SCENIUS – The Post-Punk Experience
Interview with Steve and Fabrice.
1. Please introduce the band Scenius to our readers.
Steve: Hi I’m Steve Whitfield and I live in Leeds (UK). I’ve been a Producer and Engineer in studios for many years (The Cure, Jane Weaver, The Mission, ….) but also I’ve been in many bands over the years. Currently I’m also the guitarist in Klammer.
Fabrice : I live in Angers, France. I’ve been playing in bands since I was 16, mostly as a guitarist and singer, but I’ve also gradually got interested in keyboards, sampling, recording and mixing. I met Steve when he was the sound engineer on my first band’s debut album. We got on pretty well, stayed in touch and occasionally met again over the years. Last year I was in Leeds, dropped in at Steve’s place and seeing his studio I was reminded that he owns a nice bunch of vintage synths and rhythm machines. I told him I’d be happy to try to lay vocals if he happened to write music with them. A few months later I received a first bunch of tracks, sent him back some vocal ideas which he seems to have enjoyed, and that’s how Scenius was born.
2. I think that your sound balances between the Post-punk legacy and the Electro vibes, how do you position your band in terms of music style and influences?
Steve: I’m certainly into a lot of Post-Punk music and also most things Electro but we’ve tried really hard not just to follow what is going on with the electronic scene at the moment. It was a conscious decision to stay away from the dancey 4 on the floor kick drums, and to stay fairly minimal.
Fabrice : I’d say it is as much the spirit of Post-Punk that influences us as the sound itself. That era saw a wonderful burst of creativity with lots of people starting bands only aiming at doing music their own way. Which has provided us, the listeners, with so many incredible songs that have some kind of weird, twisted, unexpected aspects to them, in their sound, or their arrangement or their structure or their lyrics – and sometimes in all these together. I tend to feel that there’s not as much sense of ‘let’s-not-care-about-the-rules’ in most of music nowadays and not as many oddballs in the big hits.
3. You have a new album called “Enough Fears”, which is the fear that surrounds the emotional environment of the album?
Fabrice: Enough Fears is one of the last songs we finished. The song itself is about trying to escape the fears that often come along with the loss or lack of certainty. So it wasn’t meant to refer to anything related to what the world’s been going through in 2020. But when we’ve had to choose a title for the album, this one connected well though with this unusal period during which the album was written. A time when fear was even more on the daily news than it usually is…
It also worked really well with this great street artwork painted by Banksy in Naples, featuring a Madonna and a gun. For better or for worse, religion and weapons have been two of the most universal human ways of fighting against fears. The third way being creation / art. I don’t know if that’s what Banksy already had in mind but obviously the painting itself embodies this “third way”. So now it’s embodied as well by the music that’s on the record.
4. When and how did you record the new album?
Steve: Lockdown and restrictions haven’t really affected us at all so far. Fabrice and I haven’t been in the same country never mind the same room through the writing and record of the singles and album. We both have studios at home and we’ve been sending files, emails and Face Timing to write, record and mix the songs.
I started to write each song on the album from the same set of sounds to help give a coherence to it. Obviously as we really got into finishing the songs, some sounds would be changed or added to but the core of it was from the same palette of sounds. I think it’s helped give the album a sound, it’s too easy with the amount of sounds available to us all these days to write 10 songs which all sound like they are from 10 different bands.
Some of the synth parts were recorded by hand into Pro Tools (no midi), I think it’s helped keep a bit of an organic human feel to it.
Fabrice : When I receive Steve’s tracks, I try to come up with a good vocal melody. Once I’ve got one that I’m happy with, I send him a rough take, usually with unfinished lyrics. If he likes the idea then I write final lyrics and record my own vocal parts, sometimes adding effects, and send him the separate tracks. Then Steve mixes the whole song. It rarely takes more than 3 mix versions before we’re both happy with it.
5. What about the lyrics of the album?
Fabrice : Well, first I never start writing lyrics with a subject in mind. In fact, most of the time there’s bits of lyrics that come along as I’m trying to come up with a melody. I quite like that kind of auto-generated lyrics. When I write the final lyrics to the melody I try to preserve those bits and build around them. Which doesn’t mean that there’s not a theme in the end to the song but I definitely enjoy a bit of elusiveness so I try not to go too blunt.
6. What kind of synths did you use for the electronic music of the album?
Steve: I have a collection of analog synths, which have been heavily used. An original Korg MS20, Moog Source, Roland SH09 and my secret weapon a very rare Arp Solus. Most of the drums are from old analog drum machines or made on my synths. But we’ve also used anything else that’s available to us, so the occasional virtual synth or loops (usually mangled by the Korg MS20). All of it has been recorded into and then mixed in Pro Tools.
7. Did you ever have any second thoughts about releasing a full album since many artists today choose a series of digital singles?
Steve: I still like the album format. In that you write a collection of songs that fit together and are designed to be listened to in that order.
Fabrice : And in a way we’ve went the single-series way too as we’ve released 4 singles between February and July this year.
8. How do you adjust to the current status of the music streaming?
Steve : The great thing about streaming is that it’s very easy for anyone anywhere to get to listen to you, the bad thing is there’s just so much music up online now. I think there’s probably more bands now than there’s ever been. So it’s very hard to break through the noise.
9. How do you approach the album from the producer’s side since you have been working as a producer for so long?
Steve: In some ways it’s easier as I don’t have to please a whole band, just myself and Fabrice. In other ways it’s harder as there’s less people to bounce ideas off. Since I have been Producing and Engineering for a long time I’ve got very good/quick at making decisions.
Because non of my old synths have presets it helped me not use the same sounds as anyone else, everything hand to be created from scratch. When I did use a virtual synth, again I programmed my own sounds into it.
10. Any plans for real shows or virtual performances for the promotion of the album?
Steve: Yes! I’ve already bought some newer synths for this, as I don’t want to take my vintage ones out live. We are currently working on the live set and it’s sounding really good. We are both really looking forward to playing live. We already have a gig in France in 2021 and hopefully there will be many more.
Fabrice: We are both really looking forward to playing these songs live.
Information: https://www.facebook.com/sceniusband/
