It’s another name designed to obfuscate, Quail State being the musical output of just one man, Jono Aidney. Dave Parker has known Aidney for about eight years and says that for about half of that time he’s been working on Quail State’s first album. They first met when Parker was doing sound for ska band Jonny Doom and the Forcefields, and again later with Aidney’s indie-pop duo Hold Dear. With Aidney these days living in Melbourne, the pair caught up as interviewer and subject while he was in Auckland recently for a listening party/art exhibition, followed by a solo live gig at Auckland’s Wine Cellar to mark the release of his surprisingly personal ‘Volcanic Hazards of Auckland‘.
It was around the time of boy/girl harmony pop act Hold Dear disbanding in 2011 that Jono Aidney started working on the Quail State album in secret, in bedrooms, hotels and hospital beds. It’s another disparate direction for his musical journey.
“I kind’a wanted to go back to that ’90s thing when people weren’t afraid to use flangers and phasers and thick harmonic distortion, like the bands I used to listen to when I was younger.”
I first learnt of Quail State and his album a year later, when Jono got in touch about replacing his temporary computer drums with real ones.
“I knew I wanted to re-do the drums with real acoustic drums, and at first I thought maybe I could do something like what I had been doing with one of my previous projects – with just a floor tom and tambourine, and snare and stuff. But by the time I got to that point production-wise I definitely needed a drummer to come in and play drums.”
Jono played all of the instruments on ‘Volcanic Hazards of Auckland’ and recorded everything himself except for the drums, for which he called in Stu Harwood (Paquin, Proton Beast). We set about recording them over a few days at my little bedroom studio in Oratia.
But why did it take so long to get released? Life still happens while you’re recording an album and for Jono a lot of life happened. He moved countries, he changed jobs, he travelled, but most of his time seemed to be spent in a hospital bed or in fact under the knife. Surgeries to repair other surgeries that were supposed to repair previous surgeries – Jono has ulcerative colitis, a condition for which, in a lot of cases, major surgery is just the beginning. Unlike Kanye West, this wasn’’t always a productive time for recording.
“I had to re-record a lot. It turns out you tend to make a lot of bad decisions on prescription painkillers!”
It’s not just music that he has been working on, there is a novel (which may be released in the future) and art, that both tie into the the album’s volcanic theme. Instead of selling CDs at his album launch Jono opted to sell prints, one-off pieces of merch and original pieces of art from a selection of artists he curated.
“I picked Auckland artists who I knew personally, whose work I liked, and who would interpret the volcanic hazards theme in ways that were different from one another. I think everyone did a great job of capturing the familiar volatility of life in a small city. Because I had no physical music media on offer, the paintings, prints and craft objects became the purchase, and each purchase came with a code for a high quality digital download.”
Selling prints allowed the focus to be on the art itself, instead of a means to an end for people to get the music.
“I hate the idea of charging more for the music to accommodate the cost of a little plastic box for it to go in.”
After recording the live drums back in 2012, Jono went to Portland, Oregon, before having more surgery. He had made a few friends through bands from Portland that Hold Dear had supported, so decided to take a summer break, returning inspired by his peers there.
“All of those guys shared this idea that music could really be an art form, which I’’d never thought of before, I don’t know why. Up until then all of the bands I’’d been in and around, we weren’t doing it as anything more than a hobby. We were doing it because we enjoyed hanging out and that’’s just what we did in the weekends, we all went to see bands play and eventually we all started our own bands. Up in Portland it seemed that all of these people I was around had a real sense of artistry and really carefully curated everything they do with their music.”
Rather than a Civil Defence warning, it turns out that the volcanoes of ‘’Volcanic Hazards of Auckland’’ are those people you don’’t want to bump into, for fear of that volcano ‘erupting’ so to speak. Some of the songs are quite personal, yet he seems unworried that releasing this album might cause some volcanic activity in his own life.
“Most of the specific references are such small details in the moments I’m describing; a turn of phrase borrowed from a fight, or wordplay around the identity of the real character. You’’d have to really know what you were looking for to find yourself in a song. A lot of the stuff that feels specific to a person is actually about a composite character; where I’’ll weave similar stories or themes into one story. So the songs are deeply personal, and very open, but in a way that protects identities. Or maybe just in a way that makes everyone wonder if the song is about them.”
He’s been living in Melbourne for three years but currently has no big plans for an Australian release. Rather it was important, he says, for him to release it in Auckland as it’s the central focus of the album.
“I feel like the album captures this journey that happened at a point in my life when I’’d been desperate to leave Auckland for various reasons, and I made this pilgrimage to a place I’’d heard so much about – and was kind of impressed, but in a different way than I’d expected. Then I came back and saw the city I came from in a different light. That story kind’’a ends before I moved to Melbourne, so Melbourne never felt that relevant to this project. I’ll give it a good push over there eventually, but I felt like the people that’’d be most responsive to it would be here.”
He hasn’t just been working on this album either, admitting to a backlog of music that has just been waiting for this album to come out.
“I’ve been writing and recording other things during this production process and I had the choice to either get it sounding right and then release it, or move on and start releasing some of the newer stuff, but I thought I should give it some justice and release it properly. For me it’s a really important stake in the ground and I’’m glad that I’ve done this.
And what is in Quail State’s future?
“One of my ambitions with Quail State is at some point to turn it into a band. I’ve got maybe one more record up my sleeve to come out after this one and hopefully at that point I’ll be able to assemble some people and come back and tour it properly, Australia too.”
