Canadian quartet Wintersleep is headed to Seattle’s beautiful Columbia City Theater on June 1st and Tim was kind enough to tell me a bit about the band’s upcoming record, Hello Hum.

The album will be released on June 12th, but don’t forget to check their tour dates for their next stop in your city!

These guys are amazing! Check out their song “Weighty Ghost” from their 2007 album Welcome to the Night Sky and then you won’t need any more reasons to buy their music! See you at the show!

WINTERSLEEP
On their upcoming release, Hello Hum:
We finally have our own rehearsal space in Montreal and I feel like this gave us a lot of freedom to experiment with different ideas really easily while writing the songs for Hello Hum. We were able to run through a song and come up with some sort of loose structure and record a rough demo immediately. It’s always nice to be able to capture something when it’s really fresh. We would throw vocals on it even if Paul was just singing phonetically with no lyrics. Also I think just the fact that we were at home, and had time off from being constantly on tour was definitely a bit of an inspiration.

On the recording experience:
The recording experience was amazing. I would say it was easily everyone’s favorite recording experience/environment that we’ve ever had… We recorded at Fridmann’s studio in upstate NY. It’s really in this wicked rural area. Tony Doogan who has worked with Dave in the past and also on our last 2 records was with us, so that made it really comfortable right off the bat. We were at the studio all the time because the studio is basically an old house and has great sleeping accommodations. We would basically wake up and walk downstairs and someone would likely already be doing a take or messing around with any of the insane amounts of instruments/gadgets Dave has amassed over the years. We also played a lot of badminton…

On whether or not they knew what they wanted the record to sound like when they went into it:
This was actually one of the first questions Dave asked us when we arrived at the studio… I think we had a general idea but nothing was set in stone and in the end we just wanted it to sound like us. Dave and Tony were great for encouraging us to experiment with lots of different ideas and we were lucky enough to have a second “B” studio set up that we could operate ourselves whenever we wanted.

On what they’ve learned about each other on tour:
We know everyone’s little quirks, rituals, and behaviors…

On the best piece of advice they’ve been given:
Keep your stick on the ice!

Any messages for Seattle fans heading to your show on June 1st?
We’re going to be playing a lot of new songs! Old ones too… but mostly new.

What Tim’s into: