Adam Weston from Birds Of Tokyo has a chat with FasterLouder about the – œBroken Strings’ tour, recording the new album and the upcoming festivals over the holiday season.

So you have just wrapped up the Broken Strings tour – how was it?
It was rad! Considering all the time and effort that was put into it, it was amazing how quick the tour actually went. It was only five or six shows and after a week and a half it was all over. It was a really good experience for everyone.

It must be a great feeling to know that you have that fan base that is keen to see you in all your elements?
Yeah. [Laughs] Luckily for us! It was just something different and we had always wanted to do a tour like that, but it is hard when you are releasing and touring and doing the festival thing and what-not. I think that the timing was right, as we were kind of wrapping up the Universes album cycle, and we are getting ready to move onto the next record, the Broken Strings Tour just seemed to be a good idea.

It is different, showcasing your music in this style. What made you decide that you wanted to go in this direction?
Well, when we are jamming and writing and that, a lot of the material comes in the stripped-back form, with a couple of acoustic guitars and some quiet drums and a tinkering on the keys. We thought it would be a shame not to be able to showcase a lot of our catalogue in that light. So we stepped it up with getting a string section and took that on the road in a concert form. It just made sense to be able to do that.

Do you think that a live CD or DVD will come out from the tour?
Yeah, we recorded and filmed a few of the shows and we have been doing a bit of cutting and splicing and editing and what-not. I think that perhaps there will be a CD/DVD in early February.

You are playing the NYE festival at Dreamworld on the Gold Coast and then you head straight to Melbourne for the Solar Music Festival, playing both in the headlining spot. How does it feel to have gained headlining honours so quickly?
Oh look, when I found out Regurgitator was one of the other bands on the bill for DreamWorld, I almost fell off my chair. They have been one of my favourite bands for so long. I must admit that I am almost a little nervous to have to go on after them! But you know, Birds have worked really hard to get to where they are and we are really proud of the fact that we are rolling into these shows and playing further up the bill.

Have you begun work on the next album?
Yes, definitely. That has been the thing for most of this year. When we haven’t been playing shows or touring for lengths of time we have just had our heads down in the studio writing frantically for our next record. As of this week we have just jumped into a bit of pre-production and we have got the majority of the album written. It’s just a matter of fine-tuning a few bits and pieces and then we will be set for all of January and February to actually start tracking the new material. I think March has been put aside for mixing – and who knows, I think by about the middle of next year we should have a new record!

You worked with Tim Palmer on the last album with great success. Would he be the natural choice for the next album or do you think you’ll look for another way to expand your sound?
We have kind of decided that even though Tim Palmer is great and a lovely guy, it would be best for the creative process to maybe work with different people on each record. Just so that it would be different for the band and the whole process and at this stage he won’t have anything to do with the new record and it is a little up in the air at the moment as to who is getting the final mixing role.

We will be pretty much producing the album ourselves, although we will be hooking up with Scott Horscroft who has worked with a lot of great Aussie bands. He will be joining us soon just while we are jamming through a few songs. It looks like he will be enlisted as a bit of a co-producer.

See, Birds are a band that have got a fairly good idea of what we want, so it would be silly of us to put all of our faith into one other person to try and make a good record. We are open to working with anyone, but this is the first time really in the band’s history that we have let anyone else into the fold to help produce.

You have had a busy year, as well as sharing Ian Kenny with his Karnivool commitments. Does it all work out fairly well as you begin to write and record?
Well that’s the thing – the last couple of years Karnivool haven’t been up to too much, whereas now that Sound Awake has been released, it is great to see them back in action again. But it works out well because when one band is doing one thing, the other band can focus on something else and vice-versa. In the end, it works.

Birds Of Tokyo play – œNYE at Dreamworld’ on the Gold Coast and Solar Music Festival at Mornington Racecourse on Sunday 3 January.