We Spoke To Blue Hawaii

Untogether, Blue Hawaii’s debut record, effervesces. Tiny pieces of memories, fears and wishes bubble in a whirl of muted but persistent beats. It sits delicately in your ear but anchors itself snuggly in your mind. It's how you think when you are a little lost and your mood restlessly skips from one place to another. It's an album of the dreamlike in-between state, and now one of my favourite releases.

I recently spoke with one half of Blue Hawaii, Alex "Agor" Cowan (his partner on this project being Braids’ Raphaelle Standall-Preston). Agor, being a Montrealer, is of course taking press calls from the loft space above a disused railway, which is Arbutus Record’s hub. I on the other hand - a London freelancer - am in a cupboard in a production office having “popped out to make a call.”

Untogether was formed as it sounds, as Alex told me “… it came from a long process of throwing ideas back and forth, reflected in the words themselves. We didn’t even talk about it too much. Even when we were in the same city it was separate. Every other night one of us would go in and work on the album a bit. It was like two individual journeys meeting… It really is tonnes of different small ideas that don’t really have anything to do with each other coming together in one form. Which is kind of a crazy way to compose together-feeling songs.”

The only track on the album that Blue Hawaii did write together, and in an afternoon it turns out, was "Try To Be", but they quickly went back to creating separately. “Raphaelle was recording with Braids for a lot of it, and it was just kind of in the middle of the night. We just didn’t really feel like doing it together that much.” And why should you force yourself to create something that’s totally cohesive when your life feels like strands that don’t quite connect, as Alex put it, “even socially we were kind of seeing each other but not, and living in this house together, but never really there at the same time and all of our friends were coming and going so it felt like that limbo state between the whole and separate parts.”

You almost sense on Untogether that the shifting foundations under them slightly sapped their will to commit to a firm direction at times. “We were very concerned about doing something that was too poppy or dance-y. We were so delicate. A beat is never really fully dropped and there are never lines that are repeated.” This way of working did result in an album of really intricate and original tracks in its own way. “What’s interesting about the way we make music is that when we have a vocal idea, a melody, that isn’t a song yet, we kind of use that and cut it up and make a new song out of it, or re-sing it at the end, or sometimes use the original as the sketch of an idea.”

I suggest that Untogether is a much more natural reflection of actual thought processes. I mean if you’re writing a record about memories and snatches of the future, then fractured pieces seem fitting don’t they? “Yeah, it’s true. Probably the reason we really respect songs like "Imagine" by John Lennon, this brought-together amazing thing, is because he’s this great artist that can think about it, but for a lot of people we just have an idea here or there. That’s why conversation feels so good because we can go off on a tangent and have it understood by someone else, but as soon as you try and solidify that you definitely get sidetracked.”

This collage-led method of creation was the main reason Blue Hawaii didn’t ever think they would play the tracks on Untogether live, but having figured out the arrangements properly they realised it worked. “It’s really quite different live from the album. It’s really upbeat and makes us feel pretty good.”

The beats on Untogether at times have a low resonance, a deeper dub feel and so it’s not surprising that Agor’s eponymous solo project is club focused. “I’ve only ever done it (‘Agor’) live before as it’s like basically, pretty hard techno. I’ve tried to exclusively play parties and late night events where people are really in a mood to dance.”

So, have they thought about the next Blue Hawaii release at all? “Next time we want to do it together in a more condensed way. Have an idea and not be afraid to stand by it… When we come at it again, it will be more like our live set, more upbeat and dance-y. I think it’s stronger but, that doesn’t mean it’s better.”

You can buy Untogether here.

Blue Hawaii will be playing at Birthdays Tuesday May 21st.