Ezekiel RodofiliOn the 1st of October 2012, Blacklevel Embassy released their last album, New Veteran. It’s an uncompromising album, and one that unfortunately went under a lot of people’s radars.
Brett O’Riley has been in quite a few bands over the years, and is known for co-running Coburg‘s True North (of which he talks about here). He also was one of Blacklevel Embassy’s members. To celebrate New Veteran turning fourteen, I was fortunate enough to speak with Brett about the album.
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Ez: Well, I guess we’ll start.
Brett: Let me preface the rest of this conversation: I have a shit memory, so let’s see how we go.
Ez: How did Blackelevel Embassy start?
Brett: How did we start… Adam Cooper and myself were very good friends. I met him the very first time I went to Sydney to tour as a child. His band and my band played together, and the band I was in… I was barely 18 or 19 and the other dudes were 25, 26? We were the same age, so I sort of gravitated toward him. We would stay at each other’s houses whenever we were in the state. Eventually he moved out to Melbourne, so it was like “Well, we have to play music together ’cause that makes sense”. He auditioned for one of the bands I was in then.
Ez: Was that Ricaine?
Brett: Nah, it was an instrumental thing. Little General is what it was called. He auditioned for that ’cause our second bass player was leaving. Then apparently the other people in the band didn’t want him because in a rehearsal or jam, me, Adam and Dave Kneale – the drummer at the time – it was just the three of us locked in and everyone else was at the periphery, so we started a band together.
Ez: Hence Blacklevel Embassy.
The first release, Fear Like Young: how did that come around?
Brett: I don’t know is the honest answer. This is me guessing: I was still in a pretty busy touring band at the time when we started working on stuff. Musically, I was bored with what I was doing and needed something a bit more challenging and abrasive. For six months we wrote until we had enough material, I guess. Don’t know. Can’t give you a realistic time frame.
Ez: Then after that comes Baroc, which sort of showed a sort of more variable Blacklevel.
Brett: Yeah, that was us trying to create a record that wasn’t just a thing. I think we were probably trying to find our feet a bit. I don’t know if we took a lot of time going “What are we? What do we want to sound like?” We just did it. “Let’s just play, let’s go”. I think we were trying to make a record that sort of moved up and down a little bit.
Ez: I think at least from Fear Like Young, you had a sound. There was definitely something there, but at least into Baroc, there were still sort of Lake and Ricaine and other elements seeping through. Those are still evident, but it is something different.
Brett: Honestly, I haven’t thought about any of those records for decades. I refreshed myself on the last one ’cause I thought “Yeah, we’ll talk about that”. I haven’t listened to anything else.
Ez: You also did a second EP with “Get Crowned” on it.
Brett: Yeah, we did a split with Sabertooth Tiger from LA. My friend James had a little record label out at Brisbane called Depot. He hooked up Fear Like Young. Then we did that split. Then we went on to a different label out of Sydney called Chatterbox for Baroc.
It was a four-song split. We did two songs each, and our other song was a ZZ Top cover.
Ez: Then you’ve got ASP, which is much closer to New Veteran than it Baroc, but with more melody in it than the former.
Brett: I guess so? I don’t know that any of it was ever discussed or a conscious decision, to be honest. My memory of how we wrote the entire time… Adam’s a fucking genius, and he has twenty ideas before he has his breakfast. He would have a catalogue of half-finished songs, fully finished songs, a riff, whatever, and I would be the siphon of “Nah, nah, yeah. Shit, good, great. Oh, put those two bits together”. What he was spitting out at the time, I don’t know if we ever sat down and went “This is what we’re gonna do”, short of I do us trying to make a record that moved on the first one. I remember that being a thing, but other than that, I don’t know if we ever talked about it.
Ez: Something I’ve noticed is that “Don Rodeo” has a particular lyric on it, which is “I feel I’m a walking contradiction I feel I’m a walking contradiction I feel I’m a walking contradiction…”
Brett: Ah yeah, I can explain that.
Ez: Did you use that in a previous band?
Brett: It was Ricaine, on “Mainlanders”
It’s a song about Ricaine [either] the first or second time we went to Tasmania. There’s this band from Tasmania called Mouth, who for us were an influential punk rock band. We fucking loved Mouth. At the time – early nineties – Tassie was a bit of a loose entity with whispered tales of this, that and the other thing.
