Ruban Nielson’s initial idea for recording outside America was inspired by David Bowie and Iggy Pop’s fruitful move to Berlin in 1976. But with the Iron Curtain drawn, the guitarist had to figure out the modern equivalent. “I realised, ‘Oh, it’s the DMZ!’” he says. “‘I’ll go to the border of North and South Korea.’ So we tried to find the studio closest to the DMZ, and it was a K-pop studio. One thing I’m obsessed with is putting myself in difficult situations.”
“In the studio in Korea,” says Jacob Portrait, “in typical Ruban fashion, he started scrolling through the ideas he had, and there were a billion of them, that sounded all over the place.”
Portrait and Nielson then headed to Auckland to record in Kody’s bedroom studio, before the trio flew to Hanoi to record at Phu Sa, a “heavily dilapidated” studio that usually hosted traditional Vietnamese musicians. There they recorded by day, before walking through lotus farms back to their apartment to do more on Ruban’s laptop. “We were recording drums at 2am,” laughs Kody. “All the apartments around us were under construction all night, so we figured that no-one really cared about noise.”
However, while Nielson was watching a gig by some outspoken musicians at the studio, the night was interrupted by the Vietnamese police, who detained everyone present. “I was thinking, ‘Oh no, I’m going to jail… this is the thought police.’ Eventually, they let the audience go. It ended up that the police were paid off, which is how everyone got away.” The experience fed into the lyrics of “Chronos…”, with the line, “Will the trouble cease/When she pays off the police?”
Iceland was also on the schedule, with Nielson recording most of the Wurlitzer funk of “Not In Love We’re Just High” in Reykjavík. His stay on the island also helped reinforce his unusual ideas on the power of creativity. “I was writing the song and I started thinking about a certain person from my past, and – it was the weirdest thing – I saw them there. Strange coincidences seem to happen whenever I start writing songs, it’s so addictive.”
With the basic tracks in the can, Portrait and Nielson headed to Mexico City to track vocals at Panoram Studios. As ever with UMO, things didn’t quite go according to plan. While the pair were eating breakfast tacos on September 19 last year, central Mexico experienced a severe, deadly earthquake.
Cut off from their AirBnB by leaking gas pipes, they sought refuge in Parque Mexico, where they were forced to stay, without food and water, until aid workers brought supplies in the middle of the night.
“We slept on the ground. The only reason we got any water, food or blankets was because people were going out of their way to help. It was pretty crazy, and pretty scary.
“In the middle of the night, though, one of the guys running the volunteer thing screamed out, ‘Viva la Mexico!’ and the whole park erupted. So I put that line in ‘American Guilt’ – it was worth going through that whole day to experience that one moment.”