Blaak Heat Shujaa Interview with Thomas Bellier: At the Edge of the Storm
Begun in Paris, moved first to New York and then to Los Angeles and signed to Tee Pee Records for the release of their second album, which wound up becoming an album and an EP, the story of Blaak Heat Shujaa thus far is not wanting for twists and turns. In 2010, though they were then based in France, the trio traveled to CA to record their self-titled debut (review here) with Scott Reeder (yes, that Scott Reeder). By the time they returned to Reeder‘s The Sanctuary studio to put to tape what would become their late-2012 EP, The Storm Generation (review here) and their first full-length for Tee Pee, 2013’s The Edge of An Era (review here), the band would be residents, touring their now-native West Coast alongside the likes of Yawning Man and Fatso Jetson, and working live and in the studio with gonzo poet Ron Whitehead on material greatly expanded in scope and sound from that which had come before.
The creative leaps the young band have made over the last couple years are no less dramatic than the geographical changes that brought them to L.A. With a sound set to melding desert rock and European heavy psych influences captured live in its crucial moment by Reeder, Blaak Heat Shujaa show with The Edge of an Era that they not only understand what they want to be as a band, but that they are in full command of actually becoming that thing. The trio of guitarist/vocalist Thomas Bellier, bassist Antoine Morel-Vulliez and drummer Mike Amster are able to create a swirling hook or a memorable jam seemingly at their whim, and as a result, songs like “Shadows (The Beast Pt. II)” and “Society of Barricades” leave a lasting impression with their chaos and with the open-spaced desert ambience the band brings to them. They are strikingly patient, and even in breaking up the sessions into two releases, they show a maturity of approach that many who’ve been around much longer simply don’t have.
When I spoke to Bellier, he and the band were fresh off a long European tour alongside Morricone-style rockers Spindrift, and he was in France staying with family, waiting to hitch a ride with his former bandmates in Mirror Queen as they toured with The Atomic Bitchwax and Earthless last month. In the interview that follows, he discusses how that tour went, actually playing with Spindrift, making The Edge of an Era and The Storm Generation with Reeder and bringing in Fatso Jetson‘s Mario Lalli for the standout track “Pelham Blue,” the possibility of US touring with Blaak Heat Shujaa, side-projects and much more.
You’ll find the complete Q&A after the jump. Please enjoy.
How was the tour?
Dude, it was great. It was the first really long tour as Blaak Heat. I think our second longest tour was maybe less than half of what we did. It was 26 [shows] but I wrote on Facebook that I played 52 because I was playing two sets every night because I was playing guitar in Spindrift.
I didn’t know you were playing with them too.
Yeah, part of the band didn’t want to go on tour. So they ended up hiring me on second guitar and our tour manger on bass, which was great actually.
Double duty.
They usually had a keyboard playing and a guy that plays bass but also, I forget the name of the instrument. It’s a double-neck, it’s bass and guitar but it’s not a guitar. I forget. Yeah, it was more a rock and roll lineup for this tour and it was fun. Kind of changed our sound a bit. Good times.
How was it for you guys? Blaak Heat, being out so long and bringing the album to people. How did it go?
It was really great. We did like 15 shows in the US before flying out. The US is hard. You play shows to 10, 20 maybe 40 people if you’re lucky. Then we fly to Europe and you’re paying to 300 and half of them know us. What, really? You guys bought our album? It was thrilling. Especially for Mike, who hadn’t been to Europe. He didn’t want to leave. It’s such a motivator. It’s like, “oh yeah that’s why I play music.” We didn’t play to 300 people every night, but we had a lot of great shows. Not a lot of bad ones, actually.
I saw the photos you were posting of lounging around and “now we’re at this cafe,” then going swimming in some river. It looked great.
That’s all for show. It’s actually hard work. We just pretend it’s a big vacation.
That too, I guess. You’re staying with family now?
Yeah. Tomorrow I’m flying to Berlin to meet up with the Tee Pee people. They had two extra bunks on the bus and asked for me to come over. I was like, “okay, sure, I’ll watch Earthless for five nights in a row.”
Not bad. I went and saw Mirror Queen and the Bitchwax a few weeks ago it was killer.
The boat. I heard it was rocky.
It was, at one point during Mirror Queen’s set the whole set just tipped over.
Great.
Good fun. I imagine it’ll be more stable in Berlin. I know it was a bit ago, but 
take me back to the recording sessions with Scott Reeder and how it was this time opposed to the self-titled.
It was obviously totally different. Self-titled, we were just a bunch of young guys. We had our tunes but we didn’t know what they were worth. We had no notion of what production was and recording, mixing. All we had done in the past was some DIY stuff at a friend’s studio, very homemade stuff. It was our first time in a professional setting. It was like, “alright Scott, whatever you do is great.” That was in 2010. Now it’s three years later and we’ve learned a lot. We each have different projects; we’ve worked in different studios with different musicians and engineers. When we showed up at Scott‘s studio we had a very precise idea of what we wanted. That’s why The Storm Generation and Edge of an Era, which were our last two releases, were co-produced.
