A Conversation With Exek and Halt Ever

Halt Ever (pictured) and Exek have always moved in similar circles; the two Melbourne bands share a dense, muddy aesthetic that they drape over different musical skeletons. While Halt Ever are aggressive and punishing, Exek are more of arestrained, lugubrious ooze. It's all good stuff.

It makes sense then that they would explore this common ground with an upcoming split cassette on Melbourne imprint Resistance / Restraint. Ahead of it's release, Exek's Albert Wolski and Halt Ever's Josh Wells chatted about their respective band's contributions to the release.

Albert Wolski (Exek): These new tracks seem different from the old stuff. You’ve been called a shoegaze band because you were loud, but you guys aren’t really a shoegaze band. There’s still the powerful dynamics and it’s still loud, but I think the shoegaze label can now safely be removed. Are you happy to not be this shoegaze band anymore?

Josh Wells (Halt Ever): I don’t care. The songs are definitely different. I don’t think we captured any of our recordings properly or perhaps as we intended, and that was the issue with being categorized as a ‘shoegaze’ band. We’ve always sounded relatively the same live, but that wasn’t a result of trying to play like anything in particular. It was mostly Harry [Schwind, bass] playing something bigger then necessary and his refusal to play quieter. His attitude about the way our music should be played live has stuck.

The songs are different this time around. Jay [Presland, vocals/guitar] has been recently interested in western film scores and treating Halt Ever’s music more as a soundtrack and I think that has been extremely beneficial.

Albert: What are the tracks about? I understand that you and Jay wrote them separately, but are they tied together at all?

Josh: “Patricia” has Jay’s vocals and was more or less written by him before we all worked on it. It’s about sitting in Patricia Arquette’s garden. “Iron Flower” is loosely based on a poem by Elana Dykewomon. There’s no correlation.

Josh: I know you’re a fan of old Giallo and Argento flicks and their soundtracks. Do you hope that one day your music may accompany fictional images of people getting stabbed and raped?

Albert: Ah yes, that’d be great.

Josh: I know you studied a lot to do with horror soundtracks this year, what did you learn?

Albert: Certain instruments can evoke terror more then others. They have different purposes. Different scales, modalities, intervals, chords. It’s not just like horror films started and they went with that kind of sound and it just kind of worked. There’s a science to it.

Josh: Has that had an effect on your music?

Albert: Not really, not with Exek. I do film work and at the moment I’m scoring a short film and doing sound for it. With that kind of stuff it helps to know what works and why. Even though that film isn’t horror at all, it has eerie qualities to it.

Halt Ever and Exek's split cassette will be available soon through Resistance / Restraint.
The bands launch the tape at Melbourne's The Old Bar Dec 19.