Opensight are back with their second album – The Outfit. The band are: Ivan (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Neil (lead guitar), Duncan (bass and backing vocals) and Redd (drums). I spoke to Ivan, along with Redd chipping in here and there.
We first chatted when I gave you 10 out of 10 for your debut album Mondo Fiction. That was a high bar and I was wondering if The Outfit could be as great, but I think it’s actually a step up. I love all the textures and touches that infuse the music.
Ivan: The textures that you mentioned are basically because we are using technology in a way that makes things sound organic and kind of vintage in a way.
Even if what we’re doing is exploring new ground and innovating, the whole sound has a very organic approach.
What I love about you guys is there’s a real sense of you just going for it, trying new stuff and being very brave. And it’s so exhilarating to listen to.
Ivan: I’m really happy to hear that. I think everything that you do should be a step forward in a way. Some things that we’re exploring with The Outfit, we had in the back of our heads for a while and that we wanted to try. But yeah, definitely The Outfit is new ground and it’s definitely Opensight. There’s a relationship like an umbilical cord that connects with the previous album, Mondo Fiction, but there’s new stuff in there. If we keep writing with complete abandon, so to speak, then it’s always something that is going to be exciting.
It’s very much a progression, isn’t it?
Ivan: We’ve got the same sound, the same underlying influences and ideas, but then, as you said, trying some new stuff. We’ve got very mellow and quite dark sounding stuff on there as well, which is a little bit of a departure from the previous album.
Do you fancy going through the album track by track and give your thoughts on each song? The album kicks of with Procesión de La Muerte – that’s a very dramatic intro.
Ivan: The idea for it was a Mexican stand-off. They’re about to shoot each other. That’s the kind of music that we were aiming for there. That was the first song that Redd was tracking on drums. We didn’t have a title for it, I was thinking about The Death March and Redd asked me (because I’m from Colombia) ,’How do you say that in Spanish?’ And I said, ‘Procesión de La Muerte.’ His eyes opened up and he said, ‘That’s perfect, that sounds cool.’
Then you bring the hammer down with Killer Outfit.
Ivan: It also has that melody from the instrumental intro. There’s a connection between the intro and the first song because of that. We were watching a lot of crime films from the 60s and 70s and there’s some Japanese crime films called The Yakuza Papers and the music is absolutely amazing. And lyrically the title has that great play on words. We’re wearing outfits on stage and so on, but at the same time it could be like a group of fun loving criminals, so to speak.
One of the little details I love on Killer Outfit is the wah guitar part that comes in occasionally.
Ivan: That is definitely a crime film, wah-wah kind of thing. It keeps the attention I think. I was reading your Black Sabbath book and you mention them using light and shade in the music. They have stuff that gets your attention, not just because it’s heavy, but because of the contrast of the heavy parts with the more mellow atmospheric parts. That’s something we absolutely enjoy as listeners and it’s going to come out in our songs as well. It’s going to permeate the music.
In Plain Sight is the new single.
Ivan: It’s nice to give that little almost subconscious nod back to 60s crime films. It was the first song that we worked on, and it made us understand more or less what the thematic basis for the album was going to be. It has that combination of things that could maybe get the point across of what the band is about really – what Opensight is in terms of clarity of vision and passion. When we (the band) talk to each other we’re passionate about the same music and discovering that inner fire in other people as well. The lyrics are dressed in the whole concept of a worldwide shadow organization and this whole thematic thing that permeates the album.
So yeah, it was an important first step. It also has a really cool video which was a lot of fun to shoot. It really goes with it and we’re really happy with it. I mean again, that’s another step up from the last album and the last videos that we’ve done. We had a great time doing it as well.
Your videos are always amazing and look so lavish.
Ivan: Thank you, this was a step up from the last ones. It was a much more sort of organized event, not that the other ones we’ve done were particularly disorganized, but this was properly story-boarded. Each and every angle was considered and we took time over it. The main venue was in the process of having all their lighting cleaned, but it lends itself perfectly to the whole sort of clandestine feel. And then we used a cinema for the external shots.
Redd: There’s a cinema I had known for a couple of decades and I thought it would be perfect to get some external. I went there a few weeks prior to the shoot, checked it out again and it looked great. We turned up on the night and it had actually closed down. The doors were all boarded up. But it played out to our advantage, it wasn’t this pristine, beautiful, in-use cinema.
