Ripped Apart: Richard In Your Mind - My Volcano

Sydney psyche-rockers Richard In Your Mind have just released their second album My Volcano. With a mish mash of influences ranging from Beck to Bob Dylan, My Volcano infiltrates your cerebral cortex and runs wild with what it finds. Rip It Up managed to track down bassist Conrad Ritchers to make some sense out of it all.

Recently enlisting help from none other than super producer Brent Griffin (SPOD), Richard In Your Mind have evolved from the attention deficient band we heard on their Summertime EP last year to a much more cohesive and organised unit. And with Jordy Lane also in the band (he of his own acclaimed solo work), Richard In Your Mind emerge as some of sort of Frankenstein's monster version of a super group.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than their weird, but mostly wonderful, second album My Volcano. Here's how they describe it in their own words:

  1.      Tiny Colossus Face

I remember Rich (Cartwright, vocals/guitar) wrote the chords and vocals ages ago and we tried to play it and it kinda sounded like cheesy stadium rock. It was funny but also kinda shit. Then one day I came over to Richard’s and he had put all these steel drum sounds on it and it was perfect. Steel drums! Who’d a thunk it?

  2.      Candelabra

This one is our sorta party time Odelay-era Beck rip-off. Not intentionally mind you, it just turned out that way. Brent is in the process of making a video clip for this one and so far it looks like the best clip ever made. Rich says “opalescent moon mantra” in this song.

  3.      Losing Our Minds

A lovely little strummy, acoustic folk ditty. There are some nice lines in this one, “Books on the shelf are part of yourself/but if they were never there who’d be in control?” Good one Rich. I like my bass playing on this one too. It’s a cool song, kinda gets better and better as it goes along.

  4.      Birds

Rich pretty much made this whole one himself, though Brent did some beats. This is one of my favourite songs to play live. It’s electronic sounding on the record but live it rocks like a motherlicker.

  5.      I Will

This is an oldie but a goodie. Rich and I spent about two years making this song what it is today. It took forever to get it right. It’s also my first ever guitar solo on record so that’s pretty cool. Sweet guiro action on this one too.

  6.      Lightning Eyes

This is the oldest song on there and also the one that I think sums up our overall sound the best. Just a nice, lazy, trippy sunshine vibe with a bit of darkness too but not too much. We actually started on this one in late 2007, so in a way it took two and half years to make this album. Sheesh!

  7.      This Face

I love this one. Rich really came up with the goods here. He did pretty much all of it himself. The beats are awesome, especially half way through when they change and the hi-hats go all fast. Cool lyrics too and excellent use of the Space Echo at the end.

  8.      Mongrowlia

This is another fave. It’s mostly instrumental, kinda sounds like early DJ Shadow or The Avalanches. There’s a few samples on there but we actually played most of it ourselves. I like my guitar sound on this one, it kinda sounds like Os Mutantes.

  9.      The Sun Broke Into Your Heart

This is a pretty little ditty but was really quite hard getting this one sounding cool. I still think maybe we could have done it better, a bit more like how we do it live but meh, whatever. It’s still cool, and there’s a nice Space Echo thing at the end.

  10.      Creation

Dub music. Lyrically this song argues that when a person turns into a tree, rather than their feet being the roots, it is their head that is in the ground. So when you turn into a tree you are upside down. It kinda makes sense when you think about it.

  11.     Edge off Dreaming

A sweet acoustic ballad for the soul. I like how stripped back this one is. Rich gets pretty intimate here. Our wonderful friend and label-mate Seja played keys on this one and she did a very good job. Thanks Seja!

  12.      Flower of the Heart

This is the big psychedelic epic. Kinda the peak of the album, might be my fave too. Me, rich and Brent all worked real hard on this one, all taking turns whose baby it was. In the end our baby turned out seven minutes long and really intense.

  13.      Jamaica

This is kinda like an outro, it’s the antidote to Flower Of The Heart. It’s just a little ambient synth thing I made a while ago and the boys liked how it sounded after Flower Of The Heart. We chucked the steel drums from Tiny Colossus Face in there at the end to provide a sense of structural unity within the album. Good work team!

My Volcano  is out now through Rice Is Nice.

Check out the other installments in our 'Ripped Apart' series:

Fire! Santa Rose Fire! - Sea Priest

Seja - We Have Secrets But Nobody Cares

Cola Wars - Invader

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