Interview Race Horses: We’ve Got At Least Two Or Three Albums

This week Race Horses released their debut album ‘Goodbye Falkenburg’ (read our review here), so last week we sent them over a few questions about it. Here frontman Meilyr Jones gives us his answers, whilst watching some daytime TV.

Hello Race Horses, who are we speaking to and what have you been up to today?
You’re speaking to Meilyr Jones. So far I have been eating Special K (Red Berries) and I’m sat in pajamas watching ‘Cash In The Attic’ coz that’s how I roll!

Your debut album ‘Goodbye Falkenburg’ is out next week - how are you feeling? Nervous? Excited? Little bit sick? Will it be a bit of an anti-climax, do you think, having it ‘out there’ after so much build up?
It’s a joy and a relief to have it out, and it’s so exciting to see how people are responding to it. I enjoy reading reviews of it, because different people seem to ‘love’ and ‘hate’ completely different songs to each other. I’m really glad about that, because I don’t feel there are weak songs on the album (if I may say so!?) just different types of songs.

How did you end up recording the album in short session bursts, rather than in one go? You’ve listed quite a variety of recording set ups on your MySpace.
We were all in college or in jobs then, our drummer was a carpenter, and we were all living in different cities at that point. So we’d just book the studio for weekends and always go to different places. The songs developed in the studios and we’d record them as they were coming together. It made us quite flexible and open to different and varied arrangements.
We knew that we didn’t have the money or time to do the album in a three week stint (and anyway, we thought that would be boring) so we’d go to the most extreme and varied studios and spaces, and let the songs and the spaces dictate the outcome of the individual sessions. It was a perfect way of working to achieve a varied collage-piece (which is what we wanted to make).

The artwork’s bizarre - though strangely in-keeping with the rest of your releases. Who designs it all? Is ‘image’ important to you?
The process of creating the artwork was wonderful. We met this great collage artist called Gavan Lee, and he is the most fascinating and inventive person you’ll ever meet. We wanted to make a real low-brow, grotesque but pretty sleeve. I co-created the album artwork- we were working together on the images, cutting and pasting on a living room floor. He works in an amazing way - both meticulous, yet totally instinctive. We did it all in 11 hour stint - it was very natural. In the run-up to making the collages Gavan collected lots of 70s cookbooks, and raided pretty much every charity shop in North Wales. He’s still got loads of the stuff left over! Haha. For the singles Gavan did them alone, and he had pretty much free reign. We love his work and trust him to create something apt and distinctive to complement the music on the record.

You’ve all done rather a lot of music-y things pre-Race Horses. Is this it now? Or will it be one album then off on new projects?
We’ve got at least 2-3 albums in our heads that we must do / we really want to do. We’ll keep making records and playing live for as long as it is enjoyable, challenging, and feels fresh. We have to be achieving something new and different or there’s no point.

Is the album really ‘loosely based on the memories of Captain von Falkenburg’? Will all your releases end up being concept pieces?
I think sometimes a concept is a way to help focus your imagination on building-up a music and lyrical piece. I think even when there isn’t a strict concept to a record, there’s always something in common with the songs you put together, they have to sit right together, and work with each other to make a whole thing. The concept of the album was something we kind of tied up with it quite late in the process. But with man in my mind, the idea / character in the song ‘Man in my mind’ was developed throughout the E.P. I think the next record will be very different to the Album. Not a concept thing at all I don’t think.

So, you’re touring next month with Fanfarlo. Are you fans? Friends? Looking forward to it?
We really can’t wait until the tour. I’ve heard very good things about them, but haven’t listened to them yet.

And finally: What do you think you’ll all be up to this time next year?
Champagne for dinner!