Brain orgasm, anyone?
Chats to the Wellington band who reckon they’ve mastered a trick that makes your grey matter ‘detonate’.
Grant Smithies
Wellington four-piece Glass Vaults want to give you goosebumps. A frisson, a shiver, a tingle. A series of little electrical detonations under the skin. The group’s second album is designed to affect you physically as well as emotionally. Entitled The New Happy, the record lives up to its name.
A record that soothes and excites in equal measure. A record as medicinal as it is musical, its songs built around golden frequencies designed to trigger an alarming-sounding phenomenon known as a ‘‘brain orgasm’’.
‘‘Actually, it’s called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response,’’ says frontman Richard Larsen, who’s on his lunch break from teaching an intermediate art class in Christchurch.
His partners in audio-assisted brain bliss – Bevan Smith, Rowan Pierce and Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa – live in Wellington and Auckland.
‘‘Really, it’s a pop record, at the heart of it. But while we were making it, Bevan got really fascinated with ASMR and decided he’d try and get the music to trigger those responses by some sort of mysterious tinkering in the dark, magic place he calls his studio,’’ says Larsen.
The New Happy is a record full of dreamy synth-pop constructions and gently seductive rhythms. Larson halfwhispers his lyrics into your ear, giving a feeling of unexpected intimacy, like some sort of hands-free sonic massage.
If your scalp starts to tingle, your eyes dilate, the little hairs stand up on the back of your arm, you know it’s working. If a little jolt of electricity barrels up your spine, then Glass Vaults have done their job.
That whole ‘‘brain orgasm’’ thing is a bit of a misnomer, though. The band isn’t looking to emulate a sexual high with The New Happy, which, to be honest, is probably just as well.
ASMR is more of a fleeting, amorphous physical thrill; a little euphoric wave that washes over the body, bringing with it feelings of comfort and security.
Often triggered by certain combinations of rhythms and sounds, the phenomenon is well-documented down the decades, both in psychology journals and in literature.
Virginia Woolf wrote about the phenomenon way back in 1925 in her novel Mrs Dalloway, in which a bedridden patient has a classic spinal ASMR response, triggered by the voice of his nurse.
The nurse speaks to the man ‘‘deeply, softly, like a mellow organ’’, writes Woolf, ‘‘but with a roughness in her voice like a grasshopper’s, which rasped his spine deliciously and sent running up into his brain waves of sound‘‘.
But how does a band go about setting off these sorts of responses deliberately, through their music?
It is, evidently, a matter of ‘‘tight room reverbs’’, ‘‘short high-frequency transients’’ and carefully modulating and panning certain sounds as a song progresses. And it is experienced more powerfully when listening through headphones.
Does it actually work? Hard to say; I have mislaid my headphones. But I love this record regardless. There’s a soft sort of mellow joyousness to it, a welcoming warmth.
Larsen and Pierce both come from a visual/performing arts background, and started Glass Vaults as a duo back in 2010.
Smith, meanwhile, is a studio boffin of long standing, having made a flurry of very fine solo albums down the years as Signer, Aspen and Introverted Dancefloor, many of them released via New York label, Carpark Records.
‘‘Me and Rowan started making music with Bevan after we all went away for a weekend together. The plan was to shoot a music video while we were away, but we ended up recording an entire EP of new songs together.’’
Following three earlier EPs, the band’s debut album Sojourn was released in 2015, the sound a lush, psychedelic folk heavily influenced by Animal Collective and Sigur Ros.
‘‘Then we went on a trip to New York and became fascinated by all these quirky, funk-flavoured things like Grace Jones, Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. Their records had superclean production, but were also packed with really interesting sounds. We got a bit obsessed, to be honest.’’
Larsen also admits an abiding obsession with the carefully structured pop songs of more traditional acts, with Roxy Music, Paul Simon and Crowded House particular favourites.
‘‘I deeply love the songwriting of the Finn brothers, and I guess this album tries to mix the two, in a way: the groove-heavy New York stuff and a more intimate lyrical style you associate with singer/songwriters.’’
The New Happy was recorded in Wellington, before the band members scattered to take up other projects elsewhere.
Thematically, the songs veer about all over the shop, spanning the range from Napster nostalgia (Savant )to New York nights (Brooklyn), the NZ summer and fresh love conspiring together to banish the winter blues (The New Happy) and last night’s dreams lingering after you wake up (Mindreader).
There’s even a song Larsen ripped off from the nippers in his classroom.
‘‘Yeah, Ms Woolley was written when I was teaching at a Wellington primary school. It started out as a project I was doing with my class, then I took it away and developed it. It’s a song about being a child, running around, having fun during playtime, and the wistful memories you have as an adult for how carefree that felt.’’
Even potentially morose break-up songs are forced to slap on a smile on this record, as with Bleached Blonde, the ‘‘it’s not you; it’s me, see you later’’ melancholia swept away on a joyous tide of synth steel drums, bumping bass and ‘‘more cowbell’’.
‘‘I’d just split up with my girlfriend when I wrote that. It was really late in my studio and I wanted to make a celebration record rather than yet another mopey break-up record. So many people are making really sad music these days, and you can see why: it’s a really effective way to get an emotional response from a listener. But I wanted this album to make you feel… well… awesome!
‘‘I can make melancholy songs, too, but I wanted to try and make the listener feel happy. Even when the lyrics are a little sad, the music goes somewhere more joyous.’’
The band heads out next week on a four-date album release tour. In the meantime, I’m intrigued.
Apologies in advance if this is a little too, you know… personal. But has Larsen himself ever managed to achieve a brain orgasm while listening to his own music?
‘‘Not really, no. I’ve listened to the songs on headphones and I can’t quite get it to happen. It’s the same with all these ASMR videos you find on YouTube. There’s this woman who calls herself ‘ASMR Darling’ who just whispers at you in a pretty sexual sort of way while she taps and rustles things. She has, like, heaps of followers. But when I listen to it, nothing much happens. It makes me feel really sleepy and relaxed, but that’s about it.’’
The Glass Vaults’ album release tour: Golden Dawn, Auckland, June 30; Caroline, Wellington, July 1; Space Academy, Christchurch, July 7; and None Gallery, Dunedin, July 8.
The New Happy