A veteran of the Brisbane underground for over three decades, James Lees has predominantly honed his craft from behind the drum kit in bands such as Milch, Krud, and later as part of the duo Silver Sircus, alongside vocalist, Lucinda Shaw.
Now on piano and synths, Lees’ Ghostwoods project first came to our attention at the backend of last year, with the release of Terminal Bliss – the lead track that forms the bedrock of debut LP, My Neon, released in January via Brisbane independent label, 4000 Records.
Taking shape during the throes of lockdown from Lees’ Mount Nebo home (roughly 32 kilometers from the Brisbane City Centre), My Neon is a record inspired by the surroundings in which it was conceived. Six tracks at a shade over 38 minutes, Lees juxtaposes deep cinematic textures with noirish dreamscapes in what is one of the slow burn releases of 2023.
Backed by fellow practitioners from the Brisbane underground, including Lees’ partner Karl O’shea (bass), Mark Angel (guitar), Andrew Garton (saxophone, clarinet, flute), James Halloran (keys, synths) and Rohan Seekers (keys, synths), My Neon is an all-encompassing affair where Lees leaves no stone unturned.
From the Necksian thrum of opening stanza, Dreamless, the minimalistic charm of Liminal and the Talk Talk-inspired Brighter Now, to the Lynchian blur of Terminal Bliss and Terminus, My Neon sparkles with a cadence that very few other experimental releases in 2023 can match, and the more time spent in its company, the stronger it gets.
Ahead of the 4000 Records showcase this Thursday night at Brisbane’s lynchpin venue, The Zoo – a night which also includes performances from fhae, Endless Valley and The Double Happiness – we spoke to Lees about My Neon and his creative process.
Sun 13: Can you tell us about the process behind My Neon?
James Lees: “Unlike most of my other music projects, the My Neon album and in fact the entire Ghostwoods project, began with no plan whatsoever. It was born from the isolation I experienced from the COVID lockdowns of 2020 and was really just a series of compositions on piano that I developed to alleviate my boredom and also find some solace in musical expression. Very slowly, it appeared that these could be recorded and it slowly grew from there with other musicians contributing and gradually forming itself into an album. It was nice to reach a point where the music took on a life of its own and started to tell me where it wanted to go – always a wonderful milestone to reach when creating music, and recording in particular. All the way through, I tried to keep any ‘planning’ to a minimum, and to maintain a sense of playfulness – this was a challenge as I have rarely worked in this way.”
S13: What was the most important thing you wanted to capture with the record?
JL: “Once I understood where the music was coming from emotionally, I worked hard to stay focused on what each piece meant to me. As instrumental music, this meant it was very open to interpretation, but all the pieces have quite specific meanings for me – whether coming from an emotional or musical place. Keeping this idea strong gave each piece a ‘pilot’ and helped me a lot when it came to directing other musicians and at the editing/final mix stage. Now that we have played live a few times, it’s really interesting and gratifying to hear that the music is eliciting quite a strong emotional reaction from audiences.”
S13: You drafted in a slew of local talent too in Mark Angel, Karl O’shea, Andrew Garton, James Halloran and Rohan Seekers. Had you worked with any of them prior to Ghostwoods?
JL: “Yes, everyone on the album has been part of my musical extended family for a while. Mark Angel and James Halloran also play in Silver Sircus with me and we have collaborated on a number of other projects outside of that too. I have previously collaborated with Rohan and Andrew on a performance of the music of Twin Peaks that we toured around Australia between 2017-2019 – this is another way that the Lynch/ Badalementi influence comes out in the Ghostwoods music of course. Karl is also my partner in life, and we have been the drums/bass rhythm section in a number of other projects. So the connections and sense of family is strong in Ghostwoods – and I also think this is a distinctly Brisbane phenomenon too.”
To me it’s one of those records that really comes on after six or so listens. There seems to be a lot of influences throughout. What were you listening to at the time of recording?
