As part of an early incarnation of The Sleepy Jackson, band members Justin Burford and Rod Aravena were always going to seek an alternative voice for their own material. End Of Fashion was the vehicle they chose to fulfil that prophecy. Australian Musician’s JOE MATERA caught up with EOF vocalist/guitarist Justin Burford to discuss the recording of the band’s self-titled debut album.

You were originally a member of The Sleepy Jackson until you and Luke Steele had a conflict of musical interest that led to your departure and to the formation of End Of Fashion.

Well a lot of these songs on the End Of Fashion debut album have been kicking around inside my head for about five years now. But the band used to just be a concept and a name but there was no music attached to it way back then. Luke and myself were best friends at the time so he had asked me to join The Sleepy Jackson and so I did. But it was always an understanding that it was a temporary thing as I was still working on my own projects. After recording the album Lovers with them, I had a few more songs under my belt and had done some gigs as End Of Fashion on the side, that Rod (Aravena) and myself decided it was time to more forward and make End Of Fashion our main priority.

You went overseas to record the album but rather than the normal LA and New York studios you choose a secluded one in Mississippi?

We wanted to avoid places like New York and Los Angeles because they’re full of distractions and you kind of tend to get sucked into things there too. And you get this geographically limited kind of sounds from those places seeping into your sound. We were trying to make a record that was hard to pin down and of which was a bit more universal than that. So Dennis Herring (of Modest Mouse fame) came along and offered his expertise after he was excited about the demos we had sent him. He works out of Oxford, Mississippi where he’s done some pretty big names out of his little studio there.

So what did Dennis bring to the recording process?

The first thing he did was to maximise our potential as a four piece. Previously we were suckers to the studio. We would take pride in our demos and would spend a lot of time in the studio particular like we did on our first EP in trying to get the sound right and everything. I guess we were coming form a place that was more of the old school 60s and 70s UK sound, you know the lush and multi-layered sound. But Dennis picked up that just the four of us together in the studio had this great dynamic and energy. And even though the previous songs were all well recorded, we had never been able to capture that sort of soul that was there between just the four of us. So his mission statement was "I am going to make you guys play as the best damn four piece rock band that you can be". So then when it came to the overdubbing, it was basically a bonus in the way that it was just adding the textures and colours to the record.

What gear did you use for the recording and how did you go about capturing your sounds in the studio?

I played a Fender Thinline Telecaster and Rod played a Custom made Fender Telecaster which his girfriend’s father made for him through a Fender Deluxe. I recorded the whole record with a little 50 watt Matchless combo. We had an amazing engineer called Jacquire King who had an amazing set of ears. We got some many different sounds out of that one amp just by placing it in different areas of the studio. And we would place it in the hall and then in the cupboard and in the control room. We used both close mic-ing and ambient mic-ing as well to capture the tones. At any given moment there were like up to five or six different mics set up around the room whilst recording the guitar tracks. Then we would pull up one or two and mix them together onto a single track.

Was there any musical reference point you had in mind that you were aiming to achieve whilst making the album?

When we were making the record I was listening a lot to the Fleetwood Mac Rumours album and it definitely a big influence on the record in the way Fleetwood Mac structured that record. Like it felt like one solid album, where you can sit there and listen to it from beginning to end and it still makes sense. So for our record because we had a few different sounds happening, like there’s some country influences left over from my Sleepy Jackson days and then there’s the more modern rock sound, so that record helped us how to unify it and make it work. Putting all these different styles on this record and still making it sound like one solid consistent album that wouldn’t confuse people. So for me, Rumours was the benchmark for that process and how we achieved our sound for the record in the end.