Interview With - 'Mount Mural'

Firstly, introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about the band and how you came to be?

Well I am Clayton or Clay, some might say. I live with two of my bandmates, Evan and Kyle. I’m currently working full-time, whilst writing tunes with my buddies Kyle, Evan and Tyler. We all work full time in pretty professional fields, but we all know music is what we wanna do.

The band has been active since February 2018. We started jamming out some songs I had made (solo artist style) and turned them into full band compositions. We were called “The Clay Stones,” at the start, but turned into Mount Mural from the involvement of all the others in the band. We thought it suited us better based on our sound and it was kinda weird having my name in there. I had made 4 songs and my friend Kyle was bugging me to come over to his place to record them. I finally dragged my ass over to his place in December 2017 and we started tracking away. He was adding tons of instruments and production techniques to the tunes and they really started to come to life, in a full band spectrum. Once the demo’s were completed, I had showed them to Tyler and Evan. Tyler being a multi instrumentalist and Evan being a drummer. They dug the tunes and we elaborated on the songs together. They added their unique spice to the pot and it made it sound more like a band other then just a solo thing. A lot of the songs changed when we started jamming them, but they definitely changed for the better. After self recording and producing the album together, I think we all realized we were having a great time and started playing some shows. The rest is to be continued!

What were you all up too prior to the band, was this always the chosen path or did you have other dreams and aspirations?

We’ve all been working full time, and writing music. We we’re playing in other bands or writing music individually. Some of us played in previous bands before together. We tried starting a band up again for the longest time and it never seemed to go anywhere. Mainly we needed a drummer, and Evan saved the day. I think creating and playing music has been a chosen path for all of us for awhile. But we’re all aware how hard it is to do music full time therefore we’re all in good job fields. Music is something we love to do, and will always do!

Tell us about your latest EP and why our readers should check it out.

Our latest EP “There Is A Better Place," came out fully in July 2018. We had released the two singles prior, “The Greenest Compass,” and “My Body Is A Car.” We recorded the album ourselves in a studio my Dad had made me. We approached the album with a really raw and honest approach. We didn’t beat map drums to a shitty DAW and we didn’t tune the vocals. Everything was all mic’ed up, and all that fun stuff. We didn’t want to “de-humanize” the recordings. I honestly feel like too many bands these days are doing that and everything sounds too perfect these days. Another fun thing we did was recording all the overdubs with no click track, just to the drummer. We experimented with different techniques of recording and didn’t really think about what the industry standard. It was a ton of fun. We didn’t do physical copies of the EP, but it is available online via Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes , Google Play, Bandcamp, Etc.

Have you ever come face to face with someone within the music scene who has left you awestruck and why?

No not really.

If we were to head out to one of your live shows what can ourselves and others expect?

You can expect all of our songs to be twice as long with experimental, psychedelic jams and all of our songs get really heavy and loud. Plus you don’t want to miss Kyle’s pant choices.

If you had one artist/band that you could go on tour with tomorrow who would it be and why?

I would have to say Broken Social Scene, because they are such a positive movement of people. All of the artists that play in that band are all incredible, and I think it would be really cool to experience how they work as a unit.

You can spend an hour with a musical icon living or dead, who would you pick, why and what would you speak about?

I’d have to say Cardi B and I have no idea what we would talk about.

And finally and most importantly is Die Hard a Christmas Movie?

Either National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, or a Christmas movie “You’ll shoot your eye out!!!”

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/mountmuralmusic/