Behind the Scenes of Void of Vision’s “What I’ll Leave Behind”

Void of Vision vocalist Jack Bergin caught up with Tiana Speter to delve behind the scenes on creating their upcoming album “What I’ll Leave Behind” (available September 20), exclusively for us right here at The Underground!

1.When it came time to choose a producer for What I’ll Leave Behind, we went back to Sam Bassal, he’s the drummer and producer for Ocean Grove, and he was also the man behind our first record when we were all kids putting out an album in 2016. FYI, we all collectively just fucking hate that album. We stand by saying that is the worst piece of work we’ve ever done to this day. And that’s totally fine! It served its purpose, we learned from our mistakes. And we gave stuff a go at the time. That’s just what you do as an artist, and I do think it’s important to do that and to realise that. We joke about it a lot of the time, and about what could have been.It’s actually very funny that we picked the person that we went to for our worst record to make our best record this time around. There’s a beauty in that, and there could be no better choice because this man has known us for those ten years and he knows what this band is, what it’s done and what it needs to do. And I think for someone to come into the fold knowing what a band needs to do is the most important choice of all when it comes to a producer. We could definitely write the songs, but we did need a coach in terms of how to have it all in that one melting pot to ensure the best end product. And Sam just guided it perfectly. He’s a fucking genius and I think he’s about to come back into the swing as a very successful young producer in Australia. Even via us working with him, he’s picked up a whole bunch of work again and it was just a beautiful full circle moment for us personally. It felt like we were kids again in a sense as well. And I think that’s how a lot of the raw and open conversations about the lyrical content came about because I felt so comfortable being in there with Sam. We would just sit on his couch all night until 4 a.m. just talking about things, like life being in a band and how I felt about the health stuff I had going on. It was just so nice having a friend there to make this record. And having that outside voice be someone so close to you is so handy. And! He’s playing on the upcoming Parkway tour with us as well. James [McKendrick] has broken his arm, so James will be up on stage doing production kind of stuff, and Sam will be on guitar because he knows all the fucking songs (laughs). It’s going to be very fun.Overall, working with Sam made everything also feel really close to home. We could spend all the big bucks on going overseas or flying in someone to do a big producer job, but nothing would’ve hit as perfect as it did having Sam do it.

2. The writing process for What I’ll Leave Behind was really weird. Angel Of Darkness obviously came out miles ahead of the rest because we were just playing around with pre-pro. We wrote Angel Of Darkness and Decades in the same session, and not long after we had Knotfest and all of my health stuff came up. We were just sitting on those two songs and we’re like: “fuck it! Let’s just release one of them now because what if we never get to again?”. That was where we went with Angel, and it ended up being fucking awesome. We were so stoked with the choice to put that one out early. I know it’s really different to the rest of the album, but something about it just felt really special. I’m glad we put that out and got the reception that we did from it, and that we had time to sit with that before we went into the rest of the album.

That whole experience also helped the direction of how to write the rest of the album, and it brought us back to our roots. We put out this very futuristic, developmental version of what we could have been, and then we realised: let’s strip it back. Let’s bring things back to our roots and let’s bring back everything we’ve known so far and just mash it all together. It really helped us reach a stage where we were like: “oh, hold on, we are pushing the envelope to a point that we’re not ready for, production and sound-wise”. It became: “okay, let’s just settle the fuck down and bring it back a little bit”. We did, and it kind of encouraged a whole new world of thought and productivity that we probably couldn’t have done if Angel didn’t exist. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s such a special track to the album, it’s such a special way to cap it all off kind of where we started. And we wanted to finish the album on that high note.

3. A fun part about this album was we finally had an album that we had to cut tracks from. Generally with all of our albums previously, we’ve just had the 10 to 12 songs that we’ve needed – and that’s been it. No B-sides, nothing. But we just wrote so much for this record. There is so much just sitting in folders, lots of fun and experimental kinds of ideas. The fact that we had to pick and choose and have fucking difficulty picking and choosing for this album – it’s so cool! And there is some awesome stuff in there that I know will eventually see the light of day somehow, some way.

