIANT WALKER have such a way with capturing a feel and a story that they’ve immediately made a huge impact in the scene. With their first record turning heads, there’s been a lot anticipation of their second release Silhouettes. The coherency of the record also comes from a streamlining of how the band are able to work away from each other. The ability to be clear with their ideas separately before honing in on them as a group is seemingly the most contemporary way of generating the right sound for modern bands. When asked how that process actually starts, Alex notes how simple it really is.
“So, I’d say 99% of the tracks either start with kind of riff or hook. In the last two years since doing the first album I’ve been able to have kind of more of a setup at home where I can track acoustic drums, which is awesome. I was sending Jamie a lot of the ideas that I’ve recorded, and then he would try and write something to that, and vice versa, that’s the process that we’ve used for a while […] Rather than be all on top of each other in a room trying to get ideas across. We literally do everything remotely now which is pretty cool, and it works well for us.”
Silhouettes is out now via Church Road Records.
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