JL: “At times I struggled with the ‘influences’ question a bit – mostly because I felt them asserting themselves quite strongly in some of the pieces, and I wanted to push back on that and keep up the pressure to be 100 per cent new/original/innovative. At some point, I wondered what would happen if I simply let go of that idea and let the ideas flow, and not try to censor myself or shut down anything I may have deemed too much of a ‘reference’, shall we say.
“This definitely proved to be a much better approach and I can hear some particular moments where the influences are clear – I could certainly name the aforementioned Lynch/ Badalamenti soundtrack work (Twin Peaks and Lost Highway in particular), Swans, The Necks, SQURL (and the Only Lovers Left Alive soundtrack), Harold Budd and maybe a bit of Brian Eno. Some non-musical influences would include early ’80s sci-fi dystopia (e.g. Blade Runner, Liquid Sky) and some of the work of Andrej Tarkovsky (especially Mirror and Stalker), and also the spooky mountain environment where I live outside Brisbane – itself extremely reminiscent of the forest in Twin Peaks.”
S13: Dreamless has a real Necksian feel to it. Can you tell us about this one?
JL: “Thank you, well spotted! Definitely there is a sense of that in the piano trilling/rumbling that goes through the track I think – it’s a sound I really love, and as noted above, I just went with it. Something that informed Dreamless is about my fascination with the different perceptions of the passing of time, and how things can look/feel/sound when you are closer or further away from them. I tried to capture this with the piano trilling constantly on one chord being full of many notes played very quickly which ends up sounding like one smooth sound – I love the sense that it is one sound made up many grains, like sand on a beach.
“Underneath this are the super slow languorous low notes which move independently and in a different time frame, but all have their own relationship to the trilling notes above them. I wanted to have a sense of the musical parts being simultaneously unrelated and related – at odds with each other but somehow in harmony. This is an idea I have applied to several other compositions in different ways. And the title Dreamless… simply a reference to the fact that I am one of those people that almost never remembers their dreams!”
S13: Terminal Bliss and Terminus have a deeply narcotic, neo-noir vibe which also runs through the record and gives it a filmic quality. Were films something that inspired the My Neon?
JL: “These two songs are cousins – in fact Terminus is a remix of Terminal Bliss, recast as an ‘end credits’ to an imaginary film that probably has a very dark ending. I was absolutely imagining both of these as film soundtracks and the vibe is definitely neo-noir, a bit low-fi, almost as if being played from a VHS tape. Something in the mix for Terminal Bliss was the idea of the feel of the Pink Room from Twin Peaks with a nod to Bill Pullman’s iconic demented sax solo in Lost Highway where he leaves the band behind to finish the song.
“It was also a track where I started with the rhythm first – as I am a drummer first and foremost, I wanted to try writing a piece from the drums up and this is where the relentless, grinding rhythm came from – a stark contrast to most of the other compositions which are gentler when it comes to drums and rhythms. Andrew Saragossi peformed the wild sax solo on this track, and was very happy to take my brief of going extreme as possible. It was a lot of fun to record.”
Ghostwoods - My NeonS13: Liminal goes to the world of minimalism and in some strange way ties together the album, I think. Can you tell us how this track came about?
JL: “Liminal started life as a piece of connective musical tissue between Dreamless and Terminal Bliss, but I soon discarded that idea and then it became a full piece of music on its own. I was definitely going for lots of negative space between the notes. I love the challenge of writing melodically with so few notes/chords and I feel this piece worked well with the repeated, hypnotic pattern endlessly cycling along. Liminal has regenerated even further in its live version to become even longer, louder and more epic and is currently my favourite one to perform.”
S13: With an album like My Neon, I think about the creative process. In your case, when you enter into it, do you think certain aspects are taken out of your hands?
JL: “When I started what was to become the album, I didn’t really know I was making an album, this emerged gradually as the project went along, and at some point, the penny dropped and the way I approached the music changed. It’s definitely a great point to get to in any creative process where the work comes alive and takes on a life of its own – you go from pushing it along, to it pulling you along and it’s such a wonderful feeling. The work becomes the pilot and tells you what it wants and needs – at this point, the feeling is that you become a conduit for the work. That’s how it feels for me at least!”
