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Writer's pictureThe Premises Studios

Michele Kirsch interviews…

LAKE TURNER AND WEM about their EP: Shelter on A Hill

Q1:  I am interested in the collaborative process when it’s not cut and dry, like this one does the words, that one does the music.  You both must be on the same page, to some extent, musically. Can you talk a bit how you work together? If there is a discussion about concepts, then working on stuff together, or just trying things out and seeing what comes up?

LAKE TURNER: “Often one of us will bring a loop or a repetitive sketch to the play and then we get in to the studio together and build some chords and moods and around that. I think generally it can start out with a loose or murky vision that we both try and help each other make sense of by just exploring sounds in the studio and using the studio as a compositional tool. Once we’ve got something down which we feel like it’s working, we’ll then conceptualise and talk about the journey of that piece and what we’re trying to convey and how we’ll achieve it.” 

Q2: I imagine you have to get into an entirely different headspace from when you are producing others to doing your own stuff. Do you, as a team, often have your own project on the go as well as others and if so, how do you stop the stuff you are working on for others, and those thoughts, from bleeding into your own stuff? This might be different for you, individually. One obvious thing might be, with others you are working to a deadline, but with your own stuff, you can end it when you want to end it? Or not?

WEM: “We usually have our own projects on the go, although invariably they get put on the back burner during busy times.  The main difference being when writing for pictures the primary focus becomes how to write music that supports or elevates the picture to new levels and it is a collaborative process with others within the production process.  When writing music for our own projects, effectively the only people we are answering to is ourselves (plus sometimes a label).  But the advantage of having frequent deadlines is that it’s helped us to learn how to sign off our own projects, and not get too wedded to endless amends. We definitely found switching between different parts of our brain tricky, but as you gain experience, your increased musical sensibility allows you to migrate into different musical head spaces a bit more easily.  Although this is a far from exact science and of course there are days when it is a more of a struggle.”

To get the latest EP head over to Bandcamp

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