Ivan: Perfect for the clandestine meeting place of The Director’s Cult or a killer outfit.
Defying Eye has that catchy surf guitar on the intro.
Ivan: Actually it’s the second single. It’s drenched in this dramatic crime film motif but also has more of a traditional metal energy. As musicians, we are all the time trying to follow our hearts regardless of what our tiny influences are telling us to do. That’s more or less the sentiment of the song. It has more of a traditional metal energy with the refrains and the vocal melodies and twin guitar harmonies and so on, but it’s also drenched in this dramatic crime film motif as well. Basically it deals with being different in a world that is going to try and guide you into being commonplace. And that’s something that, as musicians, we are all the time trying to be completely free and try to follow our hearts. That’s more or less the sentiment of the song.
There’s an interesting flow to this album, I think. The sequencing and how the album starts and how it ends. It’s a very interesting journey.
Ivan: It came very easily. The first tracks are the ones, like I said, with In Plain Sight, they get the point across. What the band is about and what the dramatic basis of the album is. Then after that, we start taking people to other places that are maybe a bit more strange. That’s kind of how the album works. But we are also fans of listening on vinyl. So you can have the journey with an intermission, like a double feature film. So at the end of the first side you have like a song that could be a bit more adventurous. And then you turn to the second side and you have like a high energy song again to kind of have that effect in terms of the journey.
At the end of the first half of the album, we’ve got Iris (I Rise).
Ivan: Iris was basically inspired by Italian thrillers. But also it’s I rise – the idea of I being the winner of the song and how that inner presence, the true essence, is within you. The truth calling from within you basically.
Broken Vow is very compelling.
Ivan: There’s an Ennio Morricone score called The Sicilian Clan and that’s more or less what inspired the main riff of the song. But then it took us to other places and we ended up with a song that has contrasts as well. It has atmosphere and pounding orchestration, but it’s also memorable and melodic. There’s this double kick thing that Redd does. It’s very compelling and alongside the orchestration it definitely has this bombastic thing. It’s one of those songs that is concrete, but it has a journey.
And after it we get the absolutely fabulous Mantra, one of my favourite tracks.
Ivan: That’s another one that sticks in the head because it’s got an ethereal feel to it in places. I’ve got very soft airy haunting feel to it.
Redd: I remember hearing it for the first time and really making me sit up and thinking this album is not just going to be a follow on. It’s going to be something better and a new avenue, a new way of looking at things.
Ivan: You’re doing this more of a tribal kind of drum pattern, and it’s also very spaghetti-western. It has this feeling of being in the desert, a hypnotic hallucination of dying of thirst or something which also thematically fits with the visual hallucination, second sight, sort of concept of the album. That’s one of the deep songs for sure.
The Director’s Curse wonderfully expands on that and I have to say I love the mellotron. Is it a sampler?
Ivan: Yeah, it’s a mellotron patch mixed with all the bits. I’ve thrown it in elsewhere on the album as well. The Director’s Curse is an interlude, but it’s a perfect little piece on its own. It’s one of those songs that took us by surprise, because it was initially an outro to Mantra. It has the same vibe. It has the same kind of sonic elements or motifs of Mantra, but the whole vibe is a bit deeper into hallucinations, this sense of angst. I just kind of like imagine me being lost in the middle of nowhere in the desert or something like that. It became a song on its own because it has a separate vibe and message as well. It’s a very effective song in terms of the atmosphere that it creates, definitely.
Final Cut has a real killer groove to it.
Ivan: That’s one of the early songs along with In Plain Sight. It was one of the last songs that we were working on during the Mondo Fiction sessions, so it’s kind of a transition between the Mondo Fiction vibe and the universe of what we have now with The Outfit.
It has a car chase sort of vibe to it like French Connection or Bullitt with that Wah guitar rhythm and it’s a bit more upbeat with that funky build of the Wah guitar. The lyrics reflect on the things you leave behind, and about eventually narrowing everything down into decisive actions.
Heist has an interesting harpsichord tone to the melody.
