Since forming in 2017, Brighton based progressive metal band Gaia have had the pleasure of opening up for Monuments on their Phronesis tour as well as death metal band Gruesome’s Twisting Europe tour, and have even played Bloodstock’s New Blood Stage. Only now however has the band released their first self-titled 5-track EP, as guitarist Olly Rybarczuk discusses the many hurdles that caused the delay;
Mainly financial reasons, we don’t have a label, so we’ve had to fund every stage of it ourselves. That’s on top of members working different times and other things we have to spend money on. The making of the EP started January 2019 and the tracking of the guitars were done at home to save money. Drums and vocals were done in a studio as well as the mixing and the mastering, which had to be paid for.
Has living in Jersey affected you balancing work at home and work with Gaia?
Luckily we finished the recording in June before I moved back to Jersey, so it only took 6 months. Then we had to send the tracks off to be mixed and mastered, and then get the artwork.
How did you decide on who you wanted to do the mixing and mastering?
The mixing was done by Wynter Prior in Brighton at Audio Beach, having mutual friends with him meant we were aware he was metal orientated. Some of the recording was done at our mate Andrew Cheeseman’s Den Studios. The mastering was done by Acle Kahney, guitarist of Tesseract, after we asked him if he’d being willing to do it and he liked the tracks too which was awesome. Both Wynter and Acle were open to suggestions as both me and Jamie, the other guitarist, are also producers, so we had a clear vision of what we wanted but just lacked the equipment.
The opening track, Words, begins with a soft piano. What’s the benefit of that being the first impression people will get from you?
A big part of Gaia’s sound is the contrast between really heavy sections and clean sections. Music tends to sound heavier if you have those dynamic jumps between really heavy and really melodic. We take influence from bands like Tesseract and Opeth who have clean guitars, pianos, and acoustic guitars. I’d also been learning piano for a couple of months at the time so wanted to have some of that in there, as well as the keyboards and synths in there that I play. Words was chosen specifically to be our first single because we felt it was our most commercially viable track off the EP. It’s a pop song structure that’s not overly complex, if you cut off the intro and outro it’s only 3 minutes long.
Each song comes across as a different subgenre, was that on purpose or accidental?
Words and Mind were written when we were 19, four years ago, so we had a lot of songs to choose from. We tend to write on a computer first before bringing it into a band scenario, using Superior Drummer for the drum tracks to make it sound like a full band to make sure everyone knows what’s going on. They all sound so different because of how far apart they were written, as well as not wanting to repeat ourselves. The next release that we do will also sound completely different because of the timescale.
What’s your favourite song from the EP?
There are specific moments and riffs that I’d call my favourites. As a song, Mind is one that I mainly wrote myself so I have an attachment to that one. I like To Be Reborn, one Jamie completely wrote, it’s just fun to play on guitar as it’s really technical.
How did you come up with the design for the EP’s artwork?
The draft was designed by Jamie, with a basic idea for the colour scheme and the background that matches with the woman in the foreground, the idea being Mother Nature. None of us are artists, so we took it to Anthony at Stoic Visions and he was open to our ideas.
You played Bloodstock’s New Blood Stage last year, how did you decide what to play without having solid material?
We weren’t worried about people not knowing our material, but we did have a few people in the crowd we knew from Brighton come to see us after winning Metal to the Masses. Our set list was basically our EP in a different order, footage which will be on YouTube soon. We also played another song of ours called The White Ship that’ll be on the next major release. We didn’t manage to get merchandise until after Bloodstock’s deadline, which meant we couldn’t have it at the merch stand so our impact was mainly word of mouth.
Now that you’re juggling two jobs in Jersey, how will you be keeping up with Gaia?
Currently it’s working out quite well as both my jobs are essentially part-time teaching roles. One is during school time, the other’s not, and the rest of the band are equally busy too. As far as rehearsing goes, I’ll rehearse with the band when we have a show, before we play. Because I get school holidays off I can easily travel to Brighton for a week or two and play a few shows consecutively.
What’s different about Gaia compared to other progressive metal bands?
We try to do something unique with the way each song on the EP sounds so different, from brutal death metal influences to the clean pianos and guitars. Jamie, Nick, and our drummer Jack who we call Dave, all grew up together playing in bands. The sound of Gaia is foundationally them, their previous band, Magnitude, was heavier without the clean sections like we have now. I’ve brought in my jazz fusion influences, classic rock and old school prog rock with King Crimson and Pink Floyd. Our vocalist Jack also does acoustic singer-song writer stuff.
Do you have any more gigs lined up?
We’re planning an EP release show for February sometime, bringing on some bands that we’ve gigged with in Sussex. Aiming for February half-term, I’ll be going over anyway to see Dream Theater. We want to do some touring round the UK too, I’ve got a few connections I made through my previous band.
Is GAIA something you want to do full-time in the future?
Realistically there’s not a lot of money in music anymore, Spotify takes a lot of the revenue you’d normally get from sales. I’ve spoken to a few people who have done world tours and it seems touring post-brexit will be hard to do internationally. I don’t think making a living from being in a band is a realistic prospect for the majority of working musicians anymore.
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