Things were looking dark for four-time ARIA Award-winning singer-songwriter Alex Lloyd back in 1997.
His band, Mother Hubbard, were on the cusp of breaking up, while the pain from his first major heartbreak was waking him up in the middle of the night. In the early morning hours, Alex channelled this turmoil into his first solo album, 'Black The Sun', by whispering vocals onto an 8-track in his friend’s basement.
Now, 20 years after the release of triple j's 1999 Album Of The Year, Alex, happily married and the proud parent of four kids, can reflect upon the breakthrough work borne from tumultuous times.
Vocally and musically, 'Black The Sun' was a marked departure from Alex’s previously released work on Mother Hubbard’s debut, 'You Me Him She', which featured full-throated vocals and blues-rock guitars.
Alex explains how his shift in singing style occurred out of necessity. “I wrote the majority of ['Black The Sun'] in my friend’s studio, which was directly underneath his bedroom and I would get up at three in the morning and go into his studio and I’d have to be kind of considerate to him because he was asleep and it wasn’t a fully soundproofed studio, it was just a room that he’d built underneath his room upstairs.
“The reason I was getting up at 3am was because my stomach was churning, that awful feeling when you go through heartbreak for the first time.”
Alex found two new loves in his friend’s studio, though: a Roland S-760 sampler and an Atari computer. These two new pieces of tech liberated him from problems he was having explaining his artistic vision to bandmates in Mother Hubbard.
“I always had altercations with the drummer about what she should play and it was hard because I felt her frustration from the point of view of 'you don’t tell me what to do'. But as a songwriter, I wanted to hear it this way, you know, and that’s what I loved about my sampler because I found the beat and went with that, and a lot of songs start that way.”
The discovery of the sampler opened a world of possibilities to Alex, which is something he occasionally laments.
“I can spend hours looking for some sample, for some sound, and it’s sh.t for days. It’s too much. I reckon it’s the general thing of social media, we’ve got too much information going into our brains. That’s why everyone’s depressed and staying in bed.”
Back in the '90s though, he only had access to an 8-track recorder and this limitation of his options in the studio was another essential ingredient to the album’s success. “I think it gives it a discipline, compared to now when you have an unlimited amount of tracks.
“Back then, there was limited amount you could use so you had to come up with different ways to do things. Part of the process was figuring out the science of how you were going to get all the music you wanted on the tracks, but at the same time having control of the tracks when it came time to mix it.”
It's been six years since Alex’s last studio album of new material, and he is contemplating re-introducing simplicity to the recording process, as he did with his 2016 'Acoustica' album, a collection of re-recordings of some of his previous material.
Before then, he is getting the full band back together for the first time in seven years for the 20th anniversary of 'Black The Sun', and he can’t wait. “It’s probably one of my greatest achievements, musically, just a whole body of work.”
Alex Lloyd 2019 Tour Dates
Wed 23 Oct - The Gov (Adelaide)Thu 24 Oct - The Croxton Bandroom (Melbourne)
Fri 25 Oct - Matthew Flinders Hotel (Melbourne)
Sun 27 Oct - Scene & Heard Festival @ Barlow Park (Cairns)
Wed 30 Oct - Dalrymple Hotel (Townsville)
Thu 31 Oct - Mount Pleasant Tavern (Mackay)
Fri 1 Nov - Harvey Road Tavern (Gladstone)
Sat 2 Nov - Scene & Heard Festival @ Eatons Hill Hotel (Brisbane)
Wed 6 Nov - The Basement (Canberra)
Thu 7 Nov - Waves (Wollongong)
Fri 8 Nov - The Highfield Hotel (Sydney)
Sat 9 Nov - The Factory Theatre (Sydney)
Sun 10 Nov - Scene & Heard Festival @ Wickham Park (Newcastle)