Ivan: That’s another Cop drama kind of thing. It’s just two verses and both are sung with two part harmonies. I worked with Duncan, who did the backing vocals for the album, and he basically did a lot when it comes to producing the vocals. Heist is about the idea that you’re being robbed of the things that are precious to you and valued. Certain forces in the world are trying to strip you away from the things that you love the most and the things that make you authentic.
It’s one of the songs that’s got like one of the biggest sort of contrasts as well going from quite a quiet laid back beginning to the choruses and then towards the end of the track it just builds and builds and builds and in the end it’s just so big and bombastic.
Redd: Towards the end of the track I’m hitting things harder and harder and it just builds up and up. I think it’s one of the musically biggest contrasts that we’ve done actually.
Ivan: Yeah, I’d say so. It’s really interesting because it’s a short song, but it has a really big feel to it.
The song that’s hit me the most so far is the last track, Delusion (which also features a great mellotron patch).
Ivan: Yeah, it’s striking isn’t it? This was possibly the track which cemented The Outfit as a step up for me. It just lifts onto that next level. It’s one of the most spontaneous tracks as well. One example of that is at the end where there is an exchange of guitar licks between me and Neil. I think his guitar parts there are some of my favourite parts of this album. Also on this song, there’s something, that happened elsewhere too on the album, which is that parts came out in dreams basically. Like when during that dream state you wake up and there’s stuff in your head and you need to go and record it somehow. Delusion is definitely an example of that because that’s something from a dream. It’s definitely one of the deepest songs, one that is very emotional. It has a melancholic power – sad and beautiful at the same time. It’s a song that we all agreed was a really good closer for the album. So it’s a great goodbye you know.
Well, look, thanks for going through the whole album. Let’s look at some more general questions. The first thing I wondered was about your lyrics, particularly on this album. Is it you imagining different things, or are there lyrics that are personal for you?
Ivan: I think that everything is intimate when you hear something or read something or there’s something that comes to your mind that you find meaningful. You write it down and then you bank up on ideas and then you realize that some of the phrases belong to each other and then you have an idea for a song. But there’s definitely a personal side there too.
There was a different way of working on The Outfit as a band to what it was on Mondo Fiction. Is that right?
Ivan: We had the opportunity to look at the songs together more because Mondo Fiction was during lockdown – either for bad or for good, because good things came out of that process, Mondo Fiction came out that way. With The Outfit we were more concentrated as a band. We worked particularly hard with pre-production rehearsals for the drums with Redd.
Redd: Personally, trying to use an electronic kit in a second floor flat was not ideal. But yeah, the pre-production stuff we did for the new album was a lot of grinding out, really. Ivan would come to me with passages and say, this is what I want to achieve. He would sort of direct – ‘I want it to build up here or drop down there. And then we would just work over and over. I’d come up with parts and we would work out what was the best for the track.
Ivan: It was laborious but it was good. Not laborious in a bad way, it was laborious as in productive. You become intimate with the tracks. I mean, any musician would say you need to know a track intimately inside out. But it’s more than that. It’s sort of getting under the skin of the track and letting the track get under your skin. So you understand it and you can give it your best. So those sessions were absolutely invaluable.
Also I did the vocal sessions with our bass player Duncan. We did the harmonies and all that. Then there’s the solos or our guitar player Neil and him coming up with bits and guitar harmonies that were very like traditional heavy metal. And that was something that we were delighted to do and translated great live. So now when we play the songs live, we enjoy ourselves even more.
There’s something to say about when you were talking about taking risks and exploring. I think this time around one of the things was that we ended up finding was a different sense of joy. When you’re exploring the song and feeling excited playing it together or recording it. That’s like a key performance indicator that we’re on the right track. The feeling of enjoyment and excitement.
The post production took time and we were kind of like trying to agree on levels and guitar tones and all that. But you know, at the end of the day, it was all worth it because all that work gave us something that we are really happy with.
Your theatrical quality suits live performances.
Ivan: I think most of our stuff does work live. It depends on what kind of show you’re playing because the limitations come from how long you have and the venue you are playing. If it was up to us, we would play whatever songs we wanted to play. We prioritise the songs that get the point across about what the band is about if we don’t have enough time. We pride ourselves in being able to adapt to a lot of scenarios.
All of your songs sound to me like they’d work live. I can’t think of one that wouldn’t.