It was kind of the whole thing with us sitting down at the board with Scott making the decisions together. It’s definitely a more mature approach with a real target in sight. The first record was just, “Scott, whatever you do is fine by us.”
Were there specific things you wanted to do coming off the first record? Years had passed, but were there specific things you wanted to bring out of the bands sound?
Maybe we didn’t show up knowing exactly how we wanted each instrument to sound. But quickly, we had just started working with Mike, our drummer. He’s a hard-hitter, so we needed to keep that feel on the record. That’s how drums sound good, when you hit them hard. Antoine and myself definitely refined our sound over the past years so we kind of know what we want to sound like on a record. After spending a lot of time in the studio, you know what works well and what doesn’t for your sound. You know what plugins and racks and effects will bring out the best in your tone and what won’t. You go for those things that you like.
How did you decide to split up the sessions to the EP and the LP, or was it just a matter of having so much stuff?
The latter. There was just so much stuff. We spent the whole summer writing in the studio. We all met up in L.A. and Antoine was in France. I was in New York and Mike was in Colorado. The three of us met up in L.A., we had a few ideas but nothing finalized. We had four weeks to write an album. It was a little stressful, how are we going to come up with 45 minutes of music that’s going to be worthy of an album in so little time? It turned out that we came up with an hour and 10 minutes.
I think we just dumped one song. There was no way we were dumping the rest. We called Kenny [Sehgal] at Tee Pee Records and said, “Okay man, we have too much. What do we do?” He agreed to do the EP and then the full-length. We were really happy he agreed to do it. As you noted in your review, the separation kind of made sense. We picked the more surfy crazy stuff for the EP and the more classic rock and roll tracks, not as in classic rock but classic format for the album.
I thought you guys divided the material really well. It seemed like you had a good sense of grouping the sounds together.
It was a bit of a risk to take but I think it came out well. We’re really proud of the EP, you know how at the merch table sometimes people are like, “Who gives a shit about the EP? I want the full length.” We’re like, “No man you don’t get it. It’s like an album, it’s something else.”
In terms of the recording, how much was done live? How much of the jams were improvised? What was the process like?
It wasn’t really improvised except for maybe a few guitar solos. Like when you have an idea of what you want to do but you don’t have it written a solo yet? So you try a few things and keep the best one. It’s an improv, but it’s a solo. Not the whole piece. We did record everything live. That’s the rule at Scott‘s studio. No click track, we do everything together. Then if we redo things, we redo them. That’s exactly what we wanted to do. I’ve never really worked with click tracks but the little experience I’ve had with them was terrible. What we did, we recorded the three of us and I was laying down scratch guitars at the same time and if they were good enough, we kept them. If they weren’t we redid them. As long as you got drums and bass, they’re solid, you got the basis for anything.
So that was a priority. Everything was recorded live.
You broke up the session to do shows, right?
Essentially it’s kind of a long-term thing. At first we went in there to lay down all the scratch tracks. Drums, bass and scratch guitars. Then we did a little CA tour, then I went back alone with Mike to kind of finish up guitar and vocals for Storm Generation then I went back in November by myself just to do guitar and vocals for Edge of an Era and to mix. That was intense. It was a lot of work. We had some real deadlines and we were kind of running late. There were a lot of late nights, early mornings.
How did bringing Mario Lalli in come about?
“Pelham Blue.” It wasn’t called anything before. It was just a little jam we did for a few nights in a row when we toured with Yawning Man. We did it on the last two shows of the tour and the first time we did it, it’s a fun little jam. The second night we did it again and since we had done it the night before we kind of remembered what we did and what sounded good. Mario started improvising on vocals. The stuff he did sounded really good. We got in touch with him and asked to make it a studio track and he was totally into it. So we reworked the song and made it a real song versus a jam with parts.
We recorded it, sent it to Mario and one day he showed up to the studio and said he had a few ideas. He’s alone in the live room doing his vocals and we can all see him through a window and he starts going into this crazy stuff. We just couldn’t believe our ears. He’s claiming he only has a few things yet he had this whole plan of recording three tracks simultaneously. Reeder started crying, saying, “Fuck, this totally reminds me of what we used to do as teenagers.” It was great and as you can hear, there’s a pretty interesting thing going on with the vocals. There are three vocals going on at the same time, each with a different treatment. Different effect.
I think Mario and Scott hadn’t hung out in a while. It became a whole BBQ thing and we hung out all afternoon.
The song turned out great. His vocals are gorgeous. 
I like where it shows up in the record. It’s in a good spot. Kind of restful but also dramatic.
