Interview: Band of the Week — Inverse Order - Page 2

Tom: When Neill and myself first started courting, Neill had made a band logo that was the Greek symbol for Phi, which basically looks like an 'I' and an 'O' on top of each other. I thought it looked cool, and whilst doing inverse sin functions in high school calculus I decided to use 'I' and 'O' together and Inverse Order was what came out of it.

I think we kept it because there are deep connotations - i.e. - Inverse Order = doing things backwards, chaos etc.

For those of us not familiar with the band, how did Inverse Order come to be? Did you always know each other?

James: We're quite an Internet band, so most of our conversations take place over email. It’s also interesting to note that our old drummer — Tristan and James all went to the same school — and our old drummer bought his drum kit off of Tristan. And I believe that we were all at the first ever Inverse Order show, just in different bands.

I've had a chance to listen to a number of your songs now, and I'm curious as to how you've come to end up with them. Is there anyone in particular that handles the lyrics, for instance, or is it a collaborative effort. Are the lyrics the first thing to emerge, even?

Neill: For the most part lyrics emerge post music, whether it is fleshed out as a band or in a bedroom. Usually they are derived from scratch vocals over the instruments to form melodies, which I then reform in some sort of coherency once I come to terms with what is coming out my mouth and subsequently, what it means.

Either together as a band or simply in your individual lives, can you remember the first time you managed to come up with an original song? What did that feel like? To know that you'd created something that nobody else had?

Neill: Individually I think I was about 15, figuring out how to form riffs and combine them into something. Wound up with a very riff heavy piece called Disarray, completely vocal-less. First vocal song was a Tool-esque song by the name of "Letting It Go", which became an early Inverse Order live song.

Article Author: Michael Jones

Visit Michael Jones's author page — Michael Jones's Blog