Vanilla Franco is the super sonic brainchild of Joey Quinn – Serving up a hyped & harsh blend of alternative indie rock sounds.
Joey works on Vanilla Franco records alone, one man band style – similarly to Tame Impala, Mac DeMarco or Unknown Mortal Orchestra.
Vanilla Franco tracks have somewhat of an ‘untamed’ feel as a result of the signature ‘Joey Quinn workflow’; a workflow consisting of limited production knowledge and pure fearlessness. Plug in and GO LOUD is the general rule.
I caught up with Joey to talk about his early musical experiences, how he started writing his own songs and the making of his latest E.P. “VOICES UPSTAIRS”
CMM-What was the first music that really made an impact on you as a kid and what artist or band did you enjoy the most?
Joey-I remember being super young, early 2000s, and I was never into music. I just didn’t “get” it. It did nothing for me. In response to this, my parents thought it would be good to get me into whatever was cool or popular at the time. So I received the first two Gorillaz albums for Christmas that year. It didn’t get me into ‘making’ music but it got me into listening for sure. I became obsessed with Gorillaz. And Gorillaz bled into Radiohead bled into the Smiths – Joy Division – Arctic Monkeys and so on and so forth. But that initial IMPACT was Gorillaz all the way.
CMM-When did you start playing music and creating songs?
Joey-I started making songs in university. I was studying film production and always found the royalty free music we had to use (to avoid copyright infringement) was terrible. I knew, from a bit of messing around on Apple’s Garageband, how to record a little. So I started making my own tunes for the movies I was doing. I found the process to be far more satisfying than making the movies themselves! I got really into it and took a lot of inspiration from Canadian Artist Mac DeMarco – I was listening to him a lot at the time. So when I eventually formed a band, a lot of the tunes we were doing sounded like his music. The sound has changed a lot since then but I continue to feel as though a lot of my work has a cinematic vibe and always put it down to my origins scoring bad movies.
CMM-You recently released a new E.P. called “VOICES UPSTAIRS”. What was the writing and recording process like? What gear and instruments did you use during the sessions?
Joey-I had a lot of fun making “VOICES UPSTAIRS”. Often Musicians have the urge to sit in front of all their equipment and just ‘make whatever feels right’ at the time – regardless of genre or typical style. This rarely results in cool music (for me at least). But ‘VOICES UPSTAIRS” was a process of laying down instrument tracks and just making it work regardless of things like: how well it was recorded, how songs are typically mixed, what effects go on what instruments etc. It wasn’t so much “lets see what comes out” freestyling but more of a challenge; can you throw out most of the ‘rules of making music’ and still get something cool out of it? Hell yeah you can. With regards, it’s hard for me to remember exactly what I did during those sessions but I kept it as weird and as extreme as possible – Hence the whole record has this “broken” feeling. Crunched, squashed. I remember at one stage feeling like no one ever has two bass takes panned left and right so I’m gonna do that. I think for one song I had 3 bass tracks! I know music people that would kill me for doing what I did recording that EP. No matter, more fun for me I say.
CMM-If you could do a score for any film director, who would it be and what would the film be about?
Joey-I saw this movie directed by Nicholas Winding Refn called “Valhalla Rising”. There’s this recurring guitar noise – a stampede of distorted hammer blows and chugs. The music was ugly but it was heavy as GOD. The film depicts ancient men on a journey through hard terrain, the land is brutal, the environment was unforgiving. They were covered in mud and blood and sweat and primitive tattoos and scars and wounds. The main character is so heavy and intense he literally doesn’t mutter a word the entire film. The Vibe was quite indescribable. Pure heaviness. Winding Refn loves to bring the intensity. And I would love to make freaky music for his scary films. Go abstract and out there. On a more contemporary level though, I reckon old Tarantino could dig on some of my funkier jams hahahha. I always thought someone should show Tarantino my song “Repeat Wild”. He’d either completely get it or completely hate it and I’m desperate to know which way he’d swing. I appreciate this is the opposite of an answer to your question but what would really intrigue me is seeing what any film maker would do with any of my tunes!
CMM-Anything coming up?
Joey-AVIATE – The fourth full length album by Vanilla Franco is coming this year hopefully. So far it’s my most mature musical effort. Everything is a little more refined sonically. I really like to shake it up genre / style wise from project to project and that usually means courting a new kind of music fan base all the time. I think with this one, I could grab the attention of people into Radiohead and early Coldplay rather than the regular hard garage-rock crowd I normally draw.
I’ll tell you this (and I really shouldn’t) I actually have plans for many albums and I intend to just make them all in the order I first thought of them. So weirdly, I’m years ahead with the planning. Album 5 is going to be so extreme that it’ll actually just be considered ‘noise’ to most. I really wanna lose fans with that one. Just barely, technically “rock music” but otherwise a totally sonic assault with a little bit of a tune thrown in there. And Album 6 is gonna be a long one! A lot of songs – My intention there is to purposely have the least cohesive album anyone has ever heard.
Imagine hearing Beethoven on track one and then Black Midi on track two. Track three- dub reggae, track four – ambient-glitch-step-tech-dog whistle-core. I think it will be the most fun I have making a record ever and I can’t wait to get to it. I want folks to admire a piano song and then a metal song and find delight in that they’re both on the same record.
Also! I (after long last) finally have a band of boys to help me play my stuff live! They’re a band called “Nose Ghost”. They’re incredible! They messaged me one night to tell me they enjoyed my tunes and I kinda responded “if your band likes Vanilla Franco that much, why don’t you help bring it to the stage” and they accepted! Now we’re on course to gig around the UK as much as possible! Super excited to hit the road with these guys. They’ve got the VF energy. They’ve got the juice! Keep an eye on my socials to see what’s happening when!