Ivan: I think we’ve played the vast majority of our past tracks live, some work better than others. The feedback you get, not necessarily direct feedback is: ‘Are people nodding their heads or are they nodding off?’
It strikes me that you’ve got a very difficult decision to make on your setlist with so much great material from two albums. Obviously you’re going to want to play stuff you haven’t played live before.
Ivan: Absolutely. I think we help ourselves to an extent because we’ve got the common theme of the feel of a movie or a genre of movie. And we can continue that throughout the sets. That allows us a little bit of flexibility where we can pick and choose from the first album and from the new one. The context of the show or festival is something that would make us decide what song to add or what song to drop out. I mean, if it was up to us, we would play whatever we wanted to play, but if the context is that we don’t have enough time, then we need to pick the songs accordingly.
You also have songs from the Ulterior Motives EP and The Voice Of Nothing EP as well.
Redd: Yeah, I mean, I’d particularly miss playing, like, Antagonist. I think that was an amazing track to play.
Ivan: I think even those old tracks like Alibi or The Chase, they get the point across about what the band is about. Those tracks are older, but if you listen to one of them and then you listen to tracks from The Outfit, you can tell it’s the same band and yet there’s a world of difference in between. But people are going to say ‘I know what you want to do and I know what your purpose is. I know what your intention is’.
What about tour dates to support The Outfit?
Ivan: We have some dates coming up and we’re waiting for dates to be confirmed. We’re trying to play more across the UK and we’re getting opportunities to play outside of the country. We played a Spanish festival last year, and we played Germany in March. We will do as much as we can to definitely have a proper run of UK dates to present the new songs.
In the videos of you live you always look like you are enjoying yourselves immensely.
Ivan: We play the songs because we are enjoying them. We cannot help but show that enthusiasm and people cannot help but notice. We are celebrating music together – I mean it’s infectious. We enjoy what we do, the audience feed off that and then we feed off the audience.
You cover so many bases in your songs but what genre would you say Opensight are? Would you add in the word ‘cinematic’ for instance?
Ivan: The thing is, when you say something like cinematic or film inspired, people are going to be thinking about, like, John Williams and that sort of thing. As great as he is, I’m not listening to John Williams. I’m listening to, say, Lalo Schiffrin. Or people when they think of film music might think superhero movies and we’re not that either. So what do you think about Noire Metal?
Excellent idea! I’ve not heard that phrase before.
Ivan: A previous bass player’s girlfriend mentioned Noire Metal once, and that makes me think of Humphrey Bogart, but I think it’s probably the closest.
You might just have created a new genre there.
Ivan: It doesn’t sum up the whole thing. The music that we do is adventurous, but it’s not difficult to digest or to listen to. Our music is memorable, it’s concrete, it’s bombastic.
Redd: But we don’t like being treated as an oddity. Some people react that way when they see what the band is about. But when they listen to the music, they are like, ‘oh this is pretty memorable actually.’
Ivan: I think I would partly agree with the oddity sort of side of it. I don’t necessarily shy away from the unusual elements, but we are not ‘odd’.
You have a very strong clear vision of what Opensight is all about – musically and the image.
Ivan: It makes sense to us. We grew up listening to rock and heavy metal music so that’s going to become part of the music. But we also grew up watching movies, playing video games and reading comic books and so on. It’s natural for us to have crime film vibes and the adventurous cinematic visuals and the gritty aspects, the lo-fi sounds and visuals, all of that. It’s just something that we feel. It’s organic.
I think The Outfit is an outstanding powerful creative album. How would you sum it up?
Ivan: The Outfit has this feeling of searching for oneself, a search for authenticity. Basically, the album is about following your heart and being authentic and being unafraid of challenging outside influences.
Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. It’s been very enjoyable to get your thoughts.
Ivan: It’s our pleasure. We have always been grateful, especially the way that you’ve responded to the music. It’s one of those moments where you realize that what you’re doing is worthwhile, when you connect with people that way.
Redd: Absolutely right. I echo that completely.
For more on Opensight and The Outfit :
Info/ Records/ Merch: Bandcamp Facebook Instagram
Streaming: Ditto Spotify Soundcloud
Videos: In Plain Sight Defying Eye Killer Outfit