This post is going to be a bit different from my others. I've wanted to do this for quite a while now and have finally found the platform/resources to do so. This series of blogs is called IN PASSING, and in it I'll be interviewing bands and artists whom I love and trying to shed further light (in the small ways I can) on their music and give anyone who may come across this a reason to listen to them. I want to focus on smaller music that deserves more attention than it gets. All blogs in this series will include unabridged (still slightly edited) interviews with the artists and a small write-up from me.
In November of 2023, I had the pleasure of interviewing Elis Czerniak of Halves, my favorite band of all time. Halves was a cinematic post-rock and ambient rock band from Dublin, Ireland. They used natural soundscapes composed of orchestral, acoustic, and electronic bits to cultivate a warm, earthy sound that never fails to feel completely human in every step of their evolution.
I've made a companion playlist for this post featuring Halves and other bands that Elis and I discussed below. If you'd like to listen to it as you read you can do so here.
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| pictures ripped online wherever I could find them. |
When was Halves formed?
2007. I think it was kind of a gradual process. I joined a band that was already kind of half of a band--I don't know if you're aware of this. There was a band called Skylight who were doing stuff. They had five members and then two members left. Then the three, Tim, Brian and Dave stayed. They were just like, "Let's start something completely new--a completely knew kind of aesthetic," and that's when I stepped in. Tim is my older brother, so he was just like, "Oh, here I'll invite Elis to come along [and] try some stuff." They already had some material, so for the first EP [Halves] they had already written two of those songs. That's kind of how the formation happened. We got in a room with this completely brand new stuff and just started.
I'm like six years younger than they are, I was only 19 when I joined, so I was quite young. I was just very green and up for anything. I was already playing with another group, as well [Alarmist]. I was used to playing whatever and writing and stuff like that. I wasn't the driving force behind [it] at that time. Creatively, Brian and Tim were very much like set on "We want to do this and this and this," so I came in and just adapted to whatever was going on. As time went on I had more of a creative input. I think that was 2007. Brian's going to kill me with all these but I think it was 2007.
I know a lot of you are multi-instrumentalists, what exactly was everyone playing/doing at that point?
Brian is primarily a guitarist, but he likes very experimental stuff like pedals and laptop stuff, so that was what he was doing. Tim, again, is a guitar player and a keyboardist and did vocals. Dave was bass and strings--he's a violin player as well, and then keyboards. So, when I came in, I actually ended up playing drums. I'm not really a drummer. I can play drums, but it was kind of good because I was coming at it from not a drummer aesthetic. Drummers are usually very drum focused and drummer-y whereas I was not. I'm a piano player and composer so I was coming at it from that end, which was kind of good because there wasn't a separate vibe of drummer and musician, it was all there.
Were you primarily drumming for It Goes, It Goes (Forever & Ever)?
Yeah, I drum on maybe 70%. Me and Brian kind of switched off. He played drums on maybe two or three songs on that album, so I was the main drummer for that.
Where was Boa Howl recorded?
Boa Howl was recorded in Gothenburg, Sweden in a studio called Svenska Grammofonstudion. It's all analog. Brian was always usually the driving force behind where we wanted to record. He loves tape, he's a tape man, so obviously the first album was recorded in Hotel2Tango and that's tape. Then we wanted to go somewhere a little closer and it just so happened that it wasn't outrageously expensive as well. I think we managed to get a good deal and we went for 10 days and literally recorded a song every day. It was very, very awesome.
[Foals] are quite a big band now, but back maybe 15 years ago, they were a small indie English band. They recorded their second album there and I was a very big fan of that album and the production on it. I just knew it was really nice, so I said to Brian, "Why don't you check that place out?" and he was just like, "Wow." What draws us to studios is gear--that's quite an obvious thing, really--and the vibe. You could stay there as well, which is very cool. So, we all went a bit mad recording that album because we were just released into a studio. We would do sessions with the engineer during the day and then he would just say, "Okay, do whatever you want afterwards," so we would record very late into the night and we'd be sleeping there as well. We'd be doing like 16-17 hour days. We all lost our minds after 10 days, but we got everything done. It's a cool place. We recorded all the strings there as well. The last day was all strings for every song, so it was pretty intense.
Back to Hotel2Tango, can you talk about that studio more just a little bit?
Godspeed (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) owned that studio. I don't know when they acquired it, but all of their projects and more recent stuff--I think Broken Social Scene probably recorded there as well--have lots of members that shift and switch. We're all big Godspeed fans. [We chose it] because of that and because of the tape and because of the gear and because of just where it was. It's a big open space which really suited us because for that album specifically, we recorded everything live and then did overdubs. That was a huge one for us. And, Montreal is a very cool place.
