You might have to wait until January 2009 to catch a glimpse of Franz Ferdinand but Bob Hardy is decidedly excited about how punters will react when their new record hits the shelves.

SCENE MAGAZINE | INTERVIEWS
FRANZ FERDINAND
JUST HUMAN

“We kind of finished the second album at the end of 2006 and took a holiday from each other to do our own thing,” the bass player says. “We'd been working solidly and came back in February 2007 and then went up to Glasgow where we found this great rehearsal space - it was this post industrial kind of depressed area - and we started writing and rehearsing in this room and when the demos started sounding good we decided we'd stay. So we sound-proofed the place and brought in lots of equipment, looking to find a new way of working!”

Indeed, the process of bunkering down together ensured Bob, along with Nick McCarthy, Alex Kapranos and Paul Thomson, created an album that was new and unique.
“We wanted to move away from what we were doing on the second record,” Bob explains. “(The first) album was fast and guitar heavy and the production was kind of linear and we wanted to avoid that. We wanted to make more of a dance record; the second record turned out the way it was because we'd become this live band who'd done a lot of touring. So we ended up slowing it down and giving it a groovier, more disco-type pace that is synth heavy. In the end electronics sound like they carried the record more than the guitars. There's a rhythm in there that's important and that bass and drive is different to what we'd done previously.”
Incidentally though, the outcome wasn't planned. Rather it was something that evolved into being. “Well, we knew what we didn't want to do,” chimes Bob. “But then we also didn't know what we wanted it to be; it took a year and a half and all the songs evolved and we realised what did and didn't work. It's a project and it pans out how it pans out I guess.

“We thought ‘let's go in this direction or in that direction’; it was an evolution in what was essentially an organic process. We wanted the album to have the feeling of a night out - or a night time feel. It is supposed to possess all of those elements. The moment before you go out that moment of getting excited; then the excitement of actually being out and having a great time that might be called the climax. And then there is that feeling of coming down off of that dynamic. That's the essence of the spirit we tried to capture.”

The word organic though, might be a bit misleading. The boys were consciously aware of their desire to create something new. To that end, Bob talks about the skeletons the crew had lying around the studio as a means of providing a bizarre, even morbid form of inspiration.
“It was really more for the vibe and the decoration value that they had.”
Of course, the future now lies in touring the record and spreading the message.
“That's when the record comes into its own. The songs tended to develop on stage and over the last couple of albums it has been the songs that were outsiders that became the lynch pin of the record. It's a really different experience to playing a song in the studio and then seeing the reaction when you play it live. We expect the same will happen this time when we play it in a pub or whatever.
“And it works differently for every song. Often Alex or Nick will arrive with something that comes with words or melodies and together they work on the sound; that's when it becomes a Franz Ferdinand record; sometimes they will become a pool of ideas and a collection of melodies - they stick together and become something we make work. Then there is the stuff they try and work with, scrap it and pretend like they never did it. They are only human after all!”
RK

Franz Ferdinand play Sunset Sounds, at the Brisbane Riverstage and Botanical Gardens January 7-8. Visit www.sunsetsounds.com.au for more details. FF’s third album 'Tonight: Franz Ferdinand' will be released thru Sony Music on January 24.