Up Close & Personal: Friends of Friends

Fresh from touring with indie heavyweights Slowly Slowly, Brisbane indie rock outfit Friends of Friends return with hard-hitting new single ‘Morphine’ and news of their own national headline tour. We caught up with lead singer Barnaby Baker to dive deep into his musical journey thus far – from his Garageband beginnings to landing a spot on Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist.

How would you describe your current sound? What’s your primary instrument? What direction are you headed in, artistically speaking?

Primary instrument is drums, and then I fake my way on keys, guitar and bass on the Friends of Friends records. Genre less gets thrown around way too much, but FoF’ tracks tend to sit in their own genres. It’s a mixtape of all my favourite bands and sounds, but overall we’re shooting for a future focused indie-rock. There’s a few curve balls on the upcoming EP though with a softer country inspired track, as well as some hard hitting industrial rock cuts. Are there any artists or producers that you look to for inspiration?

Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) is a big inspiration for Friends of Friends. He is truly the king of synths. There’s one episode on Netlfix’s ‘Song Exploder’ where he talks about making synths from overly reverbed string samples that changed the game for me. It’s all about getting those electronic sounds to feel like breathing organisms, and I’m here for it. In your own words, please describe your average production workflow and setup. I don’t run templates on my sessions, I always open something blank, and just start working. I’m not trying to get bogged down in mixing, so I let the workflow breathe and be fluid at the start, but there are some specific plugins and techniques I use. Almost every writing session I do will start with some kind of droning texture. Whether it’s from a soft synth that runs through some magic plugins, or a live instrument that gets re-sampled and warped, without fail, I have to start with texture. Sometimes these textures prompt chord progressions, or guitar parts. I’ll then start hearing things that aren’t there, like a guitar part, or little ear candy thing, and the song starts to flesh itself out.

Once that initial harmonic layer is down, I’ll hear a drum part at some point, and try a few things until I’m getting excited about the rhythm section.

I’ve got a home studio that I work from, which always sounds cooler than it is. But I was lucky to find a house with a large room and wooden floors that lend well to production and writing. It’s minimally treated, with just some tall baffles in the corner. I think having a live-ish space is important for your writing and production to come alive in, more so than having the perfect room. Is there anything unique or special about your setup? How did you get to that point?

The most unique part about the setup is simply having everything in the box. It’s not that uncommon or different – and it’s kind of born out of a budget necessity for Friends of Friends (who has money for a LA-2A? I know I don’t…), but I’ve overly leaned into the digital mindset. Most of the sounds that go into sessions come from audio snippets I’ve collected, or using a bow on an electric guitar etc, and the magic is in manipulating, warping and bending them. I love to bounce snippets of audio out of my DAW, and throw them into a sampler and play them back as chords or random phrases. It can create some really unique moments in your tracks. Do you feel this equipment/ software has had an influence on your unique sonic fingerprint?

Accepting that your musical life now lives inside of a computer can be a little weird, but I try to use it to my advantage. Small things like committing tracks, and nudging them out of time can create some really great variations on riffs and synth parts that you might not have thought of. It can take something average and turn it into something special. Running reverbs into that sans amp plugin everyone has is definitely another trick I often use. I love that big, wall of sound feel, and just throwing plugins in different orders can be the difference between something sounding nice, and something sounding unique (even if you’re not supposed to)

What is your DAW of choice?

Pro Tools is my life. I’ve been using it since highschool, but it means I’ve become dependent on it. If I can hear it in my head, I can most likely make it happen in Pro Tools but I can’t do that in Logic or Ableton, and so I’m stuck with AVID (iykyk) for the time being. I don’t like wasting time when I can hear something I want to create. Is there anything really cheap or lofi in your setup that punches above its weight?

UVI’s Synth Anthology is a MUST have for me. It’s only $150, and has more synth machines than you’ll have time to hear. They use real samples instead of emulation, so what you get is what you get, but I love the limitation of that. UVI kicks some serious ass.

Lastly, what’s your dream piece of equipment you’d like to own and why?

An outboard Empirical Labs Distressor. I need one. Let me throw it on everything. My mix bus, my vocals going in, the weird mono mic some people put on top of their kick drums, that guitar sound that’s not punchy enough, that weird little bell sound I’m trying to make sound like a glockenspiel. I’m sure it works on everything and maybe one day I’ll find out…

BY NANCY MALONE