It’s really exciting to actually have had that in the studio for the first time. And once again, that was part of having Sam [Bassal] there, just making those decisions; what fits, where it fits, and finally putting together this piece of music that has the correct order of how to listen to it. It has your breathers, it has your little twists and turns and exciting moments. It has your correct opening and your correct ending. It was just nice thinking about the perfect record for once!

4. In the studio we were working with the Brian Eno deck of cards, and that was also really fun! It was really easy to abide by. Whenever we hit a mental block, we’d just pick a card from the deck. My fondest one was “abandon normal instruments”, and that’s actually how Neurotic came about. We recorded real drums for everything except that song. Instead, Neurotic has all these Nine Inch Nails drum samples. It’s very synth-heavy, but it’s still also very much a guitar-driven kind of rock song. And I feel like we couldn’t have achieved a weird outlier like that if we didn’t have that Brian Eno deck incorporated. It’s little moments like that that make you think outside the box, and they really help. And we really realised that sometimes that’s all it takes, just a separate idea or a separate entity to part through and give you that information, whether it be an individual or a piece of paper with some writing on it. We also realised how important it is to incorporate a journaling element, and how much reflection of that kind of brings out affirmations for yourself. You realise what you really want and need from creating something. And that was an important part of this creative process too.

5. We were also looking at influences from other producers at the time and how they work with artists. Myself and Sam [Bassal] are massive fans of The Neptunes with Pharrell Williams. It’s so fun to look into how they created records and how they spun simplicity into really fucking catchy moments. It was actually similar to what we did with Neurotic. When we were making this album, we were thinking about a lot of their tracks and how a lot of those hooks and features made for really special moments. And we also looked into how a lot of those moments that happened were accidental, which we experienced ourselves too…

6. On that topic of accidental moments, an extra little hidden Easter egg on Neurotic is that the female voice coming through is actually Mikaila [Delgado] from Yours Truly (pictured Below). Funnily enough, on the day they were wrapping their record with Sam [Bassal], I hopped in to record, and she just dropped in a little hook on Neurotic. We were trying to find the right thing to add into this gap to make sure it flowed perfectly and to make it breathe nicely. So we dropped that in and it was very, very fun. It’s a nice little moment to have on the album.

7. It’s very interesting looking back already at this record because a lot of it isn’t our usual flow. I don’t think I really incorporated singing as heavily as I did into this record before we made it. I was just finally doing that and adding it into the weaponry, and bringing that out for the first time ever. I’ve dabbled with it before, but now having it a major part of songs – it’s a very different experience for me. But it’s awesome, making new moments and adding new things in every album helps to keep people on their toes; or at least you feel like you are kind of on your toes, like your feet are dangling like that famous David Bowie quote: “if you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting”. It’s about that feeling where you’re almost unsettled when you release something, but it feels right. And it wouldn’t feel like a proper release if you’re just putting out the same thing over and over again. You need to add new ideas and make it feel scary to release, otherwise you’re not getting the true reward and you’re not getting the true excitement of releasing art.

Void of Visions “What I’ll Leave Behind” drops September 20 via UNFD.

Track List:

1. Oblivion
2.  Blood For Blood
3. Supernova
4. Neurotic
5. Gamma Knife
6. Beautiful Things
7. Empty
8. Midnight Sweat
9. Decades
10. Angel of Darkness

Pre Order here: https://vov.lnk.to/WhatIllLeaveBehind

Catch Void of Vision LIVE on Parkway Drive’s 20th anniversary tour with I Prevail and The Ghost Inside:

Wednesday 18 September – Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Brisbane
Friday 20 September – Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Brisbane SOLD OUT
Saturday 21 September – Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney SOLD OUT
Sunday 22 September – John Cain Arena, Melbourne SOLD OUT
Tuesday 24 September – John Cain Arena, Melbourne
Friday 27 September – AEC Arena, Adelaide
Monday 30 September – RAC Arena, Perth

Tickets: https://www.destroyalllines.com/tours/parkway-drive