Elora Danan

Having impressed audiences all over the west coast for the last 12 months, someone finally had the sense to sign Elora Danan so the rest of us could get a taste of their atmospheric take on modern rock.

Bassist Matthew Thomas caught up for a chat about why we all have secrets…

Interview w/ Matthew Thomas (Bass)

of “Elora Danan”

By Cameron Chambers

Thanks for speaking with us

this evening Matt. 

No worries mate. 

For those that aren’t familiar

with you guys, tell us about the “coming together” of Elora Danan. 

Basically it spawned from a metal

band that me and George had played in… George was played bass and

I was the guitarist. George had always had aspirations of being a singer

in a rock band so he got some members together but they were still missing

a bass player. 

I had a bit of spare time so I

thought I’d take it up and join the band.  

Who came up with the name?

I loved “Willow” when I was a kid! 

Ha ha, so did George. Prior to

actually forming the band, George and Ryan were doing this acoustic

duo thing and playing around Perth a bit. Before a show they were stuck

for a name and they’d been watching Willow so they thought they’d

go with that.  

When the band formed, everyone

really liked it so we stuck with it.  

A lot of local bands put a

enough to garner such a reaction? 

Yeah, I think so actually. We

spent a lot of time and effort on those demos. We played up the idea

of recording a few songs but we took our chances and chose to only record

a couple of songs and to really take our time with them. 

We figured that would give us

a better run at what we’re doing so rather than having 6 really rough

songs we could have 2 songs that we’re proud of to this day.  

Your debut release

– what has the reaction been like so far? 

It’s been over the top man.

We did our CD launch and thought we’d have enough records to last

us for a couple of months at least but they were gone in 3 weeks! It

just blew my mind! 

People at my work were into it

which was cool. This lady came into my work and said she’d heard us

on Triple J, she was in her late 30’s and yeah, she asked for a copy

which was cool! Ha ha 

Can you

walk us through the recording process for the record? 

Yeah, sure thing. Basically we

recorded wit a guy called Chad Blondel. He was friends with Issac through

his church. He hadn’t recorded a real band before, he’d done things

like youth groups, stuff like Youth Alive but we thought he had good

gear and was a nice guy so we gave it a go.  

We’d already done the vocals

for our demo with him which was cool so we went back to him. His studio

is at the top of IMAX theatre which is cool. It has a really good room,

and we were able to chill and go have dinner at Hermosa so it was really

cool.  

We did the drums and things went

really smoothly so it gave us time to fine tune things. The drums only

took a couple of days and the bass was done really quickly which gave

us some time so we decided to whack one of our songs - this acoustic

song - which we didn’t really like on the record and it turned out

to be one of our collective favourites which is weird.  

The quality of the recording

the EP together? 

It wasn’t a set sound or anything

like that. We liked the sound that Chad got for the vocals on our demo,

so we knew we’d get him to do the vocals on the new disc. He said

that he’d do the rest of it better than what was on our demo and we

were cool with it so we just said if you can do it better, let’s see

what you can do! 

After hearing the In Fiction CD

– they’d set a benchmark for sound – we just said if it can sound

anything close to that then we’d be happy. It sounds really good to

us and we’re really happy with it! 

It’s always refreshing to

backbone that’s lacking on so many albums these days. 

I’m glad you said that… thanks

man! It wasn’t a conscious thing though. With rock bands I find it’s

the bass sound that stands out and a bad bass sound can let the whole

record down. We definitely needed something that sounded good under

everything else. 

It’s good that you picked up

on it though because I’m not a good bass player, ha ha. 

No worries man. Glad I was

Good choice of sample by the way… The Beach is a great movie. 

Yeah, we’re all big fans of

that movie. I’m probably going to reveal the secret in this interview.

We named the record “We All Have Secrets” for a reason and if anyone’s

got copies of the disc, look at the lyrics and there are hidden messages. 

