“The sound of that room is the sound of the record”: Wunderhorse on ‘Midas’ and capturing a moment in time

Posted On August 30, 2024August 30, 2024

Wunderhorse have released their new album, Midas. Far removed from being a standard studio album, it’s a burst of energy, a moment committed to sound that would have previously passed by with only a few people experiencing it; instead, it was captured by the band and given immortality. This is transportive music at its finest. Midas grabs you and throws you into the recording session as it happens, and when you consider the band’s history, it’s not surprising that a live and energetic sound has encapsulated this new record.

Wunderhorse started life as Jacob Slater’s solo project. In Cornwall, surrounded by nature, surfing, and tranquillity, he allowed himself to re-engage with the art form he had previously tried to distance himself from: music. He had burnt out in the London punk scene, and Cornwall offered respite. This gave rise to the album Cub, which received excellent reviews from fans and critics and led to Slater taking the show on the road. From here, he worked with Harry Fowler, Jamie Staples, and Peter Woodin. 

“It was kind of a missing piece, really,” said Slater, “We were kind of thinking about it becoming a band for a while… Harry joined, and it was just so natural. The more we played together the sound developed into something that was different to what I had in my head. You know, it was still my song but it grew and became this different beast which we were all responsible for in our own way rather than just me.” 

Their connection as a band was cemented through live performance. The music that they were playing brought them closer and closer together, to the point that it only made sense for Slater to ditch the solo mantra and turn Wunderhorse into a full blown four piece ensemble. With Midas, we get our first glimpse at the four of them making an album together, and that live sound that initially connected them bleeds into every second of the album.

The band all agree in unison when asked whether this was intentional. “Absolutely. I don’t think we really knew exactly how yet, but it was in our hearts, certainly…” they said, “Usually, the normal thing is to make the second album sound bigger, kind of more produced and elevate it more to stand out in the industry, but we wanted to get away from the production on the first record and make it a bit more like an accurate representation of how we sounded live.”  

A number of elements contribute to this album’s ability to capture a live moment. There is the band itself, the studio, and the producer, Craig Silvey. Speaking to the group, they make it clear these are the three pillars that hold up the entire record. 

Pillar one: the band. When you listen to the album, you are listening to a band who knows their live show like the back of their hand. There’s an unspoken connection between them that lets them know when to hold back and when to attack a song, creating a sound that makes it feel like you have your head in one of their amplifiers. 

“I think there’s something to be said about the fact that we were physically in the same room,” said bassist Peter Woodin, “Because there’s a tendency to separate everyone into booths and have them looking through glass windows at each other, you can control the sound a bit more. But we had all the doors open, amps were bleeding through into the room, and physically we were in the same space. We respond to each other’s energy as we were playing these takes.”

Pillar two: The producer. While the band might already have a great live sound in the bag, they’re also human, which means there’s an innate desire to play every note perfectly and get the recording spot on. This isn’t what happens during live shows, so capturing the energy of a gig and playing everything flawlessly are contradictions of one another. Silvey was on hand to talk Wunderhorse out of striving for perfection. Subtle impurities are present on Midas, and this only makes the album more authentic.

“Initially, there were a few times where I’d make a mistake in a song and be like, oh, I should do that again, I wanna do it again,” recalls guitarist Harry Fowler, “The producer, Craig, kept us on that line and said, ‘Well, you said you wanted to do it this way so that should stay in’… Initially, for me, there was an adjustment to that mindset, but I really fell into it once I realised what we were trying to achieve.”

False starts, talking at the beginning of recordings, missed notes, accents not played in the first half of songs but picked up in the second as musicians grow more into a tune, all of it can be heard on the record, and all of it adds to an unprecedented energy.

Pillar three: The studio. The album was recorded at Pachyderm Studio in Cannon Falls, the same place where Nirvana recorded In Utero. It stands as a testament that even with the accessibility of equipment that allows you to record music at home in solitude, recording in a studio can capture a rawness that is difficult to replicate.

“The sound of that room is the sound of the record,” the band agree, “The second you walk into that room and you hear the kick drum or snare, you hear the reverb; it’s like nothing else… There’s no room like it that I’ve ever been in. Super unique.”

Albums previously recorded in the studio and Midas overlap and contort, and the sound of the room is the most distinctive part of all of them. “If you play something like ‘Frances Farmer’ off In Utero and play something off our record like ‘July’, you can hear the same room in both songs,” said Slater, “You know, in the drum sounds, it’s real magic.”

The beauty of Midas

The band, the producer and the studio all come together to make an album that sounds like a moment in time bottled up and distributed. People often say that albums represent chapters in a band’s history, but in the case of Midas, it feels like that more than ever.

The fact that this record was written and recorded in the studio in a matter of days means we are getting a glimpse into everybody’s mindset during that specific period. It is such an accurate representation of a moment in time put to music that it remains one of the most transportive records available.

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