Band's sound decisions

MarineVille are happy with the rougher edge to their music.

Discovering the delights of Burger Fuel in Hamilton or surviving that depressing amble through Bulls on SH1. It's all part of touring the country playing music.

For Wellington band MarineVille, who play Auckland's Edens Bar tomorrow, those times are a bonding experience.

"Touring New Zealand is a great little pastime. That trip through Bulls is always something special. Impeccable," laughs songwriter Mark Williams.

But band bonding of a more serious nature has gone on in recent years. Since releasing their 2001 debut album, Ready For The Dance, the band realised the need to redesign their sound and re-record their second album almost entirely.

But listening to the final version of that album, Diving The Wreck, which is out now, it's still easily identified as MarineVille. The lush atmospheric textures remain but there's a few more noisy and abrasive additions.

"Yeah, it is more abrasive," agrees Williams. "I wanted to get away from the atmospheric stuff of the first record. I didn't want to repeat the first record."

When the band originally started recording Diving The Wreck in 2002 he says it was sounding too familiar, too much like their debut. They scrapped it and re-recorded all but two tracks.

"Part of the reason for that was living in Wellington, which is such a rock city, and we were finding that for the more atmospheric stuff it was actually really hard to find a place to play it, and to find a sympathetic audience for it."

So, drawing on some of their wilder influences - like New York bands Television and Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and early Rough Trade record label bands like Cabaret Voltaire and Stiff Little Fingers - they wrote some rock songs. Current single Let's Build A House is one of those tunes and the sinister din of Children of the UFO is unlike anything from MarineVille's debut.

The influence of noisy New Zealand bands like the Skeptics, Snapper and Bailter Space also comes through.

"In a lot of ways that era of New Zealand music is quite unfashionable now but it's still some of the most exciting pop-rock music to ever come out of this country," says Williams.

But he doesn't believe MarineVille have compromised their sound in an attempt to be more appealing to a wider audience.

"Part of me got really sick of the way the band got tagged post-rock 'cause I felt the songs have as many dynamics as a pop song, although we do allow a little bit of space for improvisation. And I also began to find that post rock stuff a little bit wishy-washy," he smiles.

"Stuff like Mogwai, I just found it a bit new-agey and just a lot of pedals, and volume and I didn't hear anything there. I felt a reaction against that so we went the other way to make things a bit abrasive. Another reaction to that was to write very short songs with not much going on in them [like John Can't Sleep]."

John Can't Sleep is about the band's bass player John Douglas and his bout of insomnia. What put him to sleep in the end was a musical cocktail of Smog's brooding rock and, believe it or not, the metal of Lemmy and his Motorhead gang. "I just thought it was a really cool thing to write a song about, and get away from all the big lush things on the first record, and focus more on domestic things.

"I was trying to do something really simple and textural and to the point. I kind of lost confidence in doing that sort of stuff in front of a live audience in Wellington because people just didn't seem to respond to it. So it has been a difficult year playing live," he reflects.

What kept the band focused in trying times was the recording of Diving The Wreck and forming a partnership with Wellington's Involve Records (the electronic music label run by Bevan Smith, who makes music as Signer and Aspen).

Signing up MarineVille is part of Smith's plan to broaden Involve's roster.

"It's really nice to have a little home and to have someone else to stand up and say, 'I think this stuff is really good'," says Williams. "I think it's nice being associated with a label that's willing to chance its arm and try something, and take on a band outside its usual roster profile.

"That's the kinda thing we really like. We like bands that take chances, and labels that take chances."

Performance

* Who: MarineVille, Wellington rockers

* Where and when: Edens Bar, K Rd, Sat Dec 4 (with Voom).

* Albums: Diving The Wreck is out now. Also available, Ready For The Dance from 2001.