About Me
Amusement Parks On Fire
So many groups, so little time. Some come, make their little noise, and go away again. Others barely make an impression at all. A precious few well still be listening to in 20 years time, flash-frying our minds to the strains of their early, consciousness-altering music, but also keeping pace with their journey, going to amazing uncharted places in their sound the audacity of their rock adventure laying down an ideal for the adventure of our own lives.
Think Pink Floyd, the Cure, the Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth and a younger generation including Sigur Ros and Mogwai. In the ante-chamber, impatiently awaiting our Damascene realisation that they too warrant such devotion, are Amusement Parks On Fire. The band were initially the brainchild of one young man, Michael Feerick, then just 16 years old, but now, five years on, are a fully-staffed and firing ensemble, ready to unleash a glorious fantasia of a rock record called Out Of The Angeles, which should see Michaels ambition fulfilled in millions of homes.
He started playing very young, soon after his family settled down in Nottingham, after stints in Manchester and Canada. At 15, Michael attended a local music industry convention and met the man who was to become APoFs manager, who endeavoured to get Michael a solo deal of some kind, but ended up funding him to record some demos out of his own pocket. Feericks vision was bigger than a four-track tape, he wanted to show the full spectrum. Eventually, over an intensive four-week period three years ago, he recorded nine of his songs, playing all the instruments himself, with help from his engineer friend, Dan Knowles. He was thus touting around a finished album, whose rollercoaster coherence was reinforced by the linking drones and atmospherics between songs.
Geoff Barrow of Portishead stepped in to release APoFs makeshift self-titled debut album on his Invada imprint. Word of mouth spread. Hip American alt.zine Filter picked up the rights for the US. Ex-Hüsker Dü legend Bob Mould listed it in his Top Ten. Other fans of APoF would include Snow Patrol, Elbow and Bloc Party.
With such interest gathering at his hind, Michael had to put together a band and get out there. Dan Knowles became the bands guitarist, with Jez Cox taking up bass and Peter Dale the drums. Gigging started in January 2004. By Summer 2005, theyd done Britain, Europe and North America. Theyd also got a deal with V2.
To the mind of Michael Feerick, that first album had been hasty, almost unfinished. Having cost barely two grand to make, it had barely scratched the surface of what Feerick now wanted to achieve especially that he now had a band behind him. I wanted to be away from any other influence, he says, just lock ourselves away from the rest of the world. And I'd made a conscious decision to be somewhere 'magical'.
To that end, everything fell into place when the band went to record at Sigur Ros' converted swimming pool studio near Reykjavik. Rhythm tracks were laid down at a friends place in Nottingham, but then Feerick and Knowles and co-producer/friend John Sampson decamped to Iceland to do vocals, guitars, keyboards and mixing. Michael: The studios basically in an old swimming pool, which was built in the 1920s by a madcap designer entrepreneur. Its in the middle of a forest outside of Reykjavik. You have to take a bus for half hour to get there. It was quite a small pool, its an amazing, beautiful-sounding room.
...I guess we went slightly nuts, but in a professional way! We hardly slept. We didnt talk to our families and friends, and barely even our girlfriends! We didnt take lots of acid or anything, but we may as well have done! On their rare sorties outside the studio complex, they were surrounded by incomparably beautful and inspiring sights. Michael: You could see the Northern Lights perfectly from where we were. The record was very much a product of those surroundings. It was like being literally lost in the idea of the album.
Feerick brought along his mate and long-time visual collaborator Joe Hardy, to pick up the vibes and feed them into the artwork. Hence the angel sculptures on the finished article. Michael: That was so exciting, it was as if the album was alive, growing around us, and the ideas from the album, the memories from my childhood, the films i loved, that i was attempting to capture in the album were manifesting themselves in the hills surrounding the studio. And it was all there for us to capture with a camera
Mixing happened on the in-house analogue desk, one of only two or three in existence which was bought from a French TV company. Additonal mixing happened back home to bring it into hi-fi, as Michael puts it, so you get the best of old and new.
I think that you can only judge your own art according to what you set out to do, and, like, did you achieve it? Says Feerick, trying to assemble his thoughts on Out Of The Angeles. This one definitely feels to me like the real deal. He talks very focused for a 21-year-old, and for someone who makes such sky-scraping music. There will almost certainly be higher goals to aim for in the future. Thus far, APoF has been a rolling, organic life thing. Its going to keep growing and flying. Seatbelts fastened.
