I start by congratulating Jack on the release of the album, and he beams.
The debut album from Willaris. K, Everything Is As It Should Be, is a moment of clarity after a whirlwind time personally, professionally and musically. Following a breakup and a blow out with friends, Jack McAllister a.k.a. Willaris. K realised the music he was making was straddling the line between sad and angry, a feeling we’ve all felt at times, but not something always talked about.
I start by congratulating Jack on the release of the album, and he beams.
“Yeah, thanks. Very happy to have it out.”
We dive straight into Jack’s workflow, his music conjuring up thoughts of something between a night out at a club and a movie montage, invoking the feeling of going through something and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
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“The album writing process was definitely one-of-a-kind, that I don’t think I’ll revisit again.” he acknowledges. “It was a process of making so many ideas that I built the biggest pool of demos and tracks and all these things that became a bit convoluted after a while.”
“Most of the tracks,” Jack begins, before correcting himself. “There were a couple that were one off, I sat down in a space, I wrote chords, I built everything. This track “In Retrospect” is the track I’m referring to, that was this track that was like: I made it. Boom. That’s it.”
“In Retrospect” was the only track that happened that way, the rest of the songs being the result of deep experimentation. Jack would make a few ideas a day, sit on them and then pick the best ideas to elaborate on.
This process was a lot of making loops, unless something piqued his interest, and jamming with himself and trying to vibe out ideas as best he could.
Everything Is As It Should Be
Jack explains further that his assumption to making a huge body of work would mean he could skim the cream of the crop from the top, easily filtering out the bad ideas to make way for the good, but this isn’t what he was left with.
“It left me with a big, massive bank of ideas, y’know? Most of the tracks went through at least three different versions, and not just minor iterations, like completely different directions. Fully re-interpreting them, I was just lost in the sauce, to be honest.” Jack says with a grin.
“And that’s why I bought on people like Morgan (Wright), who helped me with “Enta”” Jack explains. “Like “Enta”, the first track, initially was completely different, melodically it was completely different, and it was very epic and cinematic and emotional. And it sounded too much like the back end of the record sounds like now.”
“Once I loosely got a tracklist going, I was able to be like ‘Okay, I shouldn’t be trying to say the same thing with every single track’, like ‘What is the most interesting part of this song?’” Jack muses.
Jack obviously had a full length record in mind, thinking about the ebb and flow and the journey of the album on the whole, rather than jamming ten songs together. This helped to inform his choice of which ideas would end up on the final album.
For such a seemingly chaotic workflow, Everything Is As It Should Be is remarkably cohesive, taking us on a journey through genre, mood and ambience.
Jack acknowledges that despite the challenges, “it eventually worked”, confidently stating that there were “zero stones unturned” in the whole process.
“I didn’t want to feel that feeling of ‘Oh, fuck I should’ve done this.’” says Jack. “‘I should’ve really pursued that’, I don’t feel any of that. And I’ve felt that on previous releases, so I think that’s what motivated me to just go all the way in and figure it all out.”
“I think it was a point of clarity when I was like ‘What are these songs trying to say, individually?”
We shift here to the deeper details of the album’s workflow.
Ableton
It was made in Ableton 11, though only because the record was finished before Ableton 12’s release earlier this year.
“When I was 18, going to clubs,” Jack laughs. “I went to see Flume in 2012, and at the time I was DJing, and my mate made music in Ableton. I remember being at the club, talking shit, yelling at Flume and asking what program he used. It was loud in the club and I thought he said ‘Ampleton!’”
“I remember going home and telling my mate to use ‘Ampleton’.” says Jack, explaining that his friend corrected him, but he was sure Flume had said ‘Ampleton’ over the noise of the loud club.
From here, Jack started using Ableton to produce music, and has never considered another DAW. It fits the bill for every part of his workflow, allowing him to quickly get ideas either with soft synths, VSTs, or his growing collection of hardware synthesizers.
