Thursday, November 8, 2012

Signalfire on Fire

Signalfire's band logo and Wes Nelson '13, member of Signalfire

Wes Nelson, a member of Stonehill's class of 2013, is also a member of the four man band Signalfire, who just formally released their second album, "Don't Trust This Storm." With the band's project now featured on Spotify and the Google music store, the Rolling Stonehill recently caught up with Wes to discuss Signalfire's latest progress.

RS: How did Signalfire form and how did you guys come up with the name?

Wes: Signalfire is a music collective of 3 brothers and me(Wes, their cousin). We've been jamming since middle school, in basements, and our first attempts at recording started when I was just a freshman in high school. We've had many different names, each with different meanings... Some that come to mind are Cloud Nine, Rebel PC, and Eight The Flume.. The name Signalfire came about after a long session in the studio when we were in high school.. our stylistically eclectic nature is adopted from the fact that each of us has different taste in music, and the result of this is that each of us brings a different sound to the band.. As much as it may not make sense, we saw our sound's direction as a "fueling of the fire" of many different sounds all coming together, so that prompted one of us(I forget who) to say we were "signaling the fire"...

RS: Who makes up Signalfire, and who plays what?

Wes: Signalfire consists of the brothers Hansen...

Adam Hansen: Drums, guitar, vocals, piano, ukulele, production engineering
Mark Hansen: Guitar, vocals
Chris Hansen: Piano, keys, vocals, trumpet

and their cousin.. me,
Wes Nelson:Guitar, bass, vocals, piano, banjo
RS: What artists out there inspire your band's sound?

Wes: Our inspiration is very eclectic, as I've already stated. I'm very in tune to the indie world, and also inspired by bands like Incubus, Vampire Weekend, and MGMT.
Chris is an accomplished classically trained pianist, and he actually never listened to anything but Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and ragtime until he hit a Radiohead and Red Hot Chili Pepper's phase in college.

Mark is our most gifted song writer, and anything that involves an acoustic guitar and great lyrics keeps him going.

Finally, Adam is a very gifted percussionist and sound engineer, and any heavy music with great percussion, or very finely produced rock music inspires him.

Collectively, our approach is very 'Local Natives'- esque, where not one song was written by and performed on the same instruments as any other. But our sound most resembles that of Incubus, Radiohead, The Killers, and others of the like.
RS: I see your work has officially hit the Google music store and Spotify. Congrats. How did you guys make that happen, and what are your thoughts on it?


Wes: Yes, our music finally hit the Google music store, Spotify, bandcamp.com, and iTunes late this summer! We're so excited! This album has been in the works for years, and to finally start getting our name out their and get the feedback we've wanted to hear, it's very rewarding!
We did this with Reverbnation Distribution Services, and we can't say enough great things about it!


RS: What surprises can listeners expect on your latest, "Don't Trust This Storm?" How has the experience of putting the album together differed from the recording of your last self titled album?
Wes: On DTTS, listeners will be surprised by quite a lot actually. Our goal for the album was "pristine production". We actually spent close to two years in the studio fine tuning details.. and we're very excited about that because it brings the sound of the album to a whole new level than we've ever had.

Another surprise will definitely have to be the great work of our friend Drew Crook. Drew is featured in vocals on two of the brighter tracks on the album.. and his voice just fit the tracks perfectly. The sound of those two tracks, "Advice Column Letter" and "Skyline", were something totally different than we'd ever done before, and they turned out to be two of the most notable tracks on the album.


DTTS is a greatly different piece of work than any of our old stuff. DTTS shows the greatest progress the band has achieved in our 9 or so years together. We finally optimized the use of Cubase 4 in a make shift studio in the Hansen brother's basement. We also learned a great deal about production in the process, and it really showed in the final product. Very happy with DTTS!!


RS: What's next for Signalfire? Any new shows or releases on the horizon?


Wes: The future for Signalfire is finally here. The difficulties we face now are that the Hansen brothers currently go to school in Utah at BYU, while I'm here at Stonehill. This has lead me to a much more independent approach to songwriting, which actually resulted in the track "Strawberry Jam", which I wrote freshman year here at Stonehill. Currently, the Hansen bro's have just about completed a new studio in their condo at BYU, and they just sent me some new demos to mess around with a couple of weeks ago. Our goals now are to shamelessly promote DTTS, and also work for a new EP has already begun, which we hope to release early next summer!


RS: Where can we find you online?


Wes: You can find us online atwww.reverbnation.com/asignalfire and Spotify. Purchase our music on iTunes, the Google music store, and asignalfire.bandcamp.com. Like us at www.facebook.com/signalfiremusic. Follow us on twitter at twitter.com/signalfiremusic

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Interview by Rex Macipinlac '13
Images credit to Wes Nelson and Signalfire's media pages