S13: Given that you live on the outskirts of Brisbane, do you think your surroundings played a big part in how these recordings turned out?
JL: “It absolutely did – I live alone in semi-seclusion in a forest on a mountain outside Brisbane. I’m very tuned into the natural environment and particularly the sounds that are specific to the seasons and the time of day. This beautiful environment took on a somewhat different meaning throughout the lockdowns of 2020 where I was largely alone in this space for several months – a feeling of isolation, beauty and an odd dual mix of hopelessness and hopefulness. This was the setting for the Ghostwoods music to come into being. When I listen now, I can hear those moments and feelings strongly. On the album itself, there are many instances where the sound of the mountain, the birds and the occasional car can be heard, largely because we recorded much of the piano with the studio doors to the outside wide open. This is particularly noticeable on Brighter Now and Dreamless.”
S13: With Labor now in government in Australia, has much changed over the last 12 months in terms of opportunities such as arts funding?
JL: “I’ll go out on a limb here and say that just about anything would be better than the anti-arts/ culture previous government we had prior to 2022. Certainly the Labor party has a better track record with the arts at least from a rhetoric point of view. Some major funding amounts were announced last year, but as ever it will remain to be seen how these are dispersed and the effect they will have. Meanwhile, artists keep finding ways to create and pushing forward – because we must.”
Ghostwoods (photo: Sam Scoufos)S13: Feeding into that, and what is so special about the Brisbane music scene?
JL: “Having been involved in the Brisbane music scene (and some of its sub-scenes) since the 1990s, I have seen a few different versions of it, and also a generational change over the last decade or so two. When I first arrived here as a teenager ready to play very loud drums in 1990, Brisbane was definitely still seen as a ‘big country town’ and the poor uncultured cousin [of] the much more cosmopolitan Sydney and Melbourne.
“Prior to the ’90s, if you wanted to make music, art or to write it was probably best to simply leave, due to the extremely corrupt, right-leaning and embarrassingly country-bumpkin government that presided over the ’70s and ’80s. The ’90s was a time of seismic change to all of this, and an explosion of the music/arts scene ensued. I’m very lucky and proud to have experienced this right from the beginnings, and there are many in Brisbane who note 1990 as something of a ‘year zero’ in terms of the city becoming what it is today. Brisbane is not the only city with a history like this, and the music of these times comes from a certain ‘isolationist’ situation – a small town with an even smaller arts/ music scene, pre-internet and with hardly any infrastructure or resources, it was DIY culture at its finest.
“I would also point to some other cities similar to this who have had thriving music scenes, Dunedin in New Zealand (with the iconic Flying Nun label), Bristol and Manchester also spring to mind. There was also a sense of strong camaraderie in Brisbane if you were doing anything different in the ’80s/’90s and did not matter what scene you were from – rock, punk, folk, electronic, performance art – everyone tended to group together and support each other. I do feel that is particular to Brisbane, and I also hope it’s still the case now.”
S13: Speaking of, you’re playing at the Zoo on Thursday as a part of a 4000 Records showcase. How integral is a venue like the city?
JL: “The Zoo has been a focal point of the Brisbane arts/ music scene since 1992. A huge sprawling warehouse like space in the heart of the club/venue area Fortitude Valley, it has become one of Australia’s most highly regarded venues. Largely female owned and led, it was a pioneer artspace in the 1990s and was the launchpad for too many bands and artists to mention. I’m lucky to have had a long history with The Zoo, having worked there for several years, performed there with numerous bands, and promoted shows. Most recently I had the honour of performing there for their Thirtieth Birthday celebrations in December last year. The term ‘spiritual home’ may sound like a cliché but it is truly accurate when I, and hundreds of other artists, talk about The Zoo. I’m super excited to be bringing Ghostwoods to The Zoo stage and of course sharing the show with some of the other 4000 Records bands – in true Brisbane tradition, it will be a family affair, albeit a dark and wintry one!”
My Neon is out now via 4000 Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.
Ghostwoods plays The Zoo on Thursday, June 29, as a part of the Wintering – A 4000 Records Showcase. Purchase tickets here.
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