Bag Raiders: Glass Action

The haunting and atmospheric Way Back Home is currently hijacking radio stations and nightclubs around Australia, reminding us that, indeed, Bag Raiders are making one hell of a comeback since last year’s Shooting Stars. And if you think the first single is one of the best electro pop tunes to drop in 2010, you’re in for a mighty treat when the duo releases its self-titled debut album this month.

    “It’s just weird now because for months we’ve been sitting in this dead space waiting for it to come out,” Jack Glass, one half of the production duo, explains. “It’s been done and ready to go for a while. I think I’ve heard it a million times already because it was finished three months ago. We’ve just been in some kind of weird limbo ever since! We know it back-to-front but nobody else has heard it.”

    If Way Back Home is anything to go by, it’s sounding dark and epic and more than a little retro too. Glass is quick to agree, but adds that the entire album came within an inch of sounding like a whole different beast altogether.

    “It was definitely meant to come out earlier but we had some hiccups. Well not really ‘hiccups’, more of a change in direction I guess. We started the album and somewhere along the road we just stopped and totally changed the direction we were heading! We were going to use different vocalists but then at one point we came up with the idea that it was just going to be us both producing and singing on the album. So we did some demos with just Chris Stracey, production partner singing a couple of tracks. Then we had a change of plan and we went back to the original plan, which was to get guest vocalists to sing on the album.”

    It’s nothing to do with Stracey’s vocal ability of course, as Glass promises. Despite featuring guest vocals from Martin Solomon (Wim), Dan Black, Rhys Taylor (Ted & Francis), Simon Jones (The Holidays), and Gisselle Rosselli (Crave You), the album does still see both Stracey and Glass contribute their voices to a handful of tracks.

    “Chris is on about two or three songs and I’m on one. I think he’s got a great voice. But the guy who sang on Way Back Home (Solomon) – he was amazing! Scary, spooky, he gave it a really dark vibe. Everyone else was really cool too. In the beginning we had the idea of getting vocalists from Europe and America, but once that process started we realised it wasn’t a great idea. We just had annoying issues like sending out a track and getting back vocals that were totally off the mark from what we wanted…No, I’m not naming any names! Actually, we got some really weird ones too, I’m not going to lie. The other thing was that we had some people just dropping off the face of the earth after promising to do something – and I’m talking about fairly established artists here. In the end we decided to focus on Sydney vocalists for a million better reasons.”

    Big names like Cut Copy and Midnight Juggernauts have been lining up to collaborate with these two producers since 2009. It started with various remixing duties and led to Bag Raiders’ track Shooting Stars landing the number 18 spot on Triple J Hottest 100 last year. Ever since then, according to Glass, a full-length album has been the top priority for Stracey and himself.

    “We decided for it to be a producers’ album. More like Daft Punk or Chemical Brothers rather than The Presets with a permanent vocalist. Having worked with all the vocalists on this album, you realise how much voices bring to a song – they can transform a track completely! We also wanted people to enjoy the album for what it is – an actual album, not just heaps of club songs. Club tracks are probably the worst thing you could do for an album because people get bored so quickly and style changes in clubs almost overnight, so your song just dies in a matter of weeks. We wanted the album to be much more coherent.”

    They also wanted their first album to serve as something of a bridge between last year’s megahit Shooting Stars and the sound Bag Raiders represent in 2010. Rest assured it’s still electro, but six years since the duo’s formation, Glass claims it was time to try some new avenues too.

    “There are some similar elements to Shooting Stars,” Glass confirms. “A lot of the songs are quite poppy though. We did consciously try not to come out sounding like a straight pop jam and just freak everyone out with it. At the same time though, you’ve got to move on too. All in all, it’s probably more a dance pop album than anything. Plus we’ve learned heaps more technically…Well, we’d be pretty shit if we hadn’t progressed in two years! I just hope the album is kind of a reintroduction in a way. It’s been ages since we’ve done anything for a start so I’ll be happy if people still remember us.”

    Glass is also happy just to escape the confines of his Sydney-based studio in the lead-up to Bag Raiders’ upcoming national album tour, which will also see the duo make a special appearance as part of the Parklife 2010 line-up.

    “The worst Chris and I get in the studio is when we get all weird on each other and really passive aggressive and stuff. It’s cool though because once we start to play shows you get to relieve that energy and it all balances itself out.”

Bag Raiders headline the Atoll Stage at Parklife in Botanic Park on Mon Oct 4. Bag Raiders is out through Modular/UMA from Fri Oct 1.

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