INTERVIEW: Matt Faulkner – HighView
With their second EP Aftermind on the front line of their lives, HIGHVIEW have been making waves with their sound and especially live performances. They’ve recently finished touring around Canberra in order to promote the EP and push themselves even more. We managed to catch up with vocalist Matt Faulkner to discuss the EP, the bands progression in sound and what’s to come of these Australian rockers.
How are you?
Matt: Doing pretty well, we’ve had our three-day weekend in Canberra. This is the first weekend back off tour, we’ve been playing every weekend since the start of April so it’s nice to have a weekend just at home doing some home things.
For someone who isn’t familiar to you guys, can you explain your sound?
Matt: I guess the best way to describe our sound is that we’re heavy rock laced with electronic synths. We’re probably closer to something like NOTHING MORE, or a band like SEVENDUST just that big American rock but not heavy metal.
You’re still a relatively young band, but your name is quickly spreading. You’ve especially achieved a lot in terms of live performances. Were you expecting for your career in music to take off so quick?
Matt: No, we didn’t really have any expectation on the get go. I started the project in 2015 just as a side project from other bands that I was in, I had a bunch of ideas that wasn’t really meshing with my other projects and I just sort of put them down on a computer, and I liked the sound of what I was doing so I grabbed a bunch of mates to jump on board with HIGHVIEW. In 2016 we were just writing away with no future plans, we were just having fun making noise and then we decided to start playing shows in 2017 in Canberra, and we picked up some really good supports. It went from there, we looked at each other and thought that this could actually be something good, something fun, and we really liked the sound. From there we started pushing it more and more, we booked in management, we just finished our biggest Australian tour, again we had no real expectations getting to where we are at the moment but we’re really looking forward to what the future holds.
Your second EP, Aftermind, is due to come out in a matter of days. Are you looking forward to the release?
Matt: We’re really looking forward to it, we’ve put a lot of hard work into it the past year or so, really trying to fine tune it as best as we can. We recorded it all in-house in our own little studios between all of our houses in the suburbs. We’re really happy with the way it’s turned out, happy we’ve had the opportunities to get out and about outside of Canberra and showcase the songs, we’ve had a really positive reception so that’s really boosted our motivation to push it for the second half of the year. Everybody is really proud of all the hard work we’ve put in, we’re interested to see where it takes us from here.
You’ve collectively expressed your mental struggles on the EP. Is it difficult opening yourselves up for others to see in this way?
Matt: I think writing and performing for almost 20 years and a part of my writing process is therapeutic for me to write out what I’m seeing and what I’m experiencing from a day to day in a reflective stance. For the Aftermind EP I was writing those songs around the time that I was really struggling, I really wanted to start pushing the project but there was also pressures at work that I needed to maintain high performance in my job, and keep things rolling at home in relationships. My wife has been super supportive with my tour and all that sort of thing, it was a dream of mine to go on tour and she was really supportive of that. With the Aftermind EP process it was definitely each song relates to a different struggle, with relationships with professional life and home life and your personal interest being music. It wasn’t difficult, it was more therapeutic for me.
It must be trying when you have to live your personal life but also wanting to push yourself creatively.
Matt: Yeah.
What can people expect from the EP?
Matt: They can expect a lot of energy, we try when we’re playing live to try and project that energy that you’ll hear on each song. You’ve got your big heavy riffs, your headbanging riffs, your more intricate melodies here and there. Aftermind, the title track is a lot more cool and calm, a lot more electronic synths. I think it’s a nice mesh, a nice range of colours across the five tracks, it was a great experience to change from our first our first EP Take Your Time which was very straight heavy rock for the most part to experimenting with a couple of styles over the five tracks. I think it’s going to help us when it comes to recording an album.
Have you seen yourselves progress from your first release to now your second?
Matt: Yeah, I think sound wise we’ve really started to sit down and work out who we are and what we want to do. Looking back on our first EP Take Your Time as I said it was very heavy rock influenced, we don’t want to pigeon hole ourselves to one genre, we all love our rock, our FOO FIGHTERS, we love KARNIVOOL, a lot of the more progressive bands as well but we also want to try and experiment with different sounds, different rhythms, different melodies. For the album we’re going to try and experiment more with the electronic samples, absolutely we feel like progression is the best part of the process for us and experimentation.
What is next for you after the release of Aftermind?
Matt: We’re trying to organise another little tour but at this stage we have no dates or locations locked in at this stage. We did this first tour this month to showcase the songs and build up a bit of sound around the EP. We’re releasing it the 1st June and then I think we’re going to record another video off the EP, another single, we’re not sure which one just yet, and then we’ll roll into another tour later in the year. The big task for us from next month onwards is to try and start writing an album, that’s the plan.
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