The Divide is out now!
Image: Chandler Feddern.
Adelaide’s Broken Waves recently shared their final track of the year with The Divide. To celebrate the release, the band are taking us behind-the-scenes of their recording process whilst creating the song.
“After a few years of exploring ideas and experimenting with our sound, it feels like we’ve really hit our stride and found our voice as a band. We’ve always seen ourselves as a groove-oriented band but The Divide has been an important step in our development. It is the first song we’ve written that displays our funk influences while sounding like an original take on those styles. It explores the experience of being in love with someone whose life circumstances are causing them to push you away and trying to be there for them in any way you can.” the band share of the track.
"The writing process for this song was easily the freest and unburdened we’ve had yet; every member of the band contributed equally, and we all had a shared vision of the direction we wanted to take. We’ve always made a habit of rewriting all our songs from scratch multiple times and this one was no different, but this time we focused on speeding up that process as much as possible. Every session was a free-for-all as ideas, parts and even entire sections were scrapped or repurposed to find the core of what we wanted to say. We've become much more comfortable letting our ideas speak for themselves without over-complication."
To celebrate the release, the band will take to the stage at Adelaide’s Jive Bar on January 14 for an exclusive launch show. Tickets are on sale now!
Our main man, Ben Lyons-Reid, laying down the bass to the track. The way we like to record is a scratch with everyone playing first and then to do overdubs of each part with a cleaner take.
Heath Oetjen, the drummer, is recorded in a separate room to the rest of us. Don’t tell anyone but we recorded two singles on the same day, so he lays down the beats for both songs first up before anyone else records.
The rhythm master, Declan Oetjen, normally records with Ben and Heath as well to capture the feeling of a natural live take.
Will Physentzou, our lead guitarist/Greek goddess likes to record after everyone else on his own because it makes him feel special! In all seriousness though, we find it is the best way to record lead as the foundation of the song is already there; it really helps being able to find the pocket.
The man that makes us sound good! Our sound engineer, Joseph Cheek. Joseph owns Island Studios which is at a different location to where we are here. We like to record vocals, extra overdubs and sit in for mixes there, however, for obtaining the cleanest drum recordings, we hire out Mixmasters Studio. If you are based in Adelaide, you probably have crossed paths with Mixmasters.
The Divide is out now!