We played, and whilst jamming between songs I played a Mouth riff. Neil Thomason joined in and apparently it offended a bunch of people and they walked out. So for the second record Neil wrote a song about us going to Tasmania. And then the song “Don Rodeo” is about a night that I had with The Nation Blue. Blacklevel and The Nation Blue played together heaps because they’re like our best friends. We went out after a show and had a night out in Hobart. So because it’s about Hobart, that would have been why I threw that in. ‘Cause I’m a smartarse.
Ez: See I was gonna suggest some sort of theme of continuation from past artistry.
Sorry. Just a smartarse. Not intellectual whatsoever *laughs*
Ez: So Blacklevel disappeared for a little bit after ASP. From what I remember, Dave had left.
Brett: Dave had left after touring the first record, and the drummer on ASP was Dan Mckay from The Nation Blue. Dan played with us for a couple of years, and we were also another band at the same time, with a fourth person.
Ez: Margins.
Brett: Yeah. So Margins and Blacklevel were touring a bunch, and Dan was also touring in The Nation Blue. It was all just too much, So Dan ended up bailing and Dave joined Margins ’cause we remained friends the entire time. Dave just couldn’t tour anymore. He didn’t want to tour hard like we were touring, so he left, but Margins never toured that hard and it’s not as intense. It was a much more relaxed affair.
Ez: So then from what I recall, Future of the Left was touring and Andy Falkous got you guys to join on the tour, so you got a new drummer.
Brett: Yep. Joel Ellis.
I was at a wedding. I don’t remember who’s it was, but JonBoyRock was there, and it was his idea to meet Joel who was also there. He was like “You, you two, it’s fucken’ you two”. Joel lived in Melbourne at the time, and I think he filled in on a few gigs for another band I was in. We got along super well.
It took a little minute to click with Joel ’cause he’s a fast player. It was a bit of “Slow down mate”, but when it clicked, it clicked really well. So full credit to JonBoy. It was his idea.
Ez: And then Falkous harassed you guys to keep going.
Brett: That probably checks out. Early on Blacklevel opened for Mclusky. Very early on. I got along well with all of them. That’s probably how that relationship began.
Ez: Now, this is kind of where my fandom of the band comes in. I’d actually heard you guys beforehand on SPOD’s EP, Eternal Championz, when it was being played on FBi. Eventually I bought it, but it didn’t click.
I went to see Shellac in 2012 at The Metro, and I got there late. When I came in, you were in the middle of performing “Tony”.
Brett: *Laughs* yep.
I remember that because that was my birthday.
Ez: I was just like “Huh, okay” *laughs* and as the songs went on I got more interested. And then I saw there was a clip for “Old Revolt”, and it just kind of took off from there. So we’re now officially talking about New Veteran.
Brett: Alright, ’cause this is where I tried to refresh myself. I wanted to walk in prepared. I wasn’t expecting older questions.
Ez: You’ve already talked about Adam writing. Did that at all change for New Veteran?
Brett: Nah man. Dude’s a genius.
You could task him with an idea. I remember, vividly, saying “I want you to write a song about dudes with shit comb overs”, and he did! Lyrics, the whole thing. We didn’t use it for anything, but he is a creative genius.
I reckon the process was the same. He was spitting out ideas, he came with full songs, half songs, and my sort of role was arranging it, picking out his ideas. Joel is, technically, more of a meathead player than the other two drummers. The other two are very chops-heavy. I think that dawned upon me and it was like “Right, so this is what the rhythm section’s gonna be. Just meat and potatoes brutality. Hit hit hit hit hit; you’re gonna be doing everything on top.” That was probably a conscious move, but other than that, it was just using the best of Adam’s ideas at the time.
Ez: It’s interesting that you describe Joel that way, because… New Veteran to me is a noise rock record, but it’s very much a rock ‘n roll record.
Brett: I think all of them are, especially ASP. They’re AC/DC songs basically *laughs*
Ez: ASP is a little bit more pop to it. A thin veneer.
Brett: A thin shine buff.
Ez: But all the playing, even early on but especially on New Veteran, I would not call standard. I see what you’re saying, but it’s very abstract at the same time.
Brett: Absolutely. When I say meathead, no shade. He hits them fucking hard. His snare is the loudest snare that I have ever played with in my life. He beats the piss out of that drum kit. He can move around, he’s a very intelligent guy, but he’s not… Dave K is a flashy player, he’s got the fills. He’s a busy player. Joel is a meathead in a very tasteful way.
