“Start again in paradise” – the lingering words uttered by Tara Green in ‘Paradise’, the lead single from White Hex’s new LP, Gold Nights. Echoing, orchestral synths sing out from a richly textured canvas woven by Jimi Kritzler (Slug Guts), the other half of the Australian duo and author of Noise In My Head: Voices from the Ugly Australian Underground, the raw textual exploration of the intricate underground music community Down Under (we recently spoke to Jimi about the book, here).

In many ways, the beautiful violence and hell-for-leather desperation of Gold Nights echoes this tribe’s creed. Green and Kritzler, couple and band, here explore a more optimistic vision than their earlier material (Heat, an EP released in 2012 via Nihilistic Orbs), production from Alex Akers assisting in the creation of a slick, glimmering soundscape that feels like apocalyptic take on 1980s synth pop, punctuated with the sparse, driving beats of minimal techno and the catchy lead lines of the likes of Gianni Rossi.

Here we host the UK premiere of the video for ‘Paradise’. Shot and directed by Melbourne-based filmmaker Devin de Araujo it’s a dramatically cinematic take on White Hex’s grand, gold-tinged vision. Volume to max, screen at full – this is a paradise created by them, for them and we’re lucky enough to be invited into their world.

Tempe Nakiska: There’s a strong feeling of optimism here, it departs from the feeling of your earlier material. How did the process of writing it impact on the result?
Jimmy Kritzler: It was summer and the first summer we’d had in a couple of years, so everything felt much more optimistic.
Tara Green: I think it’s also about getting older and maturing and realising there’s more optimism in life. Even though people are dying and shit goes down there’s something at the end of the tunnel.
JK: I feel like it is much more of an optimistic album.

TN: There’s also this really industrial current than ran through your references. What kind of headspace were you in?
JK: It was more romantic and beautiful than the headspace we’ve been in previously. It was something that was just ‘us’.
TG: A lot of things happened in the first half of the year while we were writing it which I think sparked the sadness in a lot of the songs but yeah, it’s balanced with this positivity.

TN: How do the roles work, how do you divide up writing and production?
TG: Jimmy’s production, so he’ll start writing something and I will add bass and lyrics to it.
JK: Usually I will come up with the bare bones of it and then Tara and I will flesh it out, add vocals etc. Alex Akers did the production on the album in terms of recording.

TN: Was this the first time you had worked with a producer?
TG: Yeah, we didn’t work with anybody on the first album.

TN: Did you learn a lot in the process?
TG: Not necessarily in terms of the sound but it was more about streamlining it.
JK: Alex is phenomenal at what he does and we both have different methods of working so it was interesting when they clashed. We trust Alex and know what he’s capable of so there was never any fear of things going awry. It was nice to have him bringing ideas to the table as well but at the same time knowing what we wanted.
TG: Basically reading Jimmy’s mind [laughs]

TN: It’s a super polished and slick sound that you’ve achieved.
TG: Yeah definitely, that was the aim.

TN: It’s sophisticated.
TG: The sound of the first album just was what it was, but with this one we really got where we wanted to get to in terms of the sound.
JK: We always think our records will sound better highly produced.

TN: The album notes talk about some really interesting references: minimalist techno, Gianni Rossi, Craig Leon and even Arthur Russell, they’re quite varied.
JK: We listened to a lot of Gianni Rossi! But more than that the album is influenced by a wider scope of aesthetics, high fashion and the like. We felt like we were writing songs you could see Karl Lagerfeld putting a fashion show to. More than taking scope from other music it was taking influence from other settings and ideas.
TG: We really liked the idea of 60s and 70s pop storytelling, too.

TN: So if the album was a soundtrack, what would be the setting?
TG: It’s about a sparse aspect but something really glamorous about it.
JK: It relates to the name, too. We wanted to create our own world, our own context.
TG: We liked the idea that the album could be a soundtrack to something.

TN: Similarly to the film clip I guess.
JK: Yeah it goes along with that idea, it’s quite cinematic. It’s about this idea of ‘us against them’, no matter what happens.

Gold Nights by White Hex is out now via felte, available to order here. 

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