The Church's singer-songwriter and bass guitarist, Steve Kilbey was spirited and loquacious when he logged on to Zoom for this interview.
"I'm working on an album here in Italy, and yesterday, we had all these backing tracks and I pulled four songs out of thin air within the space of three hours."Steve's output is nothing short of astonishing and includes 26 studio albums with The Church and at least 30 albums as a solo artist and collaborator.
From where does he draw the inspiration? "I'm in touch with something outside myself that I can access whenever I want. And I always have been, and I just continue to improve on that relationship.
"I can't say it's the collective human subconscious. I can't say it's the universe. I can't say it's God. I don't know what it is or if it's just inherent in all of us."
The Church are touring their latest release, 'The Hypnogogue', which is being promoted as a cinematic concept album. It's hypnotic, lucid, and atmospheric, and contains some deft songwriting.
Completion of the album, however, was cast into doubt when the bushfires and COVID kept The Church isolated from each other and threatened to derail the creative process.
"I had a friend who sent me a video from south New South Wales at 11 o'clock in the morning and the sky was black. It was incredibly demoralising. Incredibly alarming. Frightening.
"When I got back to Sydney, I had friends and family all over the place. Then obviously the plague came, and it was very hard to work. We couldn't all get together during that. I never foresaw any of this happening."
After coming to terms with the shock of it all, Steve found inspiration in his 12-string guitar. He started playing Instagram shows and writing a lot of songs. He drove to his favourite studio in Gosford and started recording.
The medicinal effects of recording galvanised his resolve to continue with ‘The Hypnogogue' and steer the process to completion. "I was so happy with the solo records I was making, I decided to get more hands on with this Church record. And I sort of jumped back in.
"Ashley Nayla very kindly drove all the way from Melbourne to Gosford. We did some more playing, and it became a mail order bride thing, people were just literally phoning it in – we had more stems than a florist."
Recording today can evolve in many ways and hosting a band in the studio isn't always necessary. Thanks to recording software and an expanding internet, musicians can email their parts to the producer for assembly.
"I never foresaw any of this happening. You couldn't have done it back in the old days. With 24-track tape recorders, it wouldn't have been possible."
The album is the result of living through such a calamitous time where the band's modus operandi was turned on its head.
"It's amazing in life, how something goes wrong, and then you think, 'oh, that's really that's the end of it'. But in the end, it comes good, and something better comes along. So yep, there were challenges, but I think we overcame them and, and it sort of exceeded ourselves."
The studio, in the production of 'The Hypnogogue', was at times used as a compositional tool which enabled The Church to produce some magical atmospheres creating an unhinging of space and time effect.
"The studio has always been a compositional tool for me ever since I got my first domestic four-track back in 1977. I could already see how so-called geniuses like Todd Rundgren were using the studio. And Mike Oldfield, of course, who did 'Tubular Bells' and played all the instruments himself.
"I could foresee how for me to write songs using the studio as a compositional tool would always be a good thing. So yes, very much the studio is a sort of an instrument to play around with."
A band with a line-up as seasoned as The Church, will always experiment when on the road, an experience Steve values as highly as the creative process.
"Yes. This is the story. You write a song, and you record it. And then you get out on the road and play it for a while; it starts to go where it always wanted to go.
"So, the studio version becomes the very basic, standard version. And as it gets played every night, more and more things come in that you'll wish, you know, wish we'd recorded, in hindsight."
When asked what to expect from this upcoming tour, Steve laughs saying "total transcendence and elation. Something old and something new. We're diving deep into the catalog. And I know if we're anything like in America, it will be extraordinary."
'The Hypnogogue' is available.
The Church 2023 Tour Dates
Thu 25 May - The Fortitude Music Hall (Brisbane)Sat 27 May - Twin Towns Theatre (Gold Coast)
Sat 3 Jun - Odeon Theatre (Hobart)
Sat 10 Jun - Hindley Street Music Hall (Adelaide)
Sun 11 Jun - Riverside Theatre (Perth)
Thu 15 Jun - Palais Theatre (Melbourne)
Fri 16 Jun - Enmore Theatre (Sydney)
Sat 17 Jun - Civic Theatre (Newcastle)