Ez: He’s very rhythmically inclined.
Brett: And he plays to the material. He’s not trying to be on the cover of drummer monthly. He’s doing what the music dictates.
Ez: Do you remember how you weaved your bass around that?
Brett: I don’t, but I think playing with Adam for however long we were playing together… he’s also a very accomplished, very busy, exceptionally talented player. And having come from two lineups where the drummers were also busy, I probably removed myself and got simpler to give him and Joel more room to shine. And I probably found that my role was to be a meathead. I play like a thug, just hit them hard. Have good tone, fucken’ smack them in the face, and those guys can do all the interesting work. I played to the strength of the other two. That was my job.
Part of listening to Adam’s ideas and putting shit together is also part of listening to… it’s not a skill that I’ve developed fully, but I try to step back, approach it all, ruthlessly, be my own worst critic and go “Well pick your strengths and weaknesses”. Well those two are the strengths so I’ll just do what I have to do. I keep it really simple and just try to compliment what the other two are doing.
Ez: I was listening to the album on the way here. I still listen to it a fair bit, but I think this listent was the first time I laughed at times. Obviously there’s a real intensity to the music. Other than that and the humour there’s also an eeriness and discomfort in the mundane.
Brett: Probably. Generally speaking, Adam wrote all of the lyrics, and they’re all just kind of in-jokes.
Ez: All the songs?
Brett: All the songs. Topically, they’re all about shit that we found funny or that happened to us. “Tony” is about buying the Mortal Kombat machine that’s in the other room off Gumtree off someone called Tony. “Weng Weng is a Secret Agent” is about Weng Weng.
“Viking Tattoo” is about Adam’s… one of Adam’s uncles passed away, and his other uncle went and got his first tattoo, but it was a full back piece of his brother as a viking. He’s probably put a spin on it growing up in that family ’cause it was a very close family, but essentially that’s what it’s about.
I’m gonna shatter all of the illusions about every song. It’s just like “Yeah they’re just fucken’ stupid jokes, man” *laughs*
Ez: *laughs* It works though! And you obviously took the music seriously.
Brett: Very seriously! You always try to write the best thing you can do.
Ez: So how do you feel about the intensity of New Veteran supports its comedy?
Brett: I’m really comfortable with it. I’m a smartarse, so I find it nice to have lyrics that we’re just taking the piss. We’re just picking at shit, you know? But it can be delivered in an intense way. From these silly scenarios or stories or jokes or situations the songs have come from, there will be elements of seriousness to all of it, and it was always delivered consciously in a way where it was open to interpretation. So you don’t know that we’re taking the piss.
It’s much easier to deliver it with some venom and a bit of piss and vinegar to match the music when it is ambiguous.
Ez: So then, do you shatter the illusion of “I Keep Making Tiny Men”? Should I tell you what I think it’s about first?
Brett: Please, and then I’ll break your heart *laughs*
Ez: I think it’s about someone partly despairing, partly developing a nightmarish god complex.
Brett: Yeah, but not in the way you think. I don’t know whether I should be busting the illusion, but it’s sort of like that. You’re not incorrect, but if I was to give the actual truth, it’s not all that it seems to be.
Ez: It’s just someone who makes clay sculptures then.
Brett: Yeah. Adam was making short animations with people made out of blu tack. He was a school teacher, and was making for school stuff, little animations out of blu tack, and would spend hours and hours and hours making the little animations, and got a song out of it.
Ez: And then “New Veteran”.
Brett: That was the only serious song on the record. That’s probably just about us at the time being of an age where we were starting to be referred to as veterans. We were like thirty-two or whatever. So I think it’s coming to terms with aging.
Ez: I guess I won’t hurt myself anymore.
Brett: You can if you want, man! I’m here to shatter your dreams *laughs*
Ez: I suspect I know what “Gary” is about.
Brett: Adam used to go swimming laps at a pool, and there was a dude called Gary who’d bundle him up in the change rooms every time under the guise of wanting to have deep meaningful conversations about his life or his problems or whatever. Knowing the story, there is some genius lyrics and wordplay in that song that still, to this day, are very funny to me.
