MNZ Interview: Stretch To Mould

Wellington rock band Stretch to Mould, comprising of Darrell Vickers (vocals and guitar), Tomas Fuller (drums), and Chris Fursdon (bass) caught up with Muzic.NZ’s Nicholas Clark to discuss recording their upcoming album at The Armoury with Troy Kelly, their first single Paper Mâché (out now), and the importance of rusty strings.

So, do you guys, jam much on the stage? Is there much improvisation in the live setting?

Darrell – Yeah, if something goes wrong! But mostly it’s pretty locked in.

Because when I listen to you guys, there’s a lot of tempo changes, a lot of what sounds like key changes. You guys sound very tight, which is what a trio can do well, but when you do improvise, do you ad-lib around an idea or look at each other for cues? Or is it purely recovering?

Darrell – I think it’s more figuring it out after the fact. So, I’m not very technically capable but Chris … Chris is extremely technically capable. So, we play the thing and then he often explains what we just did. Oh, right. Oh, cool. That’s what we did, huh?

So, your debut album Shadows came out, was it 2013?

Darrell – Ah, I think it was 2012.

And then quite quickly The Painting Faces EP (2014). And then there’s been a bit of a break. What happened in the interim?

Darrell – Lots of jamming. Not a lot of playing shows. It was probably, around 2023 that we picked it back up, properly, and started actually rehearsing towards playing shows again and working on new music.

Were you writing in the meantime?

Darrell – I had a lot of ideas prior and that’s sort of what motivated us all to come together and start making more tunes, starting with little ideas and then actually throwing them into songs.

What are the most memorable gigs that you guys have done before and after the break?

Darrell – Probably playing in the middle of Lower Hutt outside Queensgate. They closed down all the roads and we had a stage in the street. That’s probably one of the most memorable from before the break. And then recently, probably, I don’t know, last night at Abandoned Petone was cool. We’ve had some legendary gigs at Firebird Café in Levin.

So, your new single, Paper Mâché, it’s for an album coming up?

Darrell – That’s our first single for our upcoming album. The final album’s got 12 songs.

Tomas – I think it’s probably safe to say we’ve produced it ourselves but we’ve had a lot of great guidance from Troy Kelly. So, we didn’t get him involved in the production as such, but because he’s so good, he’s involved – a lot of good tips.

Chris – We went through a whole demo process beforehand by ourselves. So, we did a whole bunch of recording and then listening back and then tweaking and that kind of thing before we jumped in with Troy.

How’d you record the drums?

Chris – Just two mics at Thomas’s house.

Two mics? Zeppelin style!

Chris – Yeah, literally the laptop, just a mic over there and one at the kick drum.

Darrell – For the demos, that is!

Tomas – Oh yeah, the actual album drum tracks were all done at the Armoury. With fifty thousand mics. We recorded it on the top floor. It’s a nice big brick room. It’s got a New York apartment vibe to it. Nice high ceilings. I wouldn’t be able to do it justice to explain how we recorded the drums. A lot of microphones. Beautiful kit.

The first time you recorded there?

Tomas – That was the third time actually! I’d been there a couple times before. But this was the first time doing a full album, the other times they were just doing a one day session.

How long were you in there for?

Tomas – I would say two days for drums. It’ll probably end up being two weeks in total.

Chris – I think to track the drums and bass, it took us, was it three days? Three days. Yeah. And then Darrell was in there a lot more times, doing vocals and guitars, double layering guitars.

Darrell – Two more songs to record in October to finish the tracking off, then we’re into mixing and mastering.

What’s your approach to fixing mistakes or improving drum parts? Do you go in with Protools and surgically improve, or do you say “no, that was a bad take, let me do it again”.

Tomas – It usually just came off feeling, really. I think most of the time when we had a good take, once I’d really gotten into the song and really warmed up and stuff. I think yeah, most of the time, once I’d finished a take I would know if it was it was a good one or a bad one.

Chris – It’s largely making sure that it’s close to perfect. And then if you get it onto tape that’s like 98% there, you can kind of tweak a couple of little things to make sure it’s as good as it’s supposed to be. But you want it to be at least 95% there before any tweaking.

Darrell – One of the things we loved about working with TK is that he’s very much about capturing it as good as it can possibly be. Obviously, you try, but because it takes so much care at the initial stage, the job for him later on becomes a lot easier and it sounds a lot more live.

Did you use a click track?

Darrell – Ah. No. We went in with the intention of using a click track. But our songs and parts… We didn’t realise that we were actually pretty consistent with our tempo.

It was amazing. We had sessions where we had to sometimes just, you know, drag something out to end the song or whatever. But because we had no click, that sometimes didn’t work. But a lot of the time it did, which was quite surprising.

We did some rearrangement of Paper Mâché, for example. Tomas’s tempo was pretty much perfect throughout the track, and even TK was like, “wow, OK, we don’t need to do anything. Just move it around”.

So was bass DI’d or did you use an amp?

Chris – Both? I think it was mainly mic’d. Yeah. I had my amp there, but we ended up going through his cabs. I had my pedal board, but then he had a bunch of other pedals as well. Yeah, we spent quite a bit of time on bass tones.

In terms of your sound, like your complexity comes more from tempo changes what I feel is like key changes and piecing, not a lot of wacky crazy feedback little stuff going on there.

Chris – No, not overly. Most of my pedal stuff is just for the tone and texture kind of thing. I only think there’s maybe one or two songs where I change pedal sounds mid-song.

