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ABBATTACK - Australian band takes on the music of Abba Direct link to this site: http://tinyurl.com/abbattack NOTE: The band's video - the Abbattack Medley - aired in Manhattan on VideoWave's presentation of Visual Radio November 9, 2009 1 AM Channel 67 MNN Manhattan Neighborhood Network The group: AUDIOSCAM Title: Abbattack Label: Australian Sun Records (ASR1012) The Swedish group ABBA manufactured some of the most intoxicating and disposable pop music of the 1970s. Or so it seemed at the time. Who would have imagined that their songs would develop wider acclaim in decades to come on disc, on Broadway and in the movies. Intoxicating, yes; disposable, hardly. A hard-rocking quartet from Australia crashes the American shores with a fresh perspective on ABBA music. The group called Audioscam has commandeered 10 familiar, hummable tunes, re-imagining each as a power-rock anthem. Beginning with "Money Money Money," Audioscam's Roger Gold and Ross Wedding fill Abba's songs with sweeping guitar riffs. Slowing the tempo from Abba's famed bounciness, they deliver a crunching "Rock Me" sliced by an interlude of piercing guitar licks. They also take "Voulez-vous" on a six minute excursion that flirts with prog rock. Dispensing with Abba's trademark girl-group voices, drummer Brian Pitcher sings the lead vocals; the group harmonies on songs like "S.O.S" and "Mama Mia" sometimes reference such great Anglo-pop acts as The Sweet. Inventively deploying his tom-toms, Pitcher neatly pushes "Waterloo" and "Ring Ring" in a catchy glitter-rock direction. The idea works brilliantly, re-connecting Abba's first two British hits to 1974 when the glitter trend ruled Britannia. Joseph Tell
INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN PITCHER OF AUDIOSCAM Editors note: the above review is by Discoveries Magazine contributor Joseph Tell, this interview was conducted by Gemmzine editor Joe Viglione Gemmzine: Why did you decide to record the songs for this disc. Brian Pitcher: When we started to record the demos for "Abbattack",the first track we did was Money Money Money. The riff that we used was one that Roger had stored in his head, the way all guitar players have a "library" of little licks and riffs tucked away in their brains. It worked really well and I just kept picking songs that I thought would translate into a hard rock vein sung by a guy instead of two girls. We kept going and ended up with ten tracks that seemed to lend themselves to this sort of treatment. Gemmzine: Were all these songs recorded and mixed at the same studio? Brian Pitcher: Originally, this was just going to be a recording for our own enjoyment. So I built a small studio at home in my garage, with the intention of doing a bunch of tracks ,and putting them online for anyone else who might find them interesting. Obviously, I didn't have the budget that a "Mega Studio" would , so I did the best I could with what I could afford. The drums were done with a Yamaha DTX electronic kit and the guitars and bass were done with Line 6 guitar and bass pods. The only time I used a mic was to record the vocals. When I played Ring Ring to Mark and Nigel (Australian Sun Records) they thought that this was worth pursuing and releasing in hard copy, but that the vocals needed to be redone. I took my recorder (Yamaha AW2400) to Nigels studio and dumped everything onto his Pro Tools setup. Nigel, who is also a drummer, thought that using an electronic kit was "cheating", and as well as redoing the vocal she was insistent that we rerecord the drums using an acoustic kit. So, in the end the guitars and bass were done at my place and the vocals and drums at Nigels. He also did the mixing and processing at his studio (Pegasus Sound) Gemmzine: Did the inspiration for this work come all at once, during a fixed period in time, or was it spread out over many years...or longer? Brian Pitcher: When we were doing live gigs we would always be asked" do you guys know any Abba?" Eventually, I gave in and told Brad and Rog that we would learn an Abba song but, we were going to "twist it". Dancing Queen was the one we were getting asked for a lot so we started with that one. We thought how would Hendrix do this if he had written it? When we played it live for the first time the reaction took us totally by surprise. When Rog got to that main hook line and people realized what we were doing girls came running onto the dance floor as if we had turned on a magnet. We were so surprised that we looked at each other in astonishment and nearly forgot what we were playing. In the bridge section of Dancing Queen you can hear how perfectly the line from the Hendrix tune Third Stone from the Sun slots into Dancing Queen. It was almost as though the same person wrote both songs. I also get to give a nod to Ringo in that same section by using the feel from the Beatles track Tomorrow Never Knows. Gemmzine: Are all the tracks by the same musicians and, if so, how long has this particular group been