We were lucky enough to speak to Gauci ahead of the release about the process for writing, recording and producing the single.
Gauci have slowly been building a following, being comprised of GRAMMY-nominated engineer Antonia Gauci, David Gauci (Flowertruck and previously Hatchie) and Felix Lush (supported Toro y Moi, Methyl Ethyl, daine). The dancy, rocky, indie trio have spread their wings a little on their new single “BRAT”, which seamlessly shifts them into a more “rock band” feel.
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Congrats on the release of “BRAT”! How and where did this song begin?
Thanks! We’re so excited to finally have it out!!!! It’s relatively new in the timeline of Gauci tracks. We did a lot of writing over the 2020-2021 lockdown periods, and really honed in our Zoom writing sessions together. This one began in Antonia’s studio on a day when we were meant to be finishing up other stuff! It came together pretty quickly, with most of the guts of the song demoed in one afternoon.
We stuck to mostly DI’ing all the guitars and bass throughout the writing period, and we absolutely rinsed the Tim Henson by Neural DSP Plugin – we just found that it had so many good amp sounds and inbuilt effects, which will definitely save you in a pinch! Antonia mostly recorded all of her demo vocals with an SM7B, and for guitar David used a Japanese made Fender Jazzmaster. Felix’s bass is a Fender P-Bass and for synths we stuck to classic software emulations like Junos, strings and Serum.
The sound of this single is a bit of a deviation from what we’ve come to expect from Gauci. Was this intentional or did it just fall into place that way?
It definitely felt natural for us to go in this direction, we really just let anything happen in these sessions. The “rock band” you hear in BRAT just worked, and tracking live drums was definitely the right decision in the end. As for deviating, I mean why not? We’re more than happy to just write whatever feels good, and “BRAT” is a testament to that.
We understand you’re all producers to some description. How is your work in Gauci informed by your other projects or making music for other people?
I think it helps that we all work on music outside of the band, it really brings such a melting pot of ideas to the table where we can just pick and choose what we want, and so many ideas are always flying around that all just fit in different ways.
Do you think this makes the music for Gauci easier or harder to make?
Genres don’t feel so squishy and all encompassing when we’re all working in such diverse ranges and also have quite mixed listening between the three of us. Through this I think the music for Gauci stays fun and lets us explore whatever we want!
What does performing this song live look like? How much do your live performances deviate from the studio recordings?
We’ve always been a backing track band, and I think we’d like to stay that way. It just means travelling and touring stays simple, we can get everything we need from in the box and we’ve limited ourselves to small setups without compromising on our sound! It’s funny to think back to when we started and we used to bring a synthesiser each, guitars and heaps of road cases, and now we’ve streamlined down to two guitars, some pedals and our backing track system! It rules to only have as much as we can physically carry when you’ve got to fly places.
We run a pretty tight backing track, where we have everything except for guitar, bass and vocals (that we are all playing lol), and then everything is pretty much as you hear on the recordings.
How do you think working across multiple studios affected the end result of “BRAT”?
I feel like it’s always been a pretty common practice for us to work across multiple studios, and I don’t think it affected the outcome of BRAT in any way. We’ll either demo at Antonia’s studio or Felix’s house, and it’ll bounce back and forth for a while between the two until we’re ready to start piecing together the final track! Then we’ll do a day of guitars, which we usually tend to do at Felix’s house, just for the vibe, comfort and familiarity, and Antonia will take the track into her studio and cut the vocals herself.
Is this how you usually work?
Yeah, we always like to bounce around between different places when working on stuff. Different environments spark different forms of creativity, and sometimes a change of scenery is where the best stuff happens. It all depends day to day really, but we’ve always worked roving between a few different spots.
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