Yep for sure – and, this is just an observation, there’s not a massive range of tones from the guitar. Like you’ve got a nice toasty overdrive for use for everything.

Darrell – Yeah, I like to keep things simple. Sometimes the dynamics are just through playing rather than switching on a pedal.

Tomas – It’s kind of like the classic rock and roll thing, you know, as opposed to changing your sounds, kind of just change the rhythm. For some songs, if you need a lot more intensity, I think the playing comes through more than having a more intense guitar tone.

What’s your approach with that, like different guitars, different amps, with different mic positions?

Darrell – Yeah, we used like, maybe six guitars already and layered twelve or something crazy. But then what will actually be used in the final product will be substantially less. I think that the amount of tracks that will actually be used in the final product might come down to two or three.

Do you use an acoustic to double track too?

Darrell – Yeah, I got some acoustic in there. Including a really crappy acoustic! Like the strings are rusty and it just sounded pretty cool for the section that we used it for. I mean, I brought my nice guitar too, but then we were like, “oh, we can do that part with this one and actually the crappier sound is perfect for it”.

What was your approach for vocals?

Darrell – All of the choruses use multiple tracks. Just to sort of build it up with slightly different open tones. A little bit of harmonising as well.

Alright, nice one, so, what’s the plan with the album now?

Darrell – So, first single Paper Mâché is now out. And then you just gotta keep promoting with gigs. Album release party, you know. So, we will probably release another few singles. The album itself won’t be released until mid-next year. So we’re going to go for a bit of waterfall approach and have several singles prior to the actual release. This gives us a bit of time to finish the track as well in October.

So, what is your dream band to open for? Who would you love to open for, living or dead?

Darrell – We might have different answers, but I would be stoked with Foo Fighters or Queens of the Stone Age.

Tomas – I’m not sure to be honest. I’m trying to think what would go really well with our band sound. Hmmm, I think Idles would be really fun. I’m just a massive fan of that band. We have the same sort of energy.

I feel you guys are a little bit more sophisticated.

Darrell – I’ll go Smashing Pumpkins, as well.

Tomas – Nirvana?

Chris – A Perfect Circle, maybe?

There’s quite a lot of 90’s conventions coming through in your music, but you don’t sound grunge, to me anyway. It’s more just like 90’s alternative, maybe?

Tomas – Yeah.

Darrell – Yeah.

Chris – Yeah.

Tomas – Especially with my drum parts, they have their very 90’s sort of flame feel.

Chamberlin.

Tomas – Yeah, Chamberlin, but I think that’s just because that’s mainly the sort of music we listen to, so it kind of always seeps in, you know, no matter what you do.

So, if you guys had a really massive gig opening for, let’s say the Foo Fighters, and unfortunately, one of you got COVID before the gig, but you could get anyone, living or dead to replace that member, what would you do? Like, what would you do if Tomas was the one who got COVID – and you had to replace him, who are you going with?

Darrell – Dave Grohl. Two birds, one stone.

Nah, you can’t choose Dave Grohl, that’s against the rules.

Darrell – Oh, Jimmy Chamberlin, then.

Tomas – It’d be sick to hear Matt Cameron playing my parts, because I’d imagine he’d just put even more flavour on top. That’d be cool.

What if Chris got COVID before the Foo Fighters gig, who are you gonna get?

Tomas – Bassists….

Darrell – Bassists…. Ummmmm….

Ben Shepherd?

Chris – Oh, we’re talking New Zealand people?

Nah, Shepherd is the bassist from Soundgarden.

Chris – Oh, right, he’s got the same name as a real good bassist from Tawa. He’s moved to LA now.

Darrell – Lemmy!

Tomas – I’d tend to say Timmy Commerford (Rage Against The Machine). Let’s take him.

Yeah, because your bass lines are pretty sophisticated, pretty busy.

Chris – Yeah. I’m definitely a busier player. Although, I think you have to take your moments. If the song doesn’t want something complicated, then it’s best to hold back. With any instrument you can be like, I’m going to fucking show off, and then the audience and the band would be, “what are you doing? He’s trying to sing!” If the song’s trying to relax and you were sitting there playing heaps, then yeah, you can wreck the vibe pretty fast.

What about Darrell?

Tomas – Josh Homme would be a good one.

Chris – Kurt Cobain?

Tomas – Devin Townsend? That’d be gold.

Darrell – For guitar, I wouldn’t mind Billy Corgan replacing me.

What would be your New Zealand dream band open for?

Tomas – Probably Alien Weaponry. I’d love to do a show for Alien Weaponry. That’d be awesome. I’ve been a big fan of theirs for a long time and they seem like cool guys. I saw them at Soundsplash 2018, and it was right after they had won Battle of the Bands. They were like only two years older than me at the time.

Darrell – The Datsuns!

Tomas – Done that – I’ve opened for them already!

Darrell – Stan Walker?

Chris – Six60?

Tomas – A Lorde show?

Darrell – “And now, ladies and gentlemen, for something completely different…”

If you were to introduce a new instrument to your band, what instrument would fit in with your existing sound?

Darrell – Probably keys.

Chris – Maybe some programming?

Tomas – Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, like a little record scratching in there. It kind of just opens the door to every single sound possible. What I really like about having someone who does sampling and stuff is that, like, on the fly, you could record other people playing their parts live. I’ve always been a massive fan of Slipknot, so I always love watching their sampler and DJ do that kinda stuff.

Do they even mic up those steel drums?

Tomas – Yeah, yeah, I think they do. I’m not sure about the keg to be honest.