Features Track By Track: Gang Colours - Invisible In Your City

Will Ozanne aka Gang Colours releases his second album on 16th September via Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings. It’s a labour of love, this record. The product of years and years of tinkering and refining newly-formed ideas, half its job comes in throwing the listener off, taking conventional ‘genre tags’ and throwing them into the nearest skip. On the one hand there’ll be skipping beats and sleepy production, on the other Ozanne will throw in some saxaphone solo that’ll send things to the heavens.

It’s a record that needs a backstory, or at least a little clarification to mere mortals like us less flummoxed. Although, in Will’s own words:

‘I think it’s important for people to make their own interpretations on the things that they hear in my music, rather than their thoughts being over shadowed by my vague meanings behind the songs being sung. I’m into provoking the question. Whether it’s a good or bad reaction, as long as there is a small emotional reaction happening, then my job is done.

‘I didn’t have the access or the thought to seek this kind of knowledge of the songs I loved when I was listening to music in my school blazer wearing youth. I had no idea what Thom Yorke was ever saying, but it didn’t stop me from adoring the music. Having said that I reckon I can give you a little something that might give you a greater insight into some of the thought processes that went into making the tracks on my latest album, ‘Invisible in Your City’.’

Without further ado: Stream ‘Invisible In Your City’ below and read Will’s track-by-track guide.



The Rhythm The Rebel

The title of this track was spawned from something Chuck D once smoothly spouted out of his mouth. I had and still hold a strong affinity with American hip-hop, so I guess it’s a nod to that, really. The track itself was engineered as an intro track lyrically, but also instrumentally as well. I like the idea of making people jump if they had their headphones on, listening to this track for the first time with the volume too high. Basically it’s my equivalent to those books that start the dialogue with the first letter in huge, colourful detailed calligraphy.

Invisible in Your City

This one was the first track I ever completed that really ticked the boxes in terms of what i wanted to achieve from a ‘song’. When I wrote this I was after something that involved interesting and dynamic delivery, with a rhythmic strength to it. When I completed it, I kind of saw as the new benchmark and got rid of 7 tracks that I had in my ‘album’ file.

It came together really quickly too, which really pushed my expectations of what I could actually achieve.

I remember hearing stories of tracks like Enrique Iglesias’s ‘Hero’ being created in 15 minutes, but I’d never thought I was going to experience something marginally similar with my often laboriously slow process of making music.

Home

This was the track that started my long pursuit into the almost obsessive creation of album number two. It was another track that came together relatively quickly and I knew straight away that it was going to have a place on the album. It kind of formed the sound/theme of the rest of the LP for me.

I was really glad that I put some lyrics together that were repetitive, simple yet didn’t bore me too much. I felt it had a country singer vibe as well, which got me really into harmonizing weird vocal lines for the rest of the album’s journey to fruition. I had it in my head from the beginning that a saxophone was needed for some reason. So eventually I managed to get connected with a supremely talent guy named Simbad who is strongly connected with the Brownswood family, which seemed like a nice and serendipitous scenario to be in. He whipped out this saxophone from the 1920’s which had a pretty cool story behind it too, but I have completely forgotten now. Shame on me.

Up the Downs

This track took ages to finish. It came in so many different shape & sizes and personalities throughout its journey to the finish line. And what started the marathon was the main piano riff that comes in from the start. I was really interested in creating catchy motifs like that on this album. Something that might get stuck in someone’s head on loop.

For me the beat kind of sounded like a precisely architectured ‘Bedknobs & Broomsticks’ car style engine having a midlife crisis, and that loose sentiment is what the essence of the lyrics eventually took on. It’s about escaping to somewhere, far from whatever madness is gripping your conscious thoughts in the world you predominantly surround yourself in. Finding a place to get some peace from that and hopefully translating that peace into yourself.

Freshwater Fantasy

Initially this started out as a bit of techno-style track, then eventually I did what I usually can’t help but do by slowing things down a little and having a session playing the piano alongside it, then seeing what comes of it. It was important on this album to have a sense of rawness instilled within it; to in someway parallel the flaws we all have as humans. I think it’s an unusual and unforgiving track, especially when it comes to the bass. I think I’d watched a documentary on world music or something at the time of making this. I was then really interested in using bass as a more obvious rhythm element rather than sliding it in secretly and pretending it’s not there.

Led By Example

This track actually came before all he others. I think I did this one at the end of 2011. But it wasn’t until more recently that I decided I might be able to make something of it if i applied some vocals on top. It nearly didn’t make it on the album, which would have been a shame, as I’ve grown to like it much more now. But the label had faith in it at the time, which helped me make the decision to keep it on there.

Communal Quo

It started with the piano riff at that you hear from the start of the track. I really liked that riff because it was simple yet effective (a reoccurring mantra used throughout the album) and after I’d applied a bit of echo to it, a vision automatically popped into my head of all the emotionally hard hitting scenes in the Tom Hanks classic film, ‘Big’. I couldn’t get that out of my head and still think about it if i hear it now, but I like that it took me there. What really brought it together was when I got my saxophone man Simbad on the case again. I said, ‘do something romantic, with an aftertaste of Spandau Ballet.’ He nailed it in just a few takes and I just messed around with them at home, layering them & trying to make southing audibly pleasing.

River For Dinner

I think the aim for this one initially was to make an interesting beat, with a keen interest again in giving the bass a rhythmic riff in the mix. It also shows off the sounds that come from my trusty Casio CZ1000 synthesizer. I can always get something warm, playful and familiar with that thing, and it really comes through on all the synth elements in the track. What I really liked is that I was able to incorporate my old Spanish guitar in there as well. It allowed for an instrumental breakdown toward the end, which I feel was essential to include on this particular album, as there needs to be some breathing time at some point on an album that is predominantly throwing vocals at you relentlessly.

Why Didn’t You Call? Feat. Lulu James

I think I started this in the same week as a started ‘Up the Downs’, ‘Home’ and ‘River for Dinner’. It was a fruitful week., but it’s crazy to think that I took so much longer and writing so many other (rubbish) songs and tracks to then finally decide that these particular tracks are worthy of a place on the album. I had this idea from the start that I wanted to do a boy and girl response kind of track. I met Lulu James after a show I did in Brighton a year or two ago and she was genuinely the first person I had in my mind when beginning my hunt for a female collaborator on this track. Fortunately she agreed to do it and came back very quickly with what you hear on the track now. The gospel singers were something I also had in my head for a while too, and I really felt that with this album I wanted to trust the thoughts I had in my head and just run with them and see what happens. I was very fortunate to have been able to record them in David Gray’s unbelievably huge converted church of a studio. We’d got together a few times last year to work on some stuff and so I decided to brave it and just ask if it was a possibility to record it there and he kindly obliged.

Always Crashing In the Same Car

I found that doing covers seemed to help me understand music better, especially in gaining a little more insight into the art of songwriting. I know I’ve by no means reached the ‘songwriter’s master class’ yet, but I can see myself gaining more confidence in my own writing abilities slowly but surly, which makes me more positive and excited about the music I may make in the future.

The original version of this track, written by David Bowie, is something like 5 minutes long, and the lyrics only take up a couple of paragraphs. It’s this sparse and economic use of vocals that really intrigued me, and is an ethos that I’ve started to take on in the music I’ve made post album two’s completion.

Pre-order Gang Colours’ ‘Invisible In Your City’ here.