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Meet Zero Stroke, a fairly new band to the rock scene hailing out of the Mother City. Today sees the release of their self-produced EP entitled As the Colours Seep which is available for FREE download from Bandcamp – here.
We caught up with the band to chat about their career this far and everything that went into the EP. See what they had to say:
Give us some insight in Zero Stroke. How you guys got started, who you are, what the band and its music is about, etc?
We are Michael Short (vocals), Chad Adam Browne (guitar), Alex Rohloff (bass), and John Yarnold (drums).
Michael: I met Chad in a bar in 2008 and we spoke about John Petrucci for literally 3 hours. It is pretty hard to find people with niche interests in Cape Town because it does not really feel like a big city, so Chad and I became good friends. We had both wanted to start a progressive band and we thought we would give it a go. We got Alex and John involved very early on and in the beginning we had a keyboard player, Phil.
Chad: We were gigging around a while ago under a different name and format and when Phil left the band to pursue his studies that made us rethink how we were going about doing what we wanted to do. We rethought our approach and decided to start off fresh under a new name, Zero Stroke. We began playing live in February 2014.
As far as what we’re about, there’s no real general mission statement, we just enjoy playing music and are all fans of some eclectic things, so we try to bring that all together and create music we can have fun performing.
Why the name Zero Stroke?
Alex: Zero Stroke is apparently some old psychological condition from post-WWI, inflation-era Germany that Mike came across. We just liked the sound of the words really. It has no real deeper significance to us or anything like that. Names aren’t what we’re good at, we struggle to name our songs sometimes!
Mike: We couldn’t use Jizz Wagon Sky.
Chad: We can’t decide on names, we’re absolutely useless, before Zero Stroke the top contender for band name was “The Riaan Cruywagen Experience”. This was the option nobody objected to.
What have been some of your highlights as a band so far?
Mike: Our first show in February 2014 was a real highlight as it was the culmination of a lot of time spent rehearsing and writing. It was a massive relief to finally be playing live again. The biggest thing for us was always to put together a collection of our material, and the recording and planning process for “As the Colours Seep” has been the most challenging and rewarding experience.
Chad: Just getting gigging again has been pretty great, we also got to play with Joburg band Paving The Labyrinth, which was really cool to be considered for especially seeing as we’re new to the scene.
Talk us through self-producing your EP?
Mike: Obviously the most important thing is getting the takes down and I had previously only ever recorded with an engineer pressing the button. This time I had my own time to spend and loop sections and get the parts recorded. I thought this would end up being easier, but it turns out to be very difficult to judge your own voice and which take is better than another. While this was very challenging, I have learnt a great deal about my voice during this process and I am a better singer because of it.
From the mixing and mastering point of view it was a quite new experience for us. We all know our way around Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs), but ultimately it came down to just doing some research and spending a lot of time critiquing the mixes and playing through various systems. While it might have come out better and taken a shorter time through a top quality studio, this allowed us to really put attention to detail into the tracks and for us to learnnew skills.
John: Well, everyone recorded their own takes, and we put it together at my place so we could do the mixing. Generally we would all sit in on the mix, as to all agree to what sounded good to us. Then there is automation. So much automation: volume automation for all the takes, FX channel automation for level/ type/ changes etc. Each track just about has automation, and then each sub-group. There is also mute automation for guitar cuts, and of course my favourite, vocal automation. All the vocals are automated to spike on all the plosives in each word… all the T’s, P’s, B’s, Ch’s etc. and also the mastering. It was challenging cleaning up the low end to a point where it sounded nice to us. The more one does this sort of thing the more fluid one becomes at it. I was used to doing much lighter mixes, without as many layers, so for me it was rewarding to work on it.
Chad: It was a pretty fun and enlightening experience, though stressful at times. We scoured forums, blogs and Youtube for every bit of information we could get about mixing and mastering to apply to what we were doing, and along the way things got scrapped and pretty much restarted a few times.
Alex: It was long, interesting, stressful, fun, horrible. A huge mix of everything. Ultimately, looking back, it was extremely gratifying, we definitely learned so much. Comparing our EP to the very first track we released, I think we’ve come a long way in our production ability. It took no small amount of research and trial and error, but I think it was worth it. Considering the amount we nit-pick, a real studio bill would probably have run into the millions.
How long did it take?
Mike: We released “Mask” as a single in December 2014 and that was around about the time that everything really started to get pulled together. We have had the majority of the tracks written in by February, but we decided to get very serious about things in August. We also wrote and recorded a new song during the process of recording. So in total the recording phase was around 4 months with at least a month of mixing. Since we all have day jobs, this was all done in the 2-3 evenings a week that we can stand being around each other :p .
Chad: Probably about 3 months, but there was a lot of prior research going in before we started the process itself.
John: Too long.
What are the emotions now that As the Colours Seep is a final product and released to the public?
Alex: We finished about half an hour before handing over the master copy to be duplicated, so mainly relief! We’ve been spending so much production time together over the past few months that the break from it is still settling in somewhat.
Chad: Mainly relief that it’s finally done and we can put these tracks to rest and start to work on some new fresh material, I’m quite excited for that.
John: To be honest, I don’t associate it with emotions. I’d just like to put music out there and have someone enjoy listening to it. I do suppose we all feel less frustrated now that it is done.
Which tracks mean the most to you?
Mike: I think my favourite is Mask. Mask was one of the first tracks I wrote for the band when we originally started. The song was re-written totally when we became Zero Stroke. Probably only around 10% of my original song remains, but it serves as a massive reminder of where we came from and how we have evolved as a unit and as musicians in the last 2 years.
Chad: I’d have to say “There Were Flaws” as it was the final track I had to record, and after I lay down the final chord at the end of the solo the feeling of relief that it was all finally over was palpable.
Alex: I think Machine. The other tracks had been written when we first started, and were difficult at times as we were still feeling our way into the sound we want. Machine was mostly written and completed during the recording process, and it marks the start of how we want to approach the writing process in the future.
John: I don’t have a favourite, but I guess if I had to choose it would be The Median Cycle. Our tracks were not written from emotional highs or lows. As musicians we just enjoy making music, so there isn’t really one that means more than another to me at least.
What can your fans expect from this EP and its tracks?
John: They can expect a cool looking cd cover with lyrics, some music, and whatever thoughts are conjured up in their minds when listening to it.
Chad: I want to say an eclectic mix of influences spun into a hopefully listenable format, though I guess that’ll be open to individual interpretation more so than anything else.
Mike: For us movement is key in our songwriting. We are all very into jazz and progressive music because of the evolving song structures or rhythmic and melodic phrasing that captures our attention. We hope that we translated our love of expansive sections, interesting phrasing and timing into coherent and moving songs.
What’s next for Zero Stroke?
Mike: We have the launch show at ROAR in Cape Town with Wargrave and Past Haunts on 24 January and then we are very excited to be playing Metal4Africa on 31 January with a great line-up of bands. After that we are planning a national tour for the middle of the year. A full-length album will definitely be next on the cards. We have a lot of ideas floating around, however when that will be done is not known.