The hardware are great idea starters. “If I’m on the road and I start something, I use a lot of soft(ware) synths as well. But if something really felt like ‘Oh I could push this with the Prophet 6’ or if a bassline that could use the (Moog) Sub 37, then I would just re-run the MIDI?” Jack explains, making sure I’m keeping up.
“Most of the time I would have everything connected, I would have a couple of drum machines, and experiment and make things. Most of the time, I would find one bit through that whole jam, and I’d drag that in.”
It’s a combination of running MIDI through the hardware as well as improvising that starts ideas for Jack, pulling the best parts out and using those as a catalyst for whatever he’s creating. He’s also using them push and augment sounds once a song has legs and is, to continue the pun, up and running.
We speak for a moment about despite the amount of ideas and songs available, Jack has used the limitations of hardware to help refine the sonic palette, allowing everything to exist in the same world.
“I bought all this gear and I didn’t use all of it,” he begins. “As I’ve gotten a bit more experienced, I realised you’re better off being highly experienced in one piece of gear, so then I guess I kinda leant into the Sub 37 and the Prophet 6 and they kinda became a centrepiece of the album’s sound.”
Post synth, Jack will sometimes use pedals when re-recording for added flavour and colour.
“I use the Elektrok Analogue Heat, I love that. What else …” he says, looking around his studio.
“I’m pretty locked in with my ways with processing, like I love Soundtoys. I’ll have everything as I want it, sonically, and I’ll just send the MIDI out, do a pass.”
We pivot here a little, Jack explaining that he started mixing the album as he went, unlike more ‘conventional’ approaches with a clear delineation between producing, writing and mixing.
“This album was mixed by Ewan Pearson, I think he did an incredible job. I think the thing I’ve learned throughout the process is that I’m also capable of mixing. In the middle of all this, I put out a song called “Silversun” with my friend James.” says Jack. “And I ended up mixing it. It sounds good, and people have hit me up about it. Moving forward I’m excited to go deeper into mixing.”
“Up until this point I just mixed on the go. Very grateful to have a nice studio to work in, so that helped just the sonics of everything.”
We discuss for a moment the ongoing trend of treating mixing like the main event when chasing a sound. While an important part of the process, you’re ultimately mixing the recorded sounds, so you should get those right.
Jack explains that he struggles to work on something if the sounds are uninspiring, so he makes sure they’re right at the recording stage, or mixes as he goes.
Now that the record is done, what’s the plan for performing it live?
“I think while recording, the live show was always in the back of my mind,” begins Jack. “So I think in the end that the record translates across both headphone listening and the live performance.”
“When I was making it, I was just making a record.But regarding a live show, I’m going deep on that now. Starting to build what the live show’s gonna be.”
“And there is a bit of ‘How am I gonna pull it together?’” Jacks laughs. “There’s just so many songs now, and I guess some of them are softer and I want to re-interpret some of the softer songs into the live space.”
Jack explains that subconsciously, the live show presentation is always there while he’s writing and producing an album, understanding fully that the layers, mixing, ebb and flow will all need to be performed somehow, someway!
“I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to present the live show. In the past it’s been pretty set, but I’ll have MIDI sending out to certain pieces of gear, so I’ll use the Sub 37 and the Prophet live. I also use the (Korg) Minilogue, I’ll cut soft synths across to the Minilogue.”
“I’m trying to build it now, so it’s a bit more improvised and on-the go. I think the hardest point for doing that with my music is just the drums. With a lot of live shows, you see people use a drum machine, and a lot of the drums in their music are quite similar. Whereas there’s such a wide range of drum sounds in my stuff.”
“I’ve got the (Elektron) Digitakt and the Digitone there,” he says, pointing around his studio. “I’m just at the starting point of figuring out this live show now. I’ve just bought the new Ableton Move, so maybe I can try and integrate that somehow.”
The new record from Willaris. K, Everything Is As It Should Be is, out now via Mushroom Music. Keep reading about Ableton here.
