Laura

After the release of their debut long-player Mapping Your Dreams in February 2005 and many Melbourne and interstate shows during the year, the six members of Laura collapsed into the Christmas/New Year period and tried to purge themselves of all the residual tension from the previous twelve months. But by the end of January 2006 the desire to create something new was stronger than the sense of satisfaction with what had been achieved in 2005. The first thing to be created was a new rehearsal/recording space – ‘The Iron Lung’ - in a massive tin shed. Exploring this new world became an addictive experience for the entire band. If Laura were to survive the process of creating a second album, it would be their iron lung that kept them alive. August was set as the deadline for the album’s completion. Seventeen graphical calculators would be needed to work out why. But deadlines create momentum, and Laura’s second album was to be characterised by its simultaneous manipulation of momentum and its embracing of the rhythms of impulse. Four songs that had been added to Laura’s live repertoire during 2005 – Widow’s Son, Innocent Smiles, Every Light and I Hope – were now recorded at the Rancho Cumbo studios with Laura’s engineer/producer Nao Anzai. But the rest of the album still had to be written, rehearsed, and recorded. In the first week of February it was to The Iron Lung that the band again returned. Surrounded by paper covered with ideas, chord progressions, effects settings and timelines, Laura began to create new material. Anticipation, elation, paranoia and depression were emotions that were to become motifs during the coming months. With six musicians and sometimes twice as many instruments, every piece required hours of discussion, experimentation and arrangement. The rehearsal schedule became increasingly intense. One night a week turned into two and then three. Soon sections of the band were also meeting on free nights to refine individual layers of the tracks, meaning that some members of Laura were rehearsing up to five times a week. By the end of March many hours of material had been demoed. From 200 minutes of raw audio the ‘Iron Lung Sessions’ demo cds were created. Each member of the band made notes on what they felt should be taken further. Many significant cuts had to be made. But the process of negotiation and exchange that Laura have developed over the past years seemed to work again, and the band headed into the second phase of recording with a shared vision of what the album would become. In the final week of April and the last ten days of May the remainder of the album was recorded. During this time more tracks were written as the band thrived on the intensive experience of recording. Cambridge Bypass and Radio Swan is Down Part 2 emerged at this late stage and found their place on the album. By the beginning of June the band was living in a world of fear, exhaustion and disorientation. But as mixing and mastering took place throughout June and into July, 110 minutes of recorded music became a 64-minute album. And with artwork and pressing completed by the end of July, the August deadline – unbelievably – had been met. In September 2006, Radio Swan Is Down, Laura’s second album, is released into the world to begin the next stage of its existence. “Their massive wall of sound paralyses the room with awe…They’re like a hit of LSD – you can’t stop it or control it, you just flow with it until it ends abruptly, leaving you naked and disoriented.” – Brag Magazine “Mapping Your Dreams drips in ethereal, other worldly wall of soundness.” – Rave Magazine "The first tune in a long time to send a wave of goosebumps down my back." - Beat Magazine (single of the year review 2004) “…this album is beautiful and affecting as the sight of some majestic natural spectacle.” - Inpress Magazine Laura are: nathan biggin: piano, synth, guitars, noises andrew chalmers: guitars, voice, noises david gagliardi: drums, glockenspiel, percussion, voice, noises carolyn gannell: cello andrew yardley: bass, sampler, noises ben yardley: guitars, noises