[Efrim Menuck] is a very unique character, let's say. He [had] just had his first kid so was incredibly sleep deprived and just very funny as well. He was really fun to work with, really easy going and kind of silly. You could see he was a bit mad from the sleep deprivation, so having to deal with all of us Irish lads in the studio was probably a challenge for him. They also had a mastering suite, which was really good--a guy called Harris Newman--we knew he worked out of there with all analog gear as well. That was another reason. I think he mastered both albums but definitely that one. I can't remember on the second one. It just perfectly suited us because we always care about [the] sound world. It's all about the sound, you know, "How do we get stuff sounding like this?" That's the main thing for us. We thought we could achieve that very well over there.
What were some of the inspirations that you guys had getting started and how have those changed throughout the years? Any bands, movies, books that guided your hand?
Jeez, just so many bands and sounds and things. It felt like there was actually almost too much at times. We were like, "I want to do this I want to do this I want to do this," but I think it first came from a vision of being--I don't like talking about genres because it's annoying--let's say a more experimental, "post-rock" [in air quotes] and instrumental, atmospheric, film-scorey kind of thing, but in a kind of "rock band aesthetic" [again here]. So many buzzwords there. Compared to [Brian and Tim's] first bands [which] were more straightforward--still a little bit experimental but more of a band--[with] this one, they wanted to be more like, "No, let's do something a little bit more experimental and not always have vocals, have a lot of instrumental stuff." In that world there were a lot of bands starting to do well around that time. A lot of them from Iceland, as I'm sure you know, like Sigur Rós. They were a big influence on me. I grew up listening to that music when I was like 15-16, so that was always there in my head. But also, we liked old music like 50s and 60s productions--like the productions of Joe Meek. He's an English producer from the 50s who dealt with a lot of dreamy, poppy music and stuff like that. Then there's Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys--Pet Sounds--and really we just love old, warm, analog sounding stuff. So, mix that with your Icelandic sound, and then other bands like Jaga Jazzist from Norway... and who else? Tortoise. They're from Chicago, do you know Tortoise?
I love Tortoise.
They're probably my favorite band, I'd say. So, just this blend of the warm analog stuff, post-rock-y soundscape stuff, but also electronic-y stuff as well. I love Efterklang, that band from Denmark. Their first two or three albums are very good. So yeah, just using a lot of organic sounds but in an electronic way--a lot of glitching and sampling and making your own instruments and stuff like that. The way we worked was that we would get together in a room and instead of playing songs--we'd do that a bit--but we'd actually all sit around and compile the sounds of the songs. We'd make our own instruments from samples of stuff and I'd make all the beats and record, so we actually all spend a lot of time around a computer or around something just doing it. Then we fit it together and then we play--you know, it was quite like that a lot of the time. Sometimes it would be like, "Here, I have this guitar riff, let's just play this," but it was always sound focused. The way it sounded was the most important. That's what we took from the bands that we were listening to. Like, "Oh, love the sound of that," or "I love the way it does that." Hopefully that does come across on our two records. It really is very focused on how stuff sounds, I think.
Do you feel like you accomplished what you set out to in Halves?
Yes and no. I mean, it's difficult. We were doing music that was quite not in any way commercial or mainstream, not that I'm saying there haven't been successful bands who [do that]. We did have a lot of success for how small our band was. We got to tour all over the world and play some amazing gigs, support a lot of really cool bands and play really cool festivals, so that was great. I think it's all just timing and luck. We could do it again and there could be some luck of a label wanting to put our record out. We were in close with a few labels but it just didn't work out--just money and timing and all that kind of stuff, you know--not that getting signed to a label is successful. I think that those days are over, especially now. Back then maybe it was on the turn, really.
We were never fully invested--maybe for a year or two--but we all had other stuff going on as well. It was just a passion project. I don't think any of us realistically thought we were going to make money off just this project. We were all young--we were all in our twenties, so it was fun. I look back on it very fondly because I got to record in amazing studios, I got to play all over the world, I got to do all this stuff as a 22 year old. I would say that's success for me. I see some other bands who are apparently successful and they just look absolutely exhausted and not very happy. They've been living out of a van for five years. I didn't ever want to live that lifestyle, to be honest. It kind of naturally came to an end of just being like, "I think we've kind of done everything we can do. I don't think we can do much more. We're all a bit older now. So I think we need to just relax." We're still all very good friends. We hang out all the time and it's nice because every time we used to hang out, it would be under Halves--we'd be talking about Halves. But now it's nice to just not have to do it, to just be friends.
