This interview was conducted by Philip A. Wickstrand with drummer Becky Hawk and guitarist Judd Hawk at Rotture in Portland, OR on October 6, 2011.

I was pretty bummed by the fact that I got into GRAVES AT SEA too late to see them live. I remember seeing flyers for their shows quite often around Portland prior to checking them out and just about as soon as I had finally heard them, they broke up. That was a bummer to be sure, but such is life. However, when I learned that their vocalist was in another band named LAUDANUM, I checked them out as soon as I saw they were coming to town. I was impressed. Very impressed. The song Invoke hit me in such a way as to give mental images of a swamp bubbling poisonous gasses. That’s a good thing, mind you. Now with the addition of new bass guitarist Salvador Raya (ex-ASUNDER), LAUDANUM are preparing to record their as-yet untitled third album.

Phil: First of all, tell our readers a bit about what you’ve got planned for the next album.

Judd: Well, we’ve already got a couple songs. Basically the new record… most of our records are kind of conceptual in that, not that there’s this big plan and it’s not like based on wizards or something, but more conceptual in that it’s an entire piece of music that we intended to be listened to as a whole. So everything kind of goes together musically and subject matter-wise, but we don’t make it like a Rock Opera - it’s more just like a unit of music. So we’ve already got that written and we’re just expanding even further with our whole noise and that aesthetic basically, just taking that further on this record. Further and deeper.

Becky: We’ve been around for awhile and we’ve always had noise as part of it but now it’s… kind of like through coordination we had a lot more noise pieces and then we had songs. It was more separated. Our next record is two long pieces and it’ll be noise and band, like traditional, us playing, rocking, whatever on there, but all together. And we’ve already written most of it and we’re going into the studio. We had planned actually when we get home, but it may get pushed into November. But we’re hoping to be done by the end of this year with this record.

Phil: What label are you going to be releasing it through?

Becky: We don’t know yet. Actually we haven’t settled on something yet.

Judd: We’ve been working with Dave from 20 Buck Spin. We know it’s going to be released in Europe on Throne Records.

Becky: Oh, that’s right.

Judd: But it’s probably a little too early to say as far as the American one.

Becky: Yeah, it’ll be out only in Europe on Throne Records. As an LP.

Judd: It will be released here. It’s too early to say. I probably wouldn’t want to say anything about it just yet.

Phil: That’s fine. What was the song writing process like for this particular album? ‘Cause I know most bands probably wouldn’t be able to bridge all the noise with the songs as easily as you did with The Coronation.

Judd: Basically I think we kind of go about it… sometimes the song will start with the noise, like we’ll bring in field recordings or just things that we’ve kind of made up, but mostly field and real noises that are captured either on tape or are made through circuit bending. We very rarely use a synthesizer, so we bring in something like that or sometimes it starts the other way around where we just write the song and the noise comes after. So we don’t really have a set way. We are usually open to wherever something will take us, you know. I think it keeps the songs a little more, even for us, it’s a little more unexpected where gonna end up, which I personally like that.

Becky: We’re also creating more… like he said, we did a lot with field recording, but we’re creating even more ourselves as a band, so what you hear on the recording, you will most likely hear live too because we’re actually creating it ourselves. It’s more than it was before. We were doing that before too but it’s more with this next record.

Phil: What will the lyrical content be like?

Becky: I think Nathan’s themes have been around water.

Judd: I don’t think it’s necessarily that literal, but that’s kind of, for whatever reason, everything that we’ve been writing and what he’s been singing about has had to do with water or drowning, so the whole record actually kinda has that subject matter. I believe that’s what he’s writing about.

Phil: What are your touring plans once the album’s released?

Becky: Once it’s released we’re hoping to, but we’re not sure if this is going to happen, but we were kind of hoping to go to Europe in the spring and then do a U.S. tour in the fall. But things change, so…

Judd: Our main plans are East Coast for sure and Europe for sure. We’re going to try to fit in both next year.

Becky: And then of course it’s nice to come up and do little jaunts here like a long weekend, Portland, Seattle, Olympia, Arcata.

Judd: But we really need to get to the East Coast. We’ve been wanting to for a long time, so hopefully this coming year.

Phil: How’s the live chemistry been with Salvador so far?

Becky: Great! I mean, Sal, he recorded our last record, he engineered it and he’s a good friend of ours, so it really was about as seamless, I think, as you could have possibly wanted.

Judd: Sal had spent so much time working on The Coronation with us that he already knew the songs anyway, we knew him really well, so it’s been surprisingly easy and as far as his style, it’s just been amazing where I really feel like we’re on the same page. I’m really excited for the new music to come out and for people to hear it ‘cause I think it’s definitely us but it’s something different. It’s really cool.

Phil: Are there any plans for a re-release of the first album?

Becky: I don’t think so. You mean The Apothekar?

Phil: Yeah.

Becky: No, I don’t think so. We’re such a different band now that while we love those songs, I don’t think we’ve played those songs in years and we just want to focus on writing new music anyway. So I don’t think so.

Judd: Unfortunately when it first got released, the label that put it out went out of business right away. So that record has always just existed kind of on the outskirts of everybody, so I think we’re probably just going to leave it there and just keep working on the future.

Phil: So basically, if you can find it, download it or whatever?

Becky: Totally.

Judd: I know it’s out there.

Becky: I’m pretty sure I’ve found it for free somewhere.

Judd: I actually heard that the guy from the label has a bunch of them, but we don’t know if that’s true of not. [laughter]

Phil: How prolific do you see yourselves being over the next few years?

Becky: I hope we are going to put out a lot more than we have over the last two years. We have this habit of taking a long time writing and we want to get stuff out quicker, to get on the road quicker than we have and I think with last year, we went to Japan, we’ve sort of started… put ourselves kind of on a roll. So we’re hoping to have, by the end of the year, have this one written, have another one written at least. By fall next year hopefully.

Judd: Right now everyone in this band is only in this project and we practice a lot. It’s allowed us to really write a lot more music a lot faster than we used to. We have a lot of ideas sitting around that just need to be assembled and put down, so with Sal things have been moving really fast. We’re really hoping to get a lot more music out ‘cause it is painfully slow for us generally and we’re hoping to fix that. [laughs]

Phil: I just have one last actual question and that is recommend a book for our readers and then explain why you recommend that particular work.

Becky: I just finished reading the Song of Ice and Fire series which I loved. But that’s a pretty big commitment - that’s five books.

Phil: So far.

Becky: So far, yeah - two more to come. Another really great book I read, I guess right when it came out, was a book called The Passage by Justin Cronin. It’s kind of an apocalyptic book and it’s got science, it’s got kind of what you’d call zombies, sort of, not really - technically like a zombie book, but it’s just the experience of a group of different people… I couldn’t put it down. It was a really thick book but I thought it was amazing. So that’s my recommendation.

Laudanum

Interviewer: Philip A. Wickstrand

October 19, 2011

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PHOTOS BY PHIL A. WICKSTRAND

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

(Click on Photo to Enlarge)

Formed: 2003
Oakland, CA  USA
Label: Blurred Records
Genre: Noise / Sludge / Doom Metal

CURRENT LINE-UP:

Nathan Misterek:  Vocals
Judd Hawk:  Guitars & vocals
Salvador Raya:  Bass
Becky Hawk:  Vocals & Drums

DISCOGRAPHY:

The Apotheker (2004)
Laudanum EP (2007)
Sacred Death (2009)
The Coronation (2009)