HXR20YR RETROSPECTIVE: HXR044- THE GREAT SABATINI/GREAT FALLS split 12"

My lord, what a monumental pain in the ass this was to put together.  I mean, probably every conceivable thing that could have gone wrong with this release occurred.  However, none of it had to do with either Great Falls or The Great Sabatini.  They’re both wonderful.  In fact, everything about this release that the bands, and their members, directly did to create this release went smoothly.  It was all the parts not on their end which accelerated my hair loss.  But I’ll get to all that in a moment.  First, maybe a little background on how this all came to be.

I’d been friendly with the guys in Great Falls for years, going back to Demian and Shane’s previous band Playing Enemy, having released their final record over 10 years ago (of course, you know all that because you’ve been reading every one of these interview pieces right?).  I’ve stayed in touch with them since that time and upon moving up to the Northwest I have had the distinct pleasure of seeing them far more often than I had in the past.  It wasn’t long after I got here that I got word they were shopping around for a label to release their new full length and I immediately offered to take on the task.  But what I wasn’t aware of was that they were intending to make this record a double LP and I was a little uncertain if I was up to the large task of releasing a double LP in the way they wanted for a band that wouldn’t be able to tour heavily for it.  In retrospect I think I was just a little afraid.  It really wouldn’t have been such a big issue.  Either way, a good label picked it up and did a stellar job with it.  Still wanting to work with Great Falls in some capacity they mentioned that they had a few other songs recorded for a split they had planned with The Great Sabatini that had been sitting around for a couple years but nothing had come of it.  I thought this was a pretty good idea.

Enter The Great Sabatini.  I’d known of these gents for quite some time.  They were big fans of a number of bands I had released stuff for in the past, as well as pretty good friends with some of those people.  They had even approached me about releasing material for them in some fashion at least once.  There was a sort of extended-family quality to them in regards to their connection to other Hex-related bands and the off-kilter sound they had, which was certainly relatable to other stuff I’d put out.  But I’d always been hesitant because they were Canadian (thus making shipping records always a pain in the ass), and they also were a band that were unable to hit the road all that much.  It was sort of a tough spot.  However, when the idea of this split came up, and they also had already recorded material for it just sitting around, things seemed a lot easier, and I was on board for making it happen.

There was also a brief moment where this almost became a split between Great Falls and Post/Boredom, whom I ended up releasing a full length for in 2019. But at the time Post/Boredom was not quite ready to do a split so soon after just releasing an EP and wanted to just focus on writing their full length, which I had already agreed to putting out.  So instead of remaining strictly Northwest we went with the original idea of going dual-coast and international!

Now since both The Great Sabatini and Great Falls have band members who are very artistically inclined I thought this would be a great opportunity to do some really wild packaging stuff where the members could come up with some really cool ideas and just go nuts with it.  We decided on a few cool aspects to this record:  make it one-sided and have the B-side be an etching, have a letterpressed cover that was hand-screened, and add a really weird locked groove right in the middle of the friggin’ record.  It was pretty off-the-rails all the things we wanted to do to make this special and as awesome as all of those ideas were they were ridiculous to execute.

Now, for Sean from Great Sabatini’s part to create a design for the B-side etching was easy.  Within a week or two he came up with a beautiful design that worked wonderfully.  And with Demian, he created a letterpress design for the cover, which was made and screened right in his studio in Seattle.  So far, so good.  But then things got kind of fucked up.

 That crazy B-side etching, art by Sean Arsenian

I had begun to work with a new person to cut lacquers for me at this time and they had a person they worked with to do record etchings because it’s a separate process involving precision laser-cut designs onto a record lacquer.  Not many people do this.  But he had a person.  Well, right before the record was ready that person decided to quit the business and that me in a lurch.  Thankfully, soon after, the record pressing plant I use had a person who could do this and it was sent off to that new person who, despite some wait, was able to do the job very well.  So I thought, ‘one little hiccup, no big deal’.  From there it went to get plated.  A few more weeks go by and I finally get pictures of the plates and the B-side etching is definitely something else and not mine at all.  Apparently, the B-side plates were mixed up with an Iron Lung Records release and I have no idea how they could have been more different, or mixed up at all.  So a bit more waiting and things get righted.  From there I got test presses.  I always make special covers for the test presses and I wanted to do something ridiculous for those too.  So I got some glossy, reflective paper to print them on and let me hip you to something- if you ever want to destroy a copy machine just send reflective paper through the bypass tray.  It screws up the whole machine.  I couldn’t understand what was happening, but I probably went to three different Office Max stores to make a total of 10 covers and probably mind-wiped three different copy machines into a state of comatose oblivion with that paper.  So, it was a hassle, but kind of funny too.

