TOY are back with a new record, and - as bassist Maxim "Panda" Barron explains - the creation of '
Clear Shot' saw the band hit a particularly prolific stride, and experiment with "a whole menagerie of weird equipment".
It’s been three years since your last full-length - what did you get up to during your time away?
We toured ‘
Join The Dots’ for pretty much two years after its release whilst writing songs for the next record. We also did a record last year with Dan Carey and Natasha Khan. We demoed and experimented a lot. I think there's nearly two more albums worth of material that didn't make it onto this one. Five of the tracks that weren't used are going on an EP that comes with the record.
It’s all-go for you guys at the moment, with both a new album and a tour too - do you have a preference between tinkering behind-the-scenes and being in the spotlight?
We love both. Really enjoying playing the new songs with everyone at the moment, can't wait to go on tour. We love demoing at home as well as experimenting with different sounds in the studio. Recording ‘Clear Shot’ was really fun.
We had a lot of music we'd recorded at home and were trying to pick out of that what would make the best album. We went to a studio called Far Heath in the country for about five days this time last year and recorded demos for the album. Was really fun being isolated and free to record through the night. We're always writing music but I think those sessions kind of cemented what we were going to do for the record.