I noticed there was a question about the music scene in Dublin. It's a weird one--it was a plethora of stuff, it wasn't like one thing. What we were doing was definitely not in line with what was going on. So we were kind of the, "Oh, there are those fucking opey, droney lads coming in again." There were a lot of indie bands and electro bands, not that that's bad. There was a lot of cool stuff as well, but it felt like any time there was music from Ireland, we just never really fit the bill. It just felt like a waste of time. That's why I don't know if it we would have been more successful if we were from Denmark or Norway. I don't know. That's probably another reason why it kind of fizzled out as well, because it just wasn't there as much, if that makes sense.
Can you tell me more about Hate is the Enemy?
Again, that was [Brian and Tim's] moniker, let's say. It kind of turned into our own kind of label. That's really all it was--a way to just have something official. Regarding other projects, we didn't treat it too much like a label. We were just kind of there to help out. You mentioned Carnival Moon. Elaine is just a friend from Canada, and our bass player--[who] left just before the first album and moved there, they stayed in touch and actually lived next door to each other--they started playing [together] in Carnival Moon. There was that connection to us and she played on and sung on all of our records. So with her own stuff, we would help out and released that first thing under that. It wasn't like we were going around and [scoping] for bands or anything. It was more just friends helping out friends, which you kind of see a lot of all over the place, really, so it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. It was just a way to kind of organize stuff. As I said, it was never a big dream to run an independent label. We already had enough. It was just a way to release our music and others friends' music.
What music are you listening to lately?
Yeah, [that's] a good question. Let me check. I mean, I'm still listening to the music that I used to listen to. I know I sound like an old person--I don't know if it's a growing up thing--but I do not unfortunately get as excited about music as I used to because when you're 15-25, you're so excited and everything's amazing. I thought that The Smile's album [A Light for Attracting Attention] was good. I'm gonna say something incredibly controversial here, but it's fine, I actually haven't enjoyed a Radiohead album since Hail to the Thief maybe. I didn't like In Rainbows.
Really? That's my favorite Radiohead album.
I know. It's everyone's favorite. So I thought [A Light for Attracting Attention] was nice because it felt like something else. It felt cool. Andy Shauf. He's a Canadian. He's really good, again, amazing production. I'm always just drawn to amazing production. There's another guy called William Ryan Fritch. I think he's American. He does a lot of these really bleak strings and electronic, kind of soundscape-y, instrument stuff. I'm still listening to all the bands that I used to listen to, like all of the post-rock stuff, but I still love Weezer's first two albums. I still love the Foo Fighters' first albums. Rage Against the Machine is one of my favorite bands. Deftones are actually one of the bands that have stayed pretty consistent in the past. Björk--[I'm] obsessed with all of her stuff. So, it's a mix of everything really. Explosions in the Sky [I] love. They just played. Obviously I'm in Melbourne, but they played in Dublin and I missed them, which I'm very sad about.
Still, I feel like a big old curmudgeon. A lot of my favorite bands like Efterklang and Sigur Rós and even Tortoise, I'd say, I feel like the stuff that they've released in the past 10 years is just really not as good. And I don't know if [I'm] just an old curmudgeon, but I can definitely safely say for some bands, they're just a different band. It's not the same band and that's fine. I try not to just be this old angry kind of "It's not like it used to be" kind of guy. I listen to a lot of film music, like soundtrack, just because it's easy to listen to a lot of ambient music and stuff like that. A bit of everything, really.
What was it like putting together Old Haunts (Rarities 07-14)? I think that was 2019.
We just had a lot of stuff lying around and Brian wanted to release something as kind of an anniversary thing, just like "Here's a lot of stuff that we have that's never really been heard before." There are the remixes, there are different versions of different songs--for a lot of sessions that we do, we kind of do different versions of different songs. They'd be recorded in, let's say, broadcasting studios and stuff like that, there are demos as well. We had a lot of demos. Ink and Ice was a song that was supposed to be on Boa Howl, but it just kind of didn't fit. It was nice going through, some of the stuff was more recent and then some of the stuff was from the first or second EP, so it was a long time ago. It was nice sifting through all of that and remembering that some stuff existed, I was like, "Oh yeah, there were a few months where I was thinking about that all the time," so it was nice. It's very all over the place, very fragmented, but it's all just been put on this thing and put out there. I think we did it because we had all this stuff lying around and we wanted to just solidify it into something. There's stuff from every EP or every release we've had, so it's kind of like traversing our whole career. Yeah, it was nice.
That's actually the release that turned me on to you guys. It came up in my Apple Music recommended and I was like, "Cool." Then I retroactively went back and listened to everything and fell in love with all of that, you know.
That's great. That's funny. I always wonder if we're in the in the algorithm somewhere. We definitely are because I think some live version of Blood Branches, which is on the first album, made it on some Spotify playlist and it's been played--I need to find the numbers--but a lot of times and enough to give us a funny amount of money. Of all the songs, a shitty live version where I think there's some mistake in it as well, not like one of the, you know, good songs, made it onto some random Spotify playlist. I just find it so funny. So yeah, it's good to know we're in the Apple algorithm to help recommend stuff.
