Walcha grazier Hugh Cook and UNE Philosophy professor Adrian Walsh have been writing music together since 2013.
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"We met while playing footy with the Nomads and after training found an unlikely common interest in music and decided to work on the Nomads theme song together," Hugh said.
"The theme song never eventuated because we immediately discovered that our musical backgrounds combined in an interesting way and started writing our own music."
The two started playing together and have been doing so consistently ever since they formed the band 'Fovndlings' and next Friday they will launch their first self titled album at the Imperial Hotel in Armidale.
"All of the songs we developed in Hugh's studio," said Adrian.
"Over a couple of years, we discovered a sound that was the combination of our very different influences."
The pair say they have been working on the album since 2013 when they met.
"It was a slow process," said Hugh
"Recording started in May 2017 and officially finished a couple of months ago."
Mark Axiak from Studio X in Oslo (an old musical contact of Hugh's) produced the album.
We have a lot of punk influences as well as psych-folk
- Hugh Cook
"We played in bands together in Sydney in the early 2000s," Hugh said.
"It was always going to be a challenge finding an outside ear to make the album work sonically with such conflicting influences.....Mark was that outside ear."
The guys wryly describe their sound as Walcha Cowpunk.
"We have a lot of punk influences as well as psych-folk," Hugh said.
"The sound is the point where our very different musical backgrounds meet. I love everything melodic while Adrian's focus has been primarily on the lyrics."
The writing process for their songs is equally shared, according to Adrian.
"Traditionally I will come up with an idea and Hugh will produce it and work on arrangements (and play just about all of the instruments)," he said.
"For example, the song Old Mate started as a piece of jug-music, and then Hugh transformed it into a lively power rock song."
While both men are transplanted urbanites - Adrian for quite a few years more than Hugh - much of the album has a rural and quintessential Aussie feel to it.
The songs are inspired by rusty barbed wire and loss and landscape
- Adrian Walsh
"The songs are inspired by rusty barbed wire and loss and landscape," said Adrian. "Bitumen Roads came together over a two-chord jam that was condensed down from 20 minutes to three minutes, and the lines of the song such as 'children singing edelweiss on as burning bitumen roads' came naturally out of that jam."
Adrian and Hugh say they knew that if they wanted to play live, they would need to form a band.
"So we enlisted Tom Walsh (bass), Steve Tafra (guitar, resonator and piano accordion) and Declan Humphreys (lead guitar)," said Hugh.
"Declan went overseas at the end of 2017 and is now living in Trondheim in Norway. After Declan left, we found Brendan Passey, who has slotted right into our live band."
When pushed to name a favourite song, both men name different tracks, for different reasons, which is only natural given their different musical influences.
For Hugh, Tanami is the pick of the tracks.
"It was the only song on the album which was still in very early stages when we went into the studio for tracking, and we weren't sure it if we would even make it onto the album," he said.
"We basically finished it in one very long night in Oslo. I love the minimal aspect of the song, and it sounds very Fovndlings to me. The performances were really minimal, off the cuff and it works really well for me."
Adrian chose the Great Dividing Range.
"This was really where it all started," he said.
"In the early days Hugh had what was basically a drum track, and I found some lyrics about the provinces that were lying about in my shed and somehow the words fitted neatly."
The Fovndlings will be supported by Greg Windred's Racketeers at the Imperial Hotel in Armidale on November 15. Doors open at 8pm.
The album can be bought as a CD at Blackdot Music or digital download on Spotify and iTunes.