In our latest Band Spotlight, we chat to Augustus Muller and Jae Matthews of coldwave act, Boy Harsher.
S] How are you guys today?
Augustus] We’re in LA. Beautiful day, just played a great show the other night. There’s a massive forest fire looming 50 miles away.
Jae] The fires are scary.
S] How important is the visual aspect of what you do?
Augustus] Boy Harsher is a multimedia project for me. We put just as much effort into the art and videos as we do the music.
Jae] It’s so important! If we had more time and resources we would create films for each release, like shorts not music videos. Or small books for each. We just collect a lot of ephemera when we’re writing that would be nice to publish in some way.
S] Talk us through the inspirations behind ‘Face The Fire’
Augustus] That was first song we wrote when we got our prophet 6. We just turned it on and tapped around for a few minutes and the song started to take shape. I kept picturing a sun set on a beach.
Jae] We both were consumed by this thought, the blood red sun. I think we had a very To Live or Die in LA type of trigger.
S] What do you draw from outside of music – think specific people, places and movies for example?
Augustus] All types of things. Old PC video games like Doom, the Gus Van Sant x Harris Savides trilogy, old xerox gig flyers to name a few.
Jae] I definitely write from and for moments, the feeling of walking home alone or the swampy touch of coastal living, or the way a look can make me fearful, or excited.
S] How do you define success as a band?
Augustus] Just having a quality catalog of work. If you can survive, through putting out a solid 3-4 albums that’s hall of fame worthy for me.
Jae] The fact that people feel so strongly about our music is already success.
S] Talk us through the most memorable day of the ‘Careful’ album recording?
Augustus] The recording process was about a year and a half. Lots of up and downs. We went through a lot of extremes. It’s hard to pick a stand out day in there. I can say on October 30th when we released the first single, it all finally felt worth it.
Jae] Because it lasted forever it’s hard to determine any memorable days, but yes – it didn’t feel real until finally our first single was made public.
