ELLIOTT HAMMOND OF THE DELTA RIGGS
Hi Elliott and thanks for taking the time out to speak with us at Musicology.
You’re welcome thanks for taking the time to speak to Les Riggs.
Firstly congratulations on your latest single Out Of Place. A real ear worm of a track that reveals more and more with each listen. In terms of the subject matter, what is that you are specifically addressing in this track?
It’s essentially a song about the relevancy of one’s position in the modern world. This is a time when what’s real and what’s fake is pretty blurred. We are actually buying digital clothing. FOR REAL LOL. I guess simply it’s about having good friends in your life that are gonna think about you when you are down from time to time which happens to us all.
Out Of Place has an Ezra Furman vibe to it with gravelly vocals, slinky organs, subtle bursts of horns and raw indie ethos. In formulating the track, how much emphasis initially went into the vocal structure and how it plays with the instrumentation of the track?
The song changed a lot as we were writing it and trying to interpret it in different forms. We do a lot of different things to try and catch ourselves out like this. For example we originally recorded it just Rudi and I. Then we tried it with the whole band in Melbourne. That was a bit much so when Rudi & I were in LA earlier in the year working with Elliphant, we rented another studio so would work with her during the day and in Studio City in the evenings. We used the beds from these sessions and Rudi had a wild night sampling a lot of these parts to re build Out Of Place. When we got back to Australia we added keys and horns and yea tried the vocals a few different ways. We eventually decided to use the most effortless vocal take and not the most ‘perfect’ and my voice is naturally gravelly so that’s not uncommon.. we also tried a few different and new mic and pre amp combos but I can’t give away all the tricks.
Following on from the lead single Fake earlier this year, is Out Of Place indicative of the entire record or will we experience an eclectic mix of sounds and diverse tracks?
It’s indicative in that as you said earlier it reveals more each listen but it is probably our most centred record to date. There is an overall ‘sound’ that we haven’t really completely captured again since Dipz Zebazios.
In what ways did you want to push the sonic boundaries on the latest record compared to that of your previous release, Active Galactic back in 2016?
We wanted to re-identify with the soundscapes we kind of discovered on Dipz Zebazios. Active Galactic needed to go somewhere else sonically otherwise we would have just repeated Dipz but with this bunch of songs there was room to explore that Low Fi / Hi Fi sound again more thoroughly. We also had learned so much as producers since we did Dipz that we really pooled a lot of skills together. We’d used a producer on Active Galactic called Jason Hollis and we had just been working with Mark Rankin as well (with Elliphant) as all the other projects that we have been doing in between recordings. It wasn’t like we needed to discover and find the sonics for this record cos we already had the arsenal.. it was more like how do we push them further and have them take on an even deeper meaning than we achieved before and have them burst with that sound people identify as the Riggs.
As you evolve creatively as an artist and individual, it what ways has your music matured and your lyrical topics changed in parallel with your personal explorations?
With the lyrics primarily I’ve tried super hard to simplify a lot of the themes. When I’m writing lyrics or poetry I’ve got this whole vision… like imagery or a narrative that’s going on in my head (like a person crossing the road with a cigarette taking a dodgy look back at a cab he possibly threw his phone at.. and the lyric is “Man on the corner is calling my name but he won’t remember his cos they’re all the same” FOR REAL!) and I naturally assume when people hear this stuff they do as well. And that’s dumb how could that ever be possible. This lead me to trying to communicate in a simpler way. That doesn’t mean dumbing it down at all it’s more like how can I say this with the least words possible. I love nonsense.. possibly too much, but I also like sense. So I guess I’m just trying to swing around in the middle somewhere.
You recently headlined JJ’s Place in Sydney, alongside The Gooch Palms, Sloan Peterson, and Display Homes. What is your current take on the Sydney music scene and stylistic path it is on?
All those bands you just listed are great. I think there are a bunch of awesome emerging artists at the moment Australia in general has some outstanding potential. The Gooch Palms have a look and a sound and it’s sweet as. Sloan Peterson is just sweet as in general and as an artist. It’s good to see singing drummers so Display Homes too have a great thing going on. There are so many bands I could mention we had these groms support us in Newcastle called Surf Trash who were mad. TBH I like seeing crew get on drums and guitars and thrash some shit out.
The last time Musicology caught up with The Delta Riggs was back in 2015 when you performed with You Am I at the Metro on the back of their Porridge & Hotsauce tour. Having performed with iconic artists such as Tim Rogers, have there been instances where a memorable conversation / event took place that was influential or a turning point that altered the way you approach your craft?
You learn so much from touring with bigger acts both what to do and what not to do. We try and pay attention to the production techniques a lot of the bigger acts we play with are incorporating. With Kasabian for example their crew were super into sharing some of their tips and tricks that we have incorporated into our own shows. With Simple Minds last week we noted the drummer had 4 cooling fans strategically positioned.. that’s probably not something we’d get involved in so you take the good with the bad. Tim is a good bloke. He owes me some singlets. If you read this Tim you’ve got my number.
On a technical level, have you introduced new fx to your sound or experimented with different instruments to either harness sounds that you were incorporate into the latest LP or conversely stumbled upon sounds that, albeit subtly, opened more creative doors?
Yes to all of that. We wrote much more of the last record on keys this one was very heavily dominated by guitars. The production and the instrumentation goes hand in hand for us.. and that’s obviously after the song is finished being written. So yeah once we get a sonic idea of where we are going it can often influence which instruments we will gravitate towards. The doors of creativity for us are in the surprises or magic when we can be more of a vessel for the song than actually dictating where it will go. Christ that sounds wanky.. I’ve never really put it into words. But that’s how we do it.
