The names may ring a bell, or strum a fuzzed out guitar string. As ex-members of The Morning After Girls, Scott von Ryper and Aimee Nash share a common background but re-emerge from quiet and dignified cool in their newest incarnation as The Black Ryder.

A composed and unruffled interviewee, von Ryper talks by phone at work about this latest venture. “There was very much a break away from [The Morning After Girls] early last year. Aimee and I decided to just get in and start recording. The circumstance put us there and we made the decision to immediately head into something else rather than sit there and wonder what to do…it definitely was a great catalyst,” he reflects.

The Black Ryder continue to evocate the psychedelic, reverb-drenched trademark but their song-crafting was produced inside a more private realm. “We have been very low key,” he says. “After our time in TMAG we’d really played enough shows. We weren’t being particularly creative and I really missed that. I was very happy to spend even if it took a year, to sit in the studio and play when the right opportunities presented themselves. We never wanted to go, ‘Okay, let’s play the circuit and get our name out there’. That was never the plan.”

From the confines of this space, the songs bear a more intimate and cosier texture I say. “I think the intimacy comes from us being able to translate it directly to a recorded form almost as soon as we write it,” he says.

“Often we’ll come up with an idea, hit record and go straight away and write as we’re recording. Also, the lack of hand-changing – in terms of getting another four or five people to come and add their parts, then getting someone to produce and someone else to engineer – [ensures] that intimacy is there. We’re able to control it and it very much is our sound that we’ve created right from the start. Plus having the studio at home, we’re never on the clock.”

Despite von Ryper categorising “the basis of the recording and writing is Aimee and I”, they are not exactly commanders-in-chief and juggle more of a democratic triangulation. “For the most part, it’s not an organised event to have others play on the recording with us,” he explains. “Usually, when we have guests staying with us at the house, where we’re listening to music, sometimes the mood takes us. We never really set forth, ‘Hey, why don’t you come over and do the guitars on the songs’. Though we still like to make sure the basis of the song is still us playing.

“We have guests come in and they tend to add things that we haven’t thought of. Aimee and I are kind of generalists in a way; we do what we do on a couple of instruments and by no means are we masters of any. That’s why it’s great to have people come in who haven’t heard the song a hundred times before or have a different playing style. [They can] bring something a little different to the track.”

Indeed, they enlisted the meticulous skill of Graham Bonnar from seminal 1990s shoegazer band, Swervedriver. “We had Ricky [Maymi] from The Brian Jonestown Massacre staying with us earlier in the year and he knows Graham from way back. He played on one of the early BJM albums. Graham was in the country, we asked him to come and stay at the house and he jumped on for the ride. Of course you’d be an absolute idiot not to take the opportunity to go and record some drums when someone like Graham is around.”

So he delivered then? “Yeah, he delivered,” he chuckles. “We were lucky enough to get a couple of drum tracks out of Graham. I’m starting to work through them now and it’s real nice to have those drums on there.”

He admits this mark of spontaneity also criss-crosses over to touring. “It’d be great if we could tour and have friends in other bands who play overseas, to come and play tours with us when we tour through. It’s a nice sense of community and creativity playing with different people on different tours. At other times they’ve got their own band and they’re off doing their own thing, but it creates a little window to come in and out of if they feel like they want to do that.”

Thus, he describes opening for moody tempest outfit the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club as “nice and scary to have a show like that as your first.” As for the coup of being handpicked by The Raveonettes for their Australian tour, “We’ve just been really lucky that there’s been other bands that are aware of us and like us, who’ve reached out and asked us to play with them,” he replies modestly.

One of the more long-standing and illuminating associations with firebrands The Brian Jonestown Massacre also sees them touring together late August. “Well, there’s certainly not going to be any kind of ‘getting to know you’ stage. Ricky’s already here and staying with us and we know the other guys well, so it’ll be a way to catch up and get to see them play, because they’re obviously an awesome live band.”

But in general, the importance of moulding The Black Ryder has been a somewhat liberating time. Perhaps a cathartic experience, I suggest, or like a dream of rebirth. He pauses, and then thoughtfully accepts this. “I agree. You’re completely right.”

By embracing their personal adventure in making the first album, von Ryper can date stamp the whole event with a poignant visual. “Well I do think that our music is very visual. It’s because of the light and shade and the different elements; it carries the same mood all the way through and feels like a long road trip. It has in many ways been a trip for Aimee and I in both developing our writing and playing skills, and our ability to do a whole bunch of things like recording, mixing, producing,” he says.

“There’s a constant sense of evolution when you continue to write songs and the scope of your sound keeps expanding. I think that opens you up for different ways to be creative.”

The Black Ryder has snagged two high-profile support slots over the coming weeks. Catch them warming the stage for The Warlocks and The Brian Jonestown Massacre at the following venues.

28 Aug – The Factory Theatre, Sydney, with The Brian Jonestown Massacre

31 Aug – The Hi-Fi Bar, Melbourne, w/ The Brian Jonestown Massacre

11 Oct – The Troubadour, Brisbane w/ The Warlocks

14 Oct – Spectrum, Sydney w/ The Warlocks

17 Oct – The Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne w/ The Warlocks

23 Oct – The Gov, Adelaide w/ The Warlocks

26 Oct – Metropolis, Perth w/ The Warlocks