“You Should Build Yourself a Deck” is about scoring weed off someone who fell asleep on his couch, and I think was hammered and telling him he should build a deck and talking at him about all this shit and fell asleep on his couch.
Ez: “Neighbour Ray”.
Brett: That’s about Adam’s neighbour harassing him about some fucken’ shit. Just bailing him up on the street.
Ez: And “Midnight Siblings”.
Brett: I don’t remember what that’s about.
Ez: There was another song that got released, “Metronomic Head”.
Brett: Yeah, the split for Tym. I don’t remember whether we went into the session knowing we were going to scrap it or if we scrapped it after the fact, or if it didn’t fit cleanly on vinyl. I don’t remember why, but it was a leftover, and because we had a leftover, I think I approached Tym. When Tym said “Split with No Anchor?” I was like “Fuck yeah”.
Ez: What do you remember about the recording process?
Brett: I remember it being fucken’ awesome. We went up to Sydney to do it at a place called Megaphon. We also did ASP at the same place, so we knew what we were doing. JonBoy was very comfortable in there. Joel drove up, Adam and I flew. I don’t remember how long we were there. Maybe a week? Ish?
We did it all at Megaphon, and then we mixed at JonBoy’s place ’cause he had a mix room in his house. So I think in the space of approximately a week, we would’ve tracked it all and done vocals. Joel and I would’ve tracked drums and bass live together ’cause that’s how I like to do it. I want to be standing next to him and looking at him *laughs*
Then Adam would’ve come and done all his overdubs. Then we would’ve done vocals. Then we would’ve packed up down 300 flights of stairs and fucked off.
Ez: So it was very much an in and out thing.
Brett: We would’ve known exactly what we were doing. I’m the personality type that’ll go “No experimentation, no fucking around”. I want to know what I’m doing ’cause the clock’s ticking. It’s costing us money. We have none, so everything’s gotta be to budget. Everything’s got time limits. I knew exactly what I wanted walking in that door.
JonBoy flew down at least once and came to a rehearsal so he could get his head around what we were gonna do. I don’t remember whether we gave him demos or not. Probably did. Then I would’ve been out for dinner with JBR and had a big chat about what I wanted and how I wanted it to sound.
I think with New Veteran was the first record that I had a sonic vision, whereas the others were a bit “We’ll see what happens”.
Ez: Do you feel that even though it was done over a short amount of time, it was a luxurious amount of time?
Brett: Oh dude, it’s punk rock. A week’s fucken’ luxurious. We would’ve been working hard, but we gave ourselves enough time.
JonBoy and I had a big row mixing this record. I reckon we mixed it for about a week at his place, and it was just a difference of opinion. It sounds fucken’ great; His mix, his recording and engineering on the whole thing is fucken’ awesome. We had a disagreement on where the vocals should sit in the mix. I won because I’m the client.
I was like “Hey dude, this is my band and I know what I want it to be, and it sounds fucken’ sick, You just bring the vocals down a bit. That’s it! I’m not telling you to change anything else in the mix, just this”. And he didn’t like that much at all, and it was a big fucking row.
Ez: *laughs* And it’s also about the length of a support set.
Brett: *laughs* Yeah, I didn’t think about it.
Ez: From another interview that I remember around the time, Adam said that you guys prefer to do supports rather than headlines.
Brett: Yeah, no one gave a fuck about the band. Every time we played a headline, no one would show up. Truly, and it’s not me being bummed out about the band; the history of the band is that no one cared. And that’s whatever, you win some you lose some. It hasn’t stopped me. It’s just what it is.
Ez: Taking New Veteran on tour… you did the stint with The Mark of Cain. That was the last national tour that you did.
Brett: We did a tour on the back of the release in 2012 which was sick. I think we toured that record nationally maybe twice. We actually did better in Sydney than Melbourne, ironically, given that Sydney was always a struggle for every band ever.
Ez: Do you think it’s because it’s a bit of a colder city, in a sense?
Brett: Maybe. I have no idea. Maybe Melbourne was a bit too cool for school and we fell in the cracks. Like we weren’t rock ‘n’ roll enough to be a rock ‘n’ roll band, and we weren’t abrasive punk enough to be an abrasive punk band, so we didn’t fit into any scenes and, as such, no one cared. Maybe ’cause we played with Further heaps; I don’t know why.
But in terms of an organised national run, that would have been maybe two.
