Icelandic prog rock trio The Vintage Caravan is rolling through with their sixth full-length record, Portals, out now on Napalm Records. It’s the band’s most adventurous voyage into the realms of bluesy psychedelia yet.
Bassist Alexander Örn Númason tells New Noise that TVC, which also includes drummer Stefán Ari Stefánsson and singer/guitarist Óskar Logi Águstsson, has evolved over its last few records to where the band is now writing from a more personal and truthful place. “Things tend to be more ‘true’ when you speak from the heart,” he says.
Thus the goal on Portals was to capture TVC’s true and authentic voice as accurately as possible, and to that end the band recorded live to tape in the studio. Recording live in the studio is nothing new for the band, but this time they went about it in a way especially designed to emphasize their unique cohesion as a group.
“Our goal, which we never really were able to do before, was capturing the live essence of the band on album,” Númason says. “We always recorded live in the past with amps in iso booths, which has its vibe. This time, we did a whole different thing. We had the amps as close to the drum kit as possible with some padding in between and the amps cranked up as loud as usual. This had the effect that you hear everything in everything, which I never realized is such a huge part of our sound.”
While preserving a sense of realism was important during the recording process for Portals, that was of course only in service of taking listeners on a long, strange trip through the day-glo realms of aural fantasy TVC conjures with their hypnotic hard rock riffs. The sense of embarking on a sonic journey when you enter Portals is aided by a series of interludes called “Portal I” through “Portal V” that connect the songs on the album and add an intriguing new sonic element to TVC’s sound.
“I was messing around with tape loops in the months leading up to recording and I had manically cut and pasted about 40 loops from random cassettes I found at second hand stores,” Númason explains. “These tape loops became the basis for the so-called “Portals I-V”, a bit of a tongue in cheek reference to the city of Porto [Portugal] where we recorded the album. The Portals became a mix of tape loops, synth sound design and field recordings from the city, with the first Portal including bird sounds from the garden of the studio.”
TVC pick up some notable fellow-travelers on their journey through Portals, in particular Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt, who guests on the album’s opening cut, “Philosopher.” Opeth have taken TVC out on tour three separate times, and Númason says they’ve always had such a great time together that when TVC started talking about artists to feature on the album, Åkerfeldt‘s name came up immediately.
“I couldn’t unhear in my head him singing the verses of that song, ‘Philosopher,’” Númason adds. “Óskar recorded a great version of it but I almost felt like it was meant to be that Mikael would sing it. Fortunately he agreed in the end and everybody lived happily ever after.”
Portals is out now from Napalm Records, and you can order it here. Follow The Vintage Caravan on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for future updates.
Photo Credit: Stefan Ari Stefansson