together? Brian Pitcher: Brad, Roger and myself have been playing together for a few years now. Ross Wedding was the last one to join and you can really hear his influence on Knowing Me Knowing You. I'm a big believer in having a "band" as opposed to a loose group of musicians who aren't dedicated to anything in particular. Gemmzine: Who are all the songwriters on this album? Brian Pitcher: The songwriters on this album are of course Benny and Bjorn from Abba. Unfortunately, they're not in the band! My idea was to keep the vocal melodies as close to the original as possible, bearing in mind that the Abba girls can really sing ! making it very tough on any guy trying to do this. The concept was to rewrite the musical backing to the point that if we used our own lyrics and melodies, these would be original compositions. If you listen to Rock Me, there is no way that you could play the musical backing without the lyrics and know what the song is. I wanted to show what these songs would have sounded like if Benny and Bjorn had started a rock band instead of a pop band and I think we achieved that! Gemmzine: Any anecdotes about live performances of this song? Brian Pitcher: When we do any of these songs live it's funny to watch peoples faces hearing these arrangements for the first time. You can see them singing the words but with a physical look on there faces not really knowing where they know the song from. The start of SOS is our interpretation of the Who interpreting Abba! You can see people bopping along and when we get to the vocals there is this look of "I know this song , but who is it?" Gemmzine: Was there anything out of the ordinary while recording a video of one or more songs from this album? And if not, how did the director of the video work with the original storyline? To your satisfaction? Brian Pitcher: Nigel came up with the idea of running a small section of each song and sticking them all together, starting with the slowest track and moving up in tempo. Audioscam is a Live Band and we're not very good at miming ! So doing a video is hard enough at the best of times. When you've got to mime to a small section of each song and gradually increase the speed as well it becomes a comedy to watch us screw up the lip syncing. Gemmzine: Was this song effectively captured in the studio or would you change something in the future or on stage? Brian Pitcher: As well as the medley we also did Mamma Mia as a video. Like I said originally, we were on a really tight budget. we just set up a camera on a tripod, pushed start, and jumped up on the stage and started miming! We would run through the song get down and move the camera to another position and go again. Next time we do a video we'll practice our lip syncing and get a camera operator. Gemmzine: How difficult was it getting this composition from your mind to the recording session and onto the disc? Brian Pitcher: When we were planning how we wanted to attack the songs (Abbattack) Roger had this idea that Waterloo should sound like a thousand Zulus running through the jungle pounding on their drums. (I don't know what he had for breakfast that day) I'm not very big on drum solos and it was a challenge to do the intro to make it interesting but still sound like rampaging Zulus! Getting the idea out of his head ,into mine, and then onto the recorder wasn't difficult ,it was dam near impossible! The intro and out to Waterloo were a real epic for me and then Nigel (bless him) cut them anyhow. I think I'm going to have to release the demo of that song just for my own satisfaction. Gemmzine: Did you attend the mastering session and how important was the mastering to the overall sound of the album? Brian Pitcher: Nigel did the mastering at Pegasus Sound. It is VERY important to the finished recording. Mastering is like a band playing live onstage and doing a great job, but having a crumby front of house sound guy screwing it all up through the P.A. The whole process of recording or playing live is like a chain. One weak link can wreck everything. We've got a good chain! Gemmzine: Pick any two or three songs to essay about, giving the reader more perspective on what you wanted to say... lyrically, musically or both. Brian Pitcher: Voulez Vous was the hardest song for me to sing physically. I left it till last because I was worried that I wouldn't be able to cut it. Like I said before those girls can really sing. I wanted it to be moody and a little scary. After all, it's about picking up someone that you don't know and taking a chance. Things could go horribly astray if you take the wrong person home. The biggest revelation to me about Benny and Bjorn's songwriting was Fernando When I listened to Fernando it really surprised me how they were able to take a lyric about war, killing ,dying ,fear, and turn it into such a sugary sweet song. I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted the song to sound hard industrial and menacing. There is nothing pretty about the lyrics of Fernando...there's nothing pretty about war! | 