Each song is about a movie and then inside the lyrics is a special treat. We’ve used it before…

Parallel Universe is written about “The Beach”. Well, not about

the movie but as close to it as possible. All of the songs are written

about movies we really love.  

With Issac (guitar/vocals)

collaborate on lyrics? 

Basically George comes up with

the ideas and Issac is in his own little world. No one has a clue what’s

going on in there… he’s in his own headspace. Whatever they come

up with is different but they end up collaborating.  

They both have such different

voices and Issac thinks of stuff that suits him and then George comes

up with vocal parts that suit him. They put them together and usually

they fit.  

Do George and Issac ever encounter

have such commanding vocals? 

The main problem is Issac saying

“here’s a line” and it’s 3 octaves too high for George to sing,

ha ha. 

Elora Danan’s songs are really

as a band and on a personal level? 

As a band we are all in love with

Circa Survive. When we started the band we listed some influences and

it was bands like Fall Out Boy and all the poppier stuff but when we

sat down and wrote songs they didn’t sound anything like what we were

aiming for. 

To get compliments about the Circa

Survive comparisons I think is because of our guitarist’s shredding.

It’s just a testament to our guitarists! 

Generally though our biggest influences

would be Further Seems Forever, The Receiving End Of Sirens and Circa

Survive.  

How did your signing to Boomtown

Records come about? 

Um, Jaddan got in contact with

us after we did our demo. I think it was our third show and we played

with Prom Queen in Perth which was massive for a third show! We got

together with some of the guys after the show because we knew them from

when we were in our metal band and JJ too a copy of the demo home to

his girlfriend Mel from Destroyalllines.  

After that we got an email from

Jaddan saying that he was interested in our sound and that he’d heard

people were taking about us.  

I think he said it stemmed from

our first show, which was with Silverstein, so to have something like

440 people for a first show was such a blast! So yeah, Jaddan said everyone

was talking about us and he got in touch asking to hear more. We did

everything he said hoping for our big break but he led us on for a year,

ha ha.  

After a while we were like, is

this going to happen or not and yeah, he finally said cool and he liked

what heard and he’d like to sign us. We said yep right away and it

was great to finally be able to get that off our chest.  

A large part of Boomtown’s

given your location? 

Yeah, it’s definitely difficult

in terms of money. We’ve been east twice off our own budget and it

put us a little bit behind, but we were prepared to put the money out

and attract some interest, so now that we’re with Boomtown hopefully

it’s going to ease up a bit.  

Now we’re on a label with so

many amazing bands and with the Boomtown tour in November it’s going

to be so awesome playing with bands that have such a massive reputation

on the east coast.  

As you just mentioned, you’re

year – what are you looking forward to most from these shows? 

Just playing shows with awesome

bands really. I think the second time we went east the shows were slightly

bigger so I hope the third time we’ll be playing to bigger crowds

and more people will be open to hearing our music. 

And we get to play more shows

with In Fiction! 

Do you think your alcohol consumption

is going to be able to match the boys from Amity? 

In short… no! ha ha 

Who are some other bands from

Perth that people should hear? 

Animefire. Those dudes are doing

something different in the metal scene. They’ve got their heavy stuff

happening with drum n bass, so it’s refreshing to hear! That’s all

I can think of really. 

What’s been the most memorable

Elora Danan show up to this point? 

Umm, I’d say the show we did

at Metro City with Saosin. That show was about a year and a month after

we started the band and to be playing in such a massive venue with a

band like that to 1000 people was just amazing. 

To open the show and have kids

screaming was amazing and to think we’d achieved so much in such a

short period of time was so cool.  

What’s been rocking your

IPOD lately? 

Funny you should ask man. I do

have an IPOD but Issac borrowed it for the last 4 months so I just got

it back! But, he’s been rocking his warm up tracks. 

That’s about it man, anything

else you’d like to add?

Nah, we’re just siked to come

east again and play some shows on the Boomtown tour, meet some new people

and see some new faces and hit up some places we haven’t been before.  

Awesome man, thanks again for

your time.