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Hi guys, welcome to VENTS! It’s great chatting with you guys after truly loving your stuff after discovering you guys a few months ago! How have you been?
Been very good, it’s been a busy time lately in the Windy camp. We just headlined a small festival last weekend, it was our first show in Australia this year, which feels insane that it’s been that long but we’ve been busy planning everything around the releases in that time. We’ve currently got our teeth sunk into programming and planning all the cool live show stuff for the new album. It’s very exciting.
So let’s talk about your single “closer,” which from what I read is about reaching a crossroads and deciding whether to give up or keep fighting for something you’ve invested everything into. Was there a specific moment in Windwaker’s journey that inspired that idea, or is the song more representative of the cumulative struggles you’ve experienced as a band?
I think it was more the culmination of our collective experience as a band. We’ve been doing this for a decade now and we’re at one of the most difficult points you can be at where all the plates are spinning and more plates are being introduced so to speak and it doesn’t get easier. We’ve been on the cusp of it being our full time job but still having to work our day jobs in between while also feeling the pressures of keeping our lives on hold to serve getting past this point. We try to keep a brave face about it all though.
The song turns rejection and self-doubt into a message about resilience. How would you say dealing with rejection throughout Windwaker’s career changed the way you define success and failure?
I think we’ve learned to deal with it the same way anyone in our position has. Eventually it just affects you less and you learn to keep getting back on the horse. Having a definition of what success is to you really helps and I do believe that our minds are more powerful than most give it credit for. Visualising the goals and how we’re going to achieve them has always been at the core of my philosophy and that hasn’t changed.
smile, you’re on camera. is described as your most accomplished work yet, while also being more guitar-forward, gritty, and analog-focused than HYPERVIOLENCE. What prompted you to move in that direction sonically?
I think that was a pretty natural move for us. It didn’t necessarily feel like it was a conscious decision, it just happened that way. HYPERVIOLENCE was created under a particular set of circumstances; we had only released one album and now two new members (one being a new frontman) had entered the fold of songwriting, we were also saying goodbye to our guitarist at the time Jesse later on in the process of making the album, all while feeling the pressure of whether or not this was going to be the last thing we ever make together. So HYPERVIOLENCE had to sound the way it did and so when we went in to make this album, we were able to reflect on what we liked and didn’t like about it and be more direct about what we wanted to do. Not to mention the extensive amount of touring together with this lineup we have today has made us a lot closer and we’re way more comfortable in sharing ideas. This album felt the most like ourselves and not trying to live up to our previous work and I think it reflects in the quality and the confidence in the record.
One thing I’ve loved about you guys is how the band have always thrived on unpredictability, combining rock, metal, pop, punk, electronic music, and hip-hop. Did making this album involve setting any boundaries around experimentation, or is the philosophy still essentially “if it sounds good, it belongs”?
Thank you, we do strive to tackle a lot of different styles in our music. That said, I think it’s very natural for us because we all individually take influence from a very broad range of styles and we don’t like to be kept in a box. The philosophy of “if it sounds goods, then it is good” is very much how we think when we’re writing. I don’t think we know how to write any other way but it’s also been a journey to explore and figure out what it is that makes us “us”. I think this record has been the closest we’ve gotten to figuring that out.
You made a huge musical leap from Love Language to HYPERVIOLENCE, and now smile, you’re on camera. seems to take another step forward while bringing more emphasis to guitars. When you look back at those three records, do you see a deliberate evolution or a band simply following wherever its curiosity leads?
As I said, it’s very much been a journey and I think that evolution comes from what we’re influenced by in the moment whether that’s sonically or conceptually with what we observe in the world and within ourselves. Over the course of that journey, we’ve really made our decisions around what feels right and making sure that we’re maturing and focussing more with each project. Each record has felt more and more deliberate and I think that will continue as we write more and more.
“click.” featuring RinRin sort of reveal a very different side of the album’s musical palette. How did you decide which collaborations and stylistic ideas belonged on this record without losing the core Windwaker identity?
Well RinRin was a pretty obvious and easy choice to collaborate with. She understands what we’re trying to achieve with our music and does the same thing in her own way with her music. She also works with Chris (our drummer and producer) so the chemistry was already there but she also brings a youthful energy to what she does which was a great thing to shake things up for us.
The album deals with time, growth, sacrifice, authenticity, and the superficial or sinister forces that can surround us. Did writing about those themes change the way you thought about your own journey as musicians and the sacrifices you’ve made to keep Windwaker moving forward?
The theme of this record really came only together about halfway through making this album. With the songs that we had finished and had decided were going to be on the record, it had really been shaped subconsciously by the things I was writing about. I had to stop myself from being overly dramatic in the way that I looked at the band because it sounded like it was the last record we were going to make, like a swan song. But at the same time, I think that pressure in the way I was seeing things also created diamonds and so I wouldn’t change a thing about what I was thinking about.
“closer” was co-written and additionally produced by Dan Braunstein, whose work with Spiritbox, Dayseeker, and Silent Planet is rooted in modern heavy music. What did he bring to the song that helped you realize its full potential?
Dan was an absolute pleasure to work with and we learned a lot from that experience when we came home and finished writing the rest of the album. Aside from learning how to begin writing a song all together in the room (which we had never successfully done in the past), he showed us a side to our sound that we had never heard before nor thought that we could ever pull off and that really illuminated something for us that we could bring the rest of the album and beyond.
Your music can shift dramatically within a single song, moving between this really massive hooks, heavy guitars, electronic textures, and wildly different vocal approaches. How do you maintain that sense of contrast while still making the songs feel cohesive and emotionally connected?
I think that comes back to the philosophy of “if it sounds and feels right, then it’s right”. We really try not to think about it too much and just go with what feels right to us. I think there’s a danger in overthinking and reiterating ideas. The more you do that, the more you lose the essence of what the original thought and idea was. As long as it’s catchy, we can go in whatever direction we want to go because that’s just who we are and what we’re trying to reflect in our art.
After the success of “SIRENS,” which has passed nine million Spotify streams, and the increasingly ambitious direction of your records, what does Windwaker feel like it still has to prove — to yourselves rather than anyone else?
That we can write another song that will out perform SIRENS hahaha
