Part Of The Whole

Before launching into how their new EP, Ghost Stories, came to be, a little clarification on what might seem something of a revolving door in the Monks Of Mellonwah singer department is in order.

“We started the band fresh out of high school,” singer Vikram Kaushik explains, “and there were the five of us back then when we started, so I was playing guitar, Joe [de la Hoyde] was playing guitar, Johnny [de la Hoyde] was on bass, Josh [Baissari] was on drums and Will [Maher] was the singer. Then Will left for the first time and I kind of jumped on the mic and started singing, and then I left to go to college – I had a year in Paris – and Will came back, and then Will took on some exchange in Copenhagen, so was away for a while and I came back.”

All of which explains why Kaushik was the frontman on debut EP Stars Are Out, Maher was out front for second EP Neurogenesis, and now Kaushik is back on lead vocals for the forthcoming debut album, Turn The People, which is being released progressively over the rest of the year as three EPs, volume one being Ghost Stories. Kaushik's return to the fold couldn't have been timed better, as the band had been invited to work with Grammy Award-winning producer Keith Olson, whose CV includes records for Jethro Tull, , Ozzy Osbourne and our own Rick Springfield, for US #1 Jessie's Girl. “It was awesome,” Kaushik naturally admits. “We recorded half of it at The Palms' studio in the casino there in Las Vegas. By the time I came back into the band, all that had already been lined up, but there's this open submissions thing on [website] Music Xray and Keith picked our music. When the boys won that Artists in Music award [last year] and went over to LA, they met up with him and they've just kept in touch. And the opportunity came up; we were doing an album and he wanted to be involved, so it just kind of happened pretty organically.”

Ghost Stories is the band's fourth EP, April having seen the Monks Of Mellonwah release a third EP, Sky & The Dark Night, which, like Sailing Stones on the new EP, was recorded and produced by the band's guitarist Joe de la Hoyde.

“We printed some copies of Sky on vinyl and everything. I don't know if you've listened to it but it's beautiful. It's a bit of a digression from what the songs on our album sound like but it was just something Joe worked really hard on, doing the string arrangements and the kind of electronic stuff. So it's one of those things where it's been in the band a long time, why not release it? Releasing it on vinyl, we got some really special artwork done for it, so I think it came out really well.”

The commitment to interesting artwork has carried over to the Ghost Stories EP, which features a comic book, complete with a wordless storyline, created by friends. It's all part of helping the band and the music stand out a little from the pack, including releasing the album in three parts.

“We're a young band still and we didn't want to put up twelve songs all at once for them to get lost. We wanted to get the most out of every song. So releasing them three at a time kind of gives each song time to breathe, gives them time to sink in for everyone and keep the momentum going for us.”