 Officially the most ridiculous test press cover I have made

Finally, test presses approved, time to get the records pressed.  Well, the center labels for the A-side were never approved and they said I had to have B-side labels, even though it’s a one-sided record.  So now the labels needed to be re-sent and approved, which caused a few more weeks of waiting because the labels have to be printed before the records can be pressed.  And then the color of vinyl that all the records were being pressed onto was out of stock for several weeks so more waiting.

So after a few months of waiting around for everything, a record that was intended to be out in late 2018 was FINALLY out in the world by late-February 2019.  That is why I’m including it in the final installment of this retrospective series because it should have been out last year and not in 2019.

All that long story now leads me to catch up and chat with Sean Arsenian, guitarist and vocalist of Montreal’s reigning, and long-running, kings of weirdo noise rock-sludge-whatever heavy music, The Great Sabatini.

Sean from The Great Sabatini at Heavy Montreal earlier this year

How long has The Great Sabatini been around and how many records have you released in that time?

This past November was 12 years and we have done 4 full length albums and maybe 8 or 9 smaller EPs or splits. 

That’s a lot.  I feel, even though you’ve been at it for a long time, your band goes under the radar quite a bit.  Maybe it’s because I’m in the states and perhaps it’s different in Canada.

I feel like that too.  For awhile  we tried to go stateside as much as we could because we were paying for P2 visas.  So we thought we ought to go there as much as we can.  But as you know from being in bands and putting out records for so long, if you’re not on top of it constantly you get buried.

Sure.  Because it’s so expensive to come over here legally, and it’s such a hassle too.  I’m kind of surprised that you’ve come over as much as you did.

It’s something we definitely tried to do, but now it’s sort of an impractical thing.  Unless there were to be some sort of crazy offer, and that’s not going to happen, it’s not worth us dumping thousands of dollars into trying to get all the paperwork done.  Also, we would probably only be able to do weekends, or something like that.

I always remember Montreal for having a really metallic, kind of beatdown, hardcore scene.  Is that true and if so, how has TGS fit into that, or at all?

I don’t think we ever really have fit into a scene there.  We’ve always been that band that either no one has heard of, no one likes, or the very few people who are into us seem to be really into us.  All the people around Montreal were into us when we first started, and were really generous, cool people.  But they never seemed to understand why we weren’t bigger than we were in their view.  I don’t think we’ve ever neatly fit into anything.

Montreal is a town that has a very big hardcore scene happening, and a really big death-tech metal scene.  And I don’t feel like we fit into any of those places.

How did you get to be friends with the Great Falls guys?

I think it was basically this guy Dale.  He’s from Manitoba and he does merch for KEN Mode.  He’s a very good friend of ours and he’s a good friend of theirs as well.  He has been on the road with us when we did a small tour with KEN Mode in 2011.  That sort of established us as diehard buddies.  And I know he also spent some time on the road with Great Falls too.  So he was always randomly messaging me, and also messaging them, about doing some random project together.  And  I think I’d heard of them before Dale told me about them.  But I thought because of the geographical distance, and their pedigree- they were sort of a world apart from us- Dale was the sort of connective tissue.

Great Falls in Olympia, 2018

So have you actually ever met them?

No!  I’ve never met them!  It’s only through talking to them online.  I’ve been to Seattle probably four times, but never met them.

What was the original idea of this split, or how did it come about, and why did it take so long to come out?  What took so long for it to come out?

Initially Kenny from Corpse Flower Records had spoken to me about possibly working on the split we did with Godstopper that No List Records ended up putting out on cassette.  I think there were some crossed signals there because he said he was interested, but there was some caveat and for whatever reason it just didn’t happen.  But I’m a fan of his label, and he was a fan of the band, plus he knows those Great Falls guys.  So when we talked to Great Falls about actually making this a reality they mentioned they could talk to Kenny about releasing it.  I think they have a bit more credit with him than we do.  I don’t really know him that well, but he was down with the idea.  I know he had a bunch of other releases planned and we were sort of on the backup list.  But it wasn’t for lack of trying, but I tried to see what his release schedule was because we were working on getting out our full length “Goodbye Audio”, and Great Falls was working on getting their album out too.  So I didn’t want to step on his toes with releases, or vice versa, or cross-promoting things.  And there ended up being a bit of a communication breakdown, and it just sort of stalled.  And honestly, I sort of forgot about it because I was focused on just getting ”Goodbye Audio” out.  I just put my back into working on that and making it happen.