What is your favorite Halves song?
Yeah, my favorite Halves song might be Tanager Peak from Boa Howl, mainly because we got Gemma Hayes to sing on it and I like her a lot. I just think that song is a perfect example of everything Halves-y. It came together really well. I think it kind of showcases everything; it showcases the atmosphere, the electronics, the melodic side, the string work, everything--and it's kind of a poppy song. But, it's an easy listenable-y song. It sums us up well. A thing that really confuses me is we used to call our songs loads of names, so on the album, they're called something [different].
The song, Haunt Me When I'm Drowsy, that's another one which I think is probably, I'd say they'd be my two equal favorites because I was just so happy with how that turned out. I just think it sounds incredible. I just think we captured exactly what we wanted, very grizzly bear-esque, like in an old haunted house kind of vibe, you know? We'd always come in and instead of like, "Here's a riff I have," it's like, "I want to do a song that sounds like we're trapped in a hotel in the 1950s and it's haunted," this kind of ridiculous stuff, you know? That's how we would go about songs. It would just be really funny because anyone who would walk into the room would just be like, "What are you talking about?" It wouldn't make any sense to them, but we would just sit down and have such long conversations about silly things [like] how we wanted the snare to sound like blah.
There's a song on Boa Howl--it's always about production--Slow Drawl Moon (For David), I think it's called, which is kind of like the sister song to Haunt Me When I'm Drowsy. I wanted it to sound like you're lost in The Shining hotel, like you're coming with them, not in a scary way, but--you know that scene where you hear the ballroom music? That kind of stuff. And that's exactly what we did. We set up almost like a house band and just recorded them from really far away and put that in. I think they're the songs that really stand out, the ones that I think we achieved sonically. They're the ones that really stand out to me. So yeah, I gave you loads there.
When you guys were recording your EPs, you did that all in-house, right?
We did it in a small studio in Dublin. It was the drummer of the old band's house where they used to record stuff. I think we did both the EPs in that studio, called Porchlight Studios.
Was that analog as well, or no?
No, that was digital. They're fine, I like some of the songs on those. Actually, sorry, I lied. The first EP was all there. The second EP, half of it was there and half of it was just recording ourselves. Songs like the big songs like May Your Enemies Never Find Happiness and Amberscene were done in the studio but the other ones that are more instrumental and string-heavy and stuff like that, we did all of them ourselves. So, no, we were really just starting out then.
Just trying to get something out.
Exactly. [In] those EPs, some stuff is representative of where we are kind of maturest in. But, I think that was just like, "Hey, we have some songs, let's just record them. They're good to play live. They work really well live. Let's do it." And then the second EP was kind of like, "Oh, we can kind of be a bit more experimental with this." And then that set us up for like, "Okay, I think we're ready. I think we've kind of found something, but we're ready now to do it properly," you know? They were more like testing the waters, let's say.
What are you working on lately? Musically? What are you doing?
It's been a while, I also play in another band called Alarmist who I used to play with before Halves under another moniker. And then, at the end of Halves, we started playing again. That's what I was doing up until 2018-19 or something. Then COVID happened and then that was kind of the end of that, unfortunately. I've taken kind of a break from doing stuff. I'm a music lecturer, so I kind of do a lot of that takes up a lot of mental space, but I am slowly getting back into trying to do solo projects. It's been forever. I've got a million sessions that are unfinished [and] all over the place, in many different genres and styles, I need to just decide on something and do it. I'm starting to get back into doing kind of instrumental, kind of more filmic stuff. I don't know if it would be in any way close to Halves stuff, but it probably would be in the fact that it's dealing in [the] same world, very concentrated on organic timbres and a mixture of strings and electronics. I really want to do that, but I need to actually do it. It's easier said than done. When you're in a band, there's someone constantly pushing you to do stuff because you have to do it. When you're on your own, you're just sitting in a room on your own and no one's telling you to do [anything].
It's much harder.
It's a lot harder. But, again, I just felt a bit exhausted because I've been doing Halves and Alarmist, and a lot of contemporary composition--more art music with ensembles and stuff--so I felt quite drained creatively coming up to 2019 and then 2020 when the COVID hit. I took a break from all of it, which I think might have been needed. I couldn't really play and did a few little projects here and there, but now I think I'm starting to find the mental space to be creative again. So we'll see.
This was such an amazing experience for me. I have quite a few more interviews lined up and coming out in the near future. Keep exploring new music and going to local shows. I'll see you all in January. Thank you for reading.
-Foster
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