So what’s this new track called?
The new song is called “Lifeline” - quite catchy (laughs) - which I co-wrote with OAF.
You’ve worked with OAF previously - can you tell us more about them?
OAF is my mate Alan Donald, he runs Rocket Studios, where I recorded “Secret Love” and a few other demos in the last couple of years. I produced a couple of OAF’s demo tracks, “I Look To The Sky” and “Strange In Here” a couple of years back and also re-worked “I Look To The Sky” to see how it sounded at a faster tempo.
Bispatial appear to be doing a lot of collaborations lately - is this where you see the band going in future?
No, definitely not. Bispatial will always be about me writing and recording my own songs. Working with other people is really nice as a side project and it’s interesting to see how other people do it - it can be quite lonely when you work in isolation, you know, writing everything yourself, then programming the music and recording the vocals. It’s nice to have the opportunity to bounce things off other people and get their opinions on things sometimes.
So why another collaborative project?
Really, this was off the back of the Madsen thing. I told Alan about it and we both sort of got inspired, you know ‘let’s sit and write something of our own together.’ We’d wanted to write something together for ages - years actually - but we just have such different approaches to the way we write, it never got off the ground.
What was different this time?
We definitely had a ‘game plan’ this time, it was like ‘I’m coming down for the weekend and I’m not leaving until we have a song’ (laughs). It was still a bit touch-and-go though, we did the usual - me messing about on a keyboard and Alan noodling on guitar. It looked like nothing would happen again this time but all of a sudden the song just started flowing out, it was about 2 AM and we were on a roll!
After collaborating with a handful of other electronic artists including Sure, Madsen and most recently Phatso Brown, Bispatial has teamed up with up-and-coming band OAF on a brand new track!
This is the first time you have co-written a song with another artist - how did it differ from writing alone?
The actual process isn’t that different, it’s just good having someone else’s input, to ask their opinion on whether something’s working or not. There were a couple of times when I got stuck on a particular line and Alan came up with a new melody, so it’s handy to work with someone in that respect.
What was your inspiration for “Lifeline,” what’s it actually about?
It’s not really autobiographical in that sense but it’s obviously based on my own experiences - I think you have to write from that perspective otherwise you don’t connect to the song emotionally, it can seem a bit lifeless. It’s sort of about acknowledging that no relationship is perfect, that you make compromises and tolerate each other’s imperfections, making that extra effort, especially when things go wrong.
Do you plan to co-write more songs with OAF?
I think given the success of this one, how pleased we were with this song, we would be silly not to write more stuff together. It would be a way off yet though; we both have other songs and projects that we need to complete first, clear the decks before embarking on another side project.
March 2008
You can hear several of OAF’s demos here.