Ez: That would have been the Shellac and The Mark of Cain runs.
Brett: We did Melbourne and Sydney with Shellac. Then we popped up to Brisbane and Margins played with Tortoise. Then the next afternoon we did an in-store at Tym’s and that was Blacklevel’s Brisbane launch.
Ez: Do you think in the way that New Veteran sounds, that perhaps Margins allowed Blacklevel Embassy to be that way?
Brett: They were two separate things and they were approached as two separate things, even though they were the same players.
Ez: At least from outsider’s perspective, it seems that as Margins came after Baroc, even though it’s two separate things, Margins could have branched off from that album.
Brett: Maybe. Never really thought about it. For me, Margins was a thing where that’s the kind of stuff I wrote when I was at home with a bass on my lap, just chilling and not really thinking. Then I’d have all this material and think “Well, I can’t use it for anything else”. That’s sort of how that came about.
Ez: So Blacklevel Embassy was at the height of its powers with New Veteran.
Brett: I think so. That was the best iteration of the band.
Ez: Do you think another record would have been able to top it, or do you think you went out on top?
Brett: It’s hard to know, and even going out wasn’t a conscious thing. It was just life.
In hindsight, now that you flag it, I’m kind of glad that we did. Looking back, I don’t know that there was much else that we could’ve done. That record came out in Europe, we got a couple of offers to go. Because of different things in different people’s lives, we couldn’t.
Then I started [True North] and was like “Hey, I need to, for the first time in my life, focus on something else that isn’t music because this is a big fucken’ deal and I don’t wanna fuck it up”. Then things kinda petered out, but I’m glad that that was the record we left with. Some of those shows were pretty savage.
Ez: The Black Wire one was great.
Brett: We played some pretty good shows there. I loved that little place. One of my favourites. There was another place we played in Sydney, and it was a tiny little DIY joint that was a concrete box. That place ruled.
I will say that for a band that “slipped through the cracks” and was not popular at all, we got to do some cool shit! We toured the country heaps, we played some big international supports. We did some festival stuff. For a band that no one cared about, we were actually pretty lucky and got to do some cool shit.
It’s funny. I look back at that band, and especially New Veteran, and I think that is our best record, without question. We definitely found our feet and that’s the best lineup in my opinion. The best band I’ve been in that no one gives a fuck about is how I look back at Blacklevel. No one cared then; I’m shocked that anyone gives a fuck now.
It’s hard for me to look back and figure out how or why or any logic to why it didn’t resonate with people. I don’t know. There was a very cool clique of people at the time that we definitely did not fit into, and they ran the city, so it could’ve been just because of that. Maybe we were ten years older than what was going on at the time and as such, we’re useless.
Ez: Maybe it’s that your artiness was not arty enough. It’s a very direct record, but it does have a lot of abstract shit going on.
Experimental without being experimental is a way of putting it.
Brett: Maybe. It’s just taking pretty traditional song structures and having parts of that, but also flipping it on its head because it was interesting to us.
Ez: Very little of the playing is standard. I’d say the closest to standard you get is “Old Revolt”. There are bits and pieces, but a lot of it is very off-kilter. Maybe it appealed more in Sydney because whilst Sydney is a culturally rich place, but it’s culturally colder than some other cities.
Brett: Maybe we had more stuff going on in Melbourne than you did, and just fluked it. I don’t know, and at this point it doesn’t matter. Everyone likes to be accepted, and it’s nice to have your work recognised and applauded or whatever. Having said that, [not resonating] may have turned New Veteran into the record it was because by then we didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything. “We’re just gonna do what we want to do. It doesn’t matter. And we’ll do a headine show to five people, and it doesn’t matter”. I remember the Melbourne launch. We played a tiny joint at The Gasso upstairs. It was very sparsely attended, and at the time I remember being bummed about it ’cause we’d just done a bunch of cool shows. I didn’t understand why; this is a good band. Why? It doesn’t matter.
Ez: Do you still stand behind that record?
Brett: Yeah I do! It’s the best fucken’ record I’ve done that no one gives a fuck about. Like truly. There’s some great playing on there. There’s some well-written songs on there. After listening to it, there’s a few things where I’m going “Oh we should’ve done that, I could’ve changed that, that could’ve been better”, but! you do that with everything you do, you know? And there’s other shit that’s like “That’s fucken’ great”. I’m proud of that.