SPILL FEATURE: MAKING HAPPY MUSIC THAT’S JUST WHAT COMES NATURALLY – A CONVERSATION WITH JACK “COOL-BREEZE” CROWTHER OF BABE RAINBOW

MAKING HAPPY MUSIC THAT’S JUST WHAT COMES NATURALLY

A CONVERSATION WITH JACK “COOL-BREEZE” CROWTHER OF BABE RAINBOW

Australian rockers Babe Rainbow always deliver the goods with their infectiously groovy combination of psychedelic rock, surf rock, and dance rock, joyful vibes, charmingly upbeat and fun energy, and sun-soaked melodies. If you love feel-good music that will undoubtedly put a huge smile on your face, then Babe Rainbow is for you. Their latest album, Slipper imp and shakaerator, continues to prove why they are one of the best psychedelic rock bands working today. Recently, I chatted with Jack “Cool-Breeze” Crowther about Babe Rainbow’s new record. 

Slipper imp and shakaerator sees Babe Rainbow experimenting a bit more and going in a different direction in regard to the recording process compared to their other albums. “We were using more synths and a couple of drum machines to just let us go wherever, and then we would come back,” comments Crowther. “A lot of the other records, we would try and lock down the bed of the song, like live drums, bass, and guitar at once, which is really sick, and I love that process too, but this is just trying to do something different and like just piece together some loops to get the demos going and then go from there.”

Slipper imp and shakaerator is a feel-good record full of comfortingly upbeat and charmingly relaxing tunes. “Making happy music that’s just what comes out naturally,” smiles Crowther. “We’re pretty happy people. When we’re together, we’re enjoying ourselves, we’re optimistic people, and we see the light in things. Just goes that way, I guess. It’s just what comes out. We got some more emotional songs in the mix, but they often tend to be slower, and I like making those too, but often when you’re touring a lot, you just want to play fun music because our gigs are really just dance parties. It just makes you want to play fast, upbeat, happy, and spread a good vibe.”

With “What is ashwagandha”, Babe Rainbow incorporates fascinating field recordings, drum machines, and samples into the song. “I just recorded on my iPhone filling up a glass of water in my sink,” comments Crowther. “Then there’s just a drum machine going. There’re some recordings of birds around here, like whipbirds and bellbirds. I’m not sure if that’s in the intro. Then you got that sample of that dude, P. A. Yeomans. He’s an epic Australian character from the ‘50s. He was pioneering all this amazing ideology of how to farm this landscape. He made all these epic implements for the back of tractors for how to better manage the water and landscape and feed the microbes. That’s what the sample is about. He has since passed away. But the Shakaerator is one of the things he invented.”

PURCHASE SLIPPER IMP AND SHAKAERATOR VIA P(DOOM) RECORDS

Babe Rainbow actually got the title of the new record from this invention. “That’s just something he made to put on the back of a tractor: Slipper Imp and Shakaerator,” comments Crowther. “It’s just a groovy old story, and it’s got a good ring to it. Elliot [“Dr. Love Wisdom” O’Reilly] and I are really into all of the stuff that he does on the farm. It’s a bit of a ‘Down Under’ Australiana homage to a legend.”

Many of the tracks almost ended up sounding completely different. “They all just had so many lives,” says Crowther. “Sunday” is one such example of this. “[It is] just an arpeggiator on a synth that is like slowly decreasing BPM until the beat kicks in. Then it started with that beat and just the guitar chord progression. Then, an epic bass line came into play. Kind of how the song presents itself is kind of how it is written. There was a demo we’d made that turned into the actual stems of the song. Epic singing from Angus [Dowling]. Slide guitar in the end. Big slide guitar through the jazz chorus – That was fun. Before it had that, it had a different feel. It was a bit more mellow, and then we kind of chucked a bit of rock in there.”

Throughout the record, there are many groovy and exciting jam sessions. One of the best examples is in the outro of “LONG LIVE THE WILDERNESS”. “We just got to that part when we were recording, and we did two bass guitars going at once for the outro,” states Crowther. “When we first did that outro, it didn’t have any intensity. It was almost like a breakdown. Then as we continued on throughout the night and the next couple of days it just turned into that, to a cool guitar take after a few beers.”

Stu Mackenzie of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard mixed the album and is also featured in “Mt dub”. “He just came in and threw the vocoder on it, and it was so good,” grins Crowther. “His mixing was awesome. Timon Martin, our friend from Auckland, New Zealand, produced the album and wrote some stuff with us as well. It was just really good back and forth between Timon, and us, and Stu. It was just ‘no worries.’ It was really a joy for us all to work together.”

Camille Jansen plays a pivotal role in this record and is featured on “Rainbows end”. “We had written a bunch of the stuff earlier, and then we met Camille, and we played with her in Paris – She supported us at a gig in Paris,” exclaims Crowther. “It just happened perfectly. She’s in a couple of others, too, but that’s her featuring one because she’s actually a bit more discernable. She did such a cool job. Her voice is unreal. We had a few different vibes on that one with the singing and then when we got Camille to do that spoken word thing it just really melded so nicely with Angus’ vocals. They both were just complementing each other. It came out pretty well at the end… She’s actually flying out here to come sing those songs with us and play the whole set with us for the next Australian shows.”

Slipper imp and shakaerator drops on April 4th. “It’s just like a little diary entry really – A moment in time,” says Crowther. “It’s a bit of a departure like I was saying that old making beds style with everyone recording at once to a bit more experimental way of making the songs. In that way, we didn’t get too trapped by the bed of the song that we’d make at a certain moment of time – Which was quite liberating.”

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Photo Credit: Izzie Austin