Ron Whitehead. Where did he come from? How did that relationship get started and develop?
It kind of came out of the blue. Essentially we met online. I can’t remember what it was. I think he shared something from the Facebook page or something. I’m like, Ron Whitehead. I know that name. Then I remembered who it was and sent him an email. Said, “Hey man, saw you interacted with us on Facebook. I’d be more than happy to send you a few CDs.” Right away, he’s like, “yeah, I dig your band man send whatever you want.” So I sent him stuff, then he sent books and we started corresponding via email. Then on the phone then we were becoming online and phone friends and after a while I was like, “dude, make your way to CA.” He always had stuff to do with CA, readings, and signings. I asked him to figure out how to be in CA in August so we can play some shows together and maybe record some stuff for us. He said yes right away without even thinking. So he bought a plane ticket and was there. On time. He showed up the next day, we were in the studio he was recording the intro track to The Edge of an Era. I don’t know if you caught the pics on Facebook. Essentially, we set up a mic outside in the studio. Just ran a long cable and he did his spoken word outside. You can’t really hear birds or whatever, but it was outside, which made it really fun.
Then a few days later we started our little CA tour. We didn’t really know what was going to come out of it. We didn’t know what format we were going to use. But what we did, or just came together defacto was just him on stage starting the show. He’d read a piece or two then we’d play “The Beast Part 1 and 2,” which are side A of the new record, he’d show up in between and read “Closing Time Last Exit,” which is the poem he reads on the first track of the album. It worked out really well. I didn’t really know what to expect. It turns out he had already worked with rock bands in the past. It just flowed and made sense.
He works too, especially on The Edge of an Era a lot of the lyrics are socially themed. He’s conscious of that in his work as well.
That was one reason we got along. I sent him all my lyrics and he’s like, “oh man, this speaks to me. I get it.” That was one reason why we became friends, we were reflecting on the same things more or less.
Was that something you wanted to do purposefully going into writing these songs? Or was it where your head was at the time?
A little bit. Whenever I write lyrics, whether it’s straight to the point or evocative, I always deal with those things. Social change, conflict. That’s what interests me and what I read about. I like the songs to be, not necessarily about something but I like the lyrics to have at least a little bit, something to grasp onto when you listen to them. They don’t have to be straight to the point — the listener can do whatever he or she wants with them. Hopefully they raise a few issues and questions.
Have you started writing after the album yet? The next batch of material?
Not much. A lot of jamming, but — I mean, there are a few things in the pipe but nothing concrete. We’ve been so busy lately, Antoine was spending half his time in France and the UK and half the time in L.A. so whenever he was around, we’re trying to play out and practice. Haven’t had much time to write. We’ve always had a few ideas on the back-burner.
Will you do another Ehécatl album? 
That was a one shot thing. It’s funny, we actually ran into Tim [Gacon] our first drummer when we played the Paris show. He’s the guy that plays drums on Ehécatl. I don’t have any — I don’t think we’ll do another one. I think we played maybe one show? It was just a little studio thing. As for side-projects, yes, we have a million. Since you asked.
Are you actually going to play guitar with Mirror Queen for those shows with Bitchwax and Earthless?
I’m technically out of the band because me living on the other coast just didn’t work. They hired Phil [Ortanez] who used to play in La Otracina. They’re going to invite me on stage to play their cover of Captain Beyond‘s “Mesmerization Eclipse.” We haven’t really defined the details but that’s what’s going to happen. We’ll do a three-guitar thing.
Worthy of the three guitars.
It’ll probably just be fun for us and not the audience. Three guitars, really?
Will Blaak Heat do more US shows?
There are a few things in the works, nothing confirmed. We’re definitely trying to do one US tour by the spring. We’ve been so busy lately we haven’t had time to work on the future. The day the tour ended a few days ago we started planning for the next few months.
Keeping busy, I guess.
Hope so. The stars are aligned. We have a record we’re happy with, a label we’re happy with. Now we just have to tour as much as possible.
Anything else to add?
One thing, you asked about side-projects. I have a jazz record that came out yesterday, free jazz. I don’t know if I ever told you, I do a lot of free jazz recordings with some dudes in New York. Have you heard of Sonny Simmons? I met him in Paris two years ago and we recorded a lot of stuff together. This album is a double album, double CD. And CD number two is a session we did back in Paris two years ago. The name of the record is Beyond the Planets and it came out on Improvising Beings, which is a little experimental jazz label based in Paris. They’re the guys that release the first Blaak Heat album. This is essentially my second album with Sonny. We have some more stuff that might come out soon, or not that soon.
Blaak Heat Shujaa, “The Obscurantist Fiend (The Beast Pt. 1)”
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Tags: Blaak Heat Shujaa, Blaak Heat Shujaa The Edge of an Era, California, Los Angeles, Tee Pee Records, The Edge of an Era
