INTERVIEW: James Monteith – TesseracT

With the release of their new album, Sonder looming it would be reasonable to think that TESSERACT are right at the fore of their genre right now. Touring across the world with BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME and PLINI in support of Sonder, this is the furthest they’ve gone and the hardest they’ve pushed in terms of their ambition so far. We caught up with guitarist James Monteith to get the lowdown on Sonder, their goals and ambitions, and what exactly makes the TESSERACT machine run.

Hey man! Congrats on the upcoming release of Sonder. Are you guys excited for everyone to hear it?

James: I mean, it’s always exciting when a new album is coming out. Everything is a bit crazy right now though. It’s exciting, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that when so much is happening. It makes us feel slightly removed from it, to a degree, because we’re all trying to make sure everything gets done. It’s a bit of a process for us at this point, so it’ll be a bit of blur until the album is out and we’re into the swing of things.

I know that in the past, records like Altered State and One had thematic concepts and groups of songs. It’s easy to see that this is missing from Sonder – and it’s quite a short record which is strange for you. Did you take a new approach with the concepts and writing of the new record?

James: I think, that like those first two records, there is still a concept that runs throughout Sonder. Polaris was actually the odd one out, with no concept at all, really. With this one it’s definitely more of a continuous concept. Luminary is still a track on its own, but then the second and third tracks form almost around one specific thing, and then the next two groupings of tracks also go together. So, really it’s a collection of musical groupings. There’s not a real overall theme for the whole record, but there are blocks of themes in these groups.

Would you say that that’s due to a progression away from those ideas? Was it something you wanted on the first two records but you’re not really going for any more?

James: Yeah, there was never any, and there never really is any conscious decision to create something in a particular way. It’s funny, I think at the very beginning of every album process it’s literally just a bunch of ideas, and then those ideas developed, and then we see where we take it. The music takes itself, really, whether or not we want to create a concept album with four parts, or if we want to make an album with a big centrepiece. We end up with a bunch of different pieces, and then putting those pieces together leaves us with whatever the album is at the end. Although, lyrically, Dan usually has a little bit more planning in mind. When the songs start to grow musically, that’s when he starts build his vocals and themes around the tracks.

You’ve announced a big US tour, along with the announcement of the album. Any word on the UK tour for Sonder?

James: Unfortunately, that’s a big secret at the moment, but if you sit tight you won’t be disappointed!

Bands like PERIPHERY are very famous for their over-the-top documentation of their writing and recording process, but I’ve never seen how you guys go about it. What’s your process?

James: Well we’re still very much a bedroom-based band. It’s where the band came from, and it’s how we’ve always known how to do things. We’ve got better equipment than we used to, but the principle and process is kinda the same. The writing process is essentially just putting down sketches and ideas, emailing it around and then someone else might like it, and then record something on top of it, and then that’s really how the ideas are spawned. Acle, the other guitar player, is sorta the main songwriter – he’s the one that pulls it all together, he takes on the lion’s share of the music. Anything else that the rest of us write, he then brings it together and finishes it off, if you like. So basically, lots of the ideas feed into him, then he develops the songs, and Dan…well, I guess what was different with this album is that Dan wrote the vocals whilst the ideas were being generated. But then, lots of the ideas that he came up with actually influenced changes in the music, as well, so it definitely felt like the most organic album in that respect. Rather than the last couple of records which were more planned and fragmentary with bits stuck over the top, if you know what I mean. It’s similar with the recording process, most of it was done in Acle’s home studio, and Dan actually did all the vocals in his own home studio. It’s kinda always been that way. We have, in the past, kinda used posh, expensive drum rooms to get the best drum sounds but the final mix has always ended up being in Acle’s studio. I guess it’s what we’re used to, and it’s how he gets his best results, because he gets his most comfortable environment for mixing.

Sonder is being released in the midst of a bit of a changing scene – there’s lots of new stuff going on, genres are being bent and broken – did this new landscape in the metal industry influence your thought process amidst the release of the new record?

James: I wouldn’t say we’re separate from everyone else, but no, we definitely weren’t influenced by anything that’s going on at the moment. Things that we did consciously different from last time, I suppose, is that we tried to bring a bit of heaviness back in. Especially on the vocals – we kinda shied away from aggressive vocal for a while, and in all honesty, we just got bored of it. However, it is an amazing dynamic tool, and in those moments when you want it to be really heavy, a bit of aggressive vocals can really work. So that, as well as bringing in some slightly more metallic riffing. We didn’t actually end up making a ‘heavier album’ overall, though. It definitely has some heavy moments, but a lot of it is very ambient and atmospheric. I don’t think that was affected by the scene, though, I think that was just us trying to do something a bit different again. We try to some things different because that’s what’s interesting to us, and if we don’t find what we’re doing interesting, then it probably won’t be interesting to anyone else. So, I think that’s the main driver, just to make us excited about it. As long as we’re into it, that’s what will be written and that’s what we’ll put out.

You mentioned an increased use of aggressive vocals, but that you got bored of it. That’s fair enough, because I suppose it can end up quite formulaic, but even on the new record they can’t really be classed as ‘screams’. Would you say, then, that the band has permanently progressed away from the sort of harsh vocals Dan delivered on ‘One’?

James: I wouldn’t say we’re moving away from anything in particular…we’re constantly trying out new things and evolving and testing new textures and sounds. In terms of sounds, Acle is constantly on his ‘tone quest’, trying to find new things. We never say never to any sort of sound really. One thing we are moving away from, though, is making things that sound too much like what we’ve done previously. Saying that, we would never shy too far away from our own sound, though. We’ve had people from the industry approach us asking us to make radio tracks, or follow a formula, and there have been attempts, but it didn’t really work for us.

Do you have a favourite song off the new record?

James: King is really fun to play, since it’s one of our most ambitious songs to date, and the riffs at the beginning and end of Luminary are also pretty boss. It has some really complex bends in it that you have to have exactly on point throughout the band. We have a few weeks to practice before tour, though. The re-release of Smile also really hits the mark for me. I wasn’t too sure about the version we released before, but this time, I think the mix really nailed it.

Awesome. What would say the goals of the band following the release of Sonder? What’s the endgame for TESSERACT?

James: We’re not looking massively far ahead, we’re just gonna keep doing what we’re doing while people are enjoying it. Obviously, we have these tours to do, but really, we want to get to work on the next record. We have a hell of a lot of ideas which we really wanna develop and wanna get to work on as soon as possible, to be honest. The next one will hopefully come quicker than the next one since we’re bursting full of ideas.

Sonder is out April 20 via Kscope

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