And then my understanding was the Great Falls guys asked Kenny if they could just take the project elsewhere, which is where you came in.

I know between you, myself, and Great Falls we came up with some really wild ideas for this record, but previous to my involvement did you have any prior idea for artwork, or direction, or format for this record?

Yeah, I think there was some ideas, like we wanted to make it a one-sided 12”, mainly because of time constraints.  The initial idea was a split 7” and I believe Great Falls had some of their material done and we did not.

So when the nascent idea of this record began I had a song that I wanted, but it wasn’t recorded yet.  I knew how long the song was, and I had the recording session scheduled.  One of the songs on the record was recorded during the “Goodbye Audio” sessions.  So I already had everything planned out.  But because Great Falls already had a couple songs, and it was a certain length of time a 7” wasn’t going to work.  And I had this other song- “Bleeder Of the Pack”- recorded, but it didn’t have a home.  It was just sort of in this digital compilation I had put up on bandcamp years ago.  But I really liked that song and thought it would work well paired with this other song, and then we would have something that could be one side of a 12” with Great Falls two songs.

So the songs weren’t exactly specific to this release.  They were more of odds and ends?

Well, “Bleeder Of the Pack” was sort of like that.  It was out there, but it was an obscure track for us.  Even people who really like our band may not have known about it.  The other song I wrote it knowing that it would be for this split specifically.

Great Falls in Seattle, 2019

Since this record was definitely a group effort between different bands, what’s your favorite part of it that you didn’t contribute to?

Wow.  It’s hard to nail down one aspect because there’s a lot of cool little things on this record that I had nothing to do with.  Like that noise track in-between the two bands is crazy.  I love it.  I love the cover art, and the fact that it was letterpressed.  I love that all the ideas that everyone threw up in the air landed on one thing.  I didn’t have anything to do with that little buffer track, but it’s so cool.  It ties everything together.  It’s not just someone in the middle organizing two bands to get together and do a split and then it just happens.  It was a much more collaborative thing.

Who is the Great Sabatini?

It’s a pretty moronic story.  I was in a band with Rob, who also plays in Sabatini.  We were in a band together prior to this one, and our singer Diego had a song he titled “The Great Sabatini”.  And we were like, ‘what the hell does that mean?’  And he said, ‘it’s a name for self-fellatio’.

We were around 22 at the time so we thought that was real funny.  It’s still pretty silly.  But when we were trying to come up with a name for this project I proposed that name as sort of a joke, but it was the only one that everyone was OK with.  I’m sure you know that naming a band is impossible.

So they agreed on the most ridiculous thing?

Yeah!  Really, it’s meaningless.  It’s not a person, or anything.  It’s just a handle that is sort of moronic.

So, in lieu of that, what’s the best and worst thing about your band?

(laughs)  I could probably give the same answer for both those things.  We all care about this a lot, and we tried to be professional about it for awhile with touring and getting visas, and investing the money we made back into the band.  But we never had any illusions that we would get huge or anything.  There’s that thing about investing your time, money, and energy into a thing with diminishing returns.  And I’m in my 40’s now, so it’s been a long time of doing that.  It’s kind of like a hobby at this point, even though we don’t approach it that way.  It’s extremely rewarding, just doing this and having crazy experiences around the world with these people who are my best friends.  But I’m also probably where I should be financially right now because I’ve spent so much of my time chasing this thing.  But I don’t equate my financial stability with my happiness.

What’s the best and worst thing about Great Falls?  I mean, they share the record with you.

(laughs) I think the worst thing is that I haven’t met them!  I wish I had them more on my radar when I was touring in the Northwest because we could have maybe done some shows with them back then.  So that’s a bummer.  I wish I had known those guys earlier.

But I think those guys just make the most cathartic, disturbing, heartfelt music, ya know? I don’t even know how we’re on this release with them.

There’s always the future.

And that's a wrap!  I hope you have enjoyed all these pieces looking back on the records that were an (mostly) enjoyable task putting out into the world.  For this week help yourself to getting this record for $8 (only $4 for the digital) through the webstore HERE