Blistering.com: With so many bands now mimicking your style and taking influence from you do you find it more difficult now to find inspiration and stay fresh sounding?
Turner: I don’t believe we are ever lacking in inspiration. We have never looked exclusively within our own realm for inspiration, and more often than not we’ve looked outside of it, which I think is part of the reason we’ve ended up sounding the way we do.
Blistering.com: What was your most difficult album to write?
Turner: Wavering Radiant.
Blistering.com: Would you consider doing something like In The Fishtank(Vol.14, the split/collaborative project they did with the much missed Aereogramme for Konkurrent) again and if so with whom? Or is it something you’ve done and have no desire to do again?
Turner: The collaborative process is something we’ve enjoyed from very early on in the band. Whether through contributions
we’ve made to the records of others, guest musicians we’ve had on our albums or in the live setting, or remixes we’ve initiated, it’s something that has been a great part of the existence and development of Isis. I don’t know that we’d ever do a full fledged collaborative record again such as the one we did with Aereogramme, but we have been talking for years about doing something similar with Tim Hecker (ambient, electronic – kind of like Final (Blistering.com)). Whether that actually comes to fruition or not remains to be seen.
Blistering.com: You’ve made the whole record available on your MySpace to stream. Why did you decide to do this? Do you think it’s going to get leaked anyway so you might aswell be in control of it, making sure it’s the final version that gets out there?
Turner: Exactly. Music is widely available for free now, so why not be the outlet for people to reach it? Our opinion is that if people don’t want to pay for an album they will just download it regardless. For those that are on the fence about it perhaps having a chance to actually hear the record first will encourage them to purchase it or at least come to see Isis perform when we’re on tour.
Blistering.com Do you think this will hurt sales of the album?
Turner: No.
Blistering.com: The album came out on vinyl a while before the CD version. Why the staggered release dates for the two formats?
Turner: We wanted to get the album out as quickly as possible, so the time between the release of the album proper and the time at which it was leaked would be lessened. For technical reasons it was better to delay the release of the CD than the vinyl and we thought it would be a nice treat for the vinyl enthusiasts.
Blistering.com: Adam Jones from Tool plays on two tracks…
Turner: He plays guitar
on one section of “Hall Of The Dead” and keyboards on “Wavering Radiant.”
Blistering.com: Why did you decide to ask him to play and was it a case that he came in and did his own thing or had you something in mind for him to do?
Turner: Adam offered to play with us on numerous occasions and it never came to fruition for a variety of reasons. When it came time to record the album Adam again offered his services and because we had plenty of time in the studio, we thought we’d take advantage of that in order to get Adam in on the process. We did have a couple of tracks in mind for him to contribute to, and specific portions of those tracks, but he had total freedom to do what he liked. Of course, if he’d come up with something we didn’t like, we would’ve vetoed it, but fortunately that was not the case. As with any other contributor in the past we chose Adam based on the simple premise that we like what he does and we knew he had a good understanding of our aesthetic.