Facts is the third album from Melbourne based art-pop explorers Aleks and the Ramps. It is both a continued refining of the hook laden pop sound the band developed on Midnight Believer, and the sound of the band striking out in a darker and more personal direction.
Recording began in March 2010 at Ramps HQ in Fairfield Victoria, with a view to write and record the songs simultaneously. While initially this seemed like a quicker way of writing and recording, the completion of the album in September 2011 put the lie to that idea.
With the line up of the band in flux and a tour to Japan occurring during the sessions, the recording involved Aleks and Simon sitting in an alternately sweaty and chilly warehouse laying down whatever instruments sounded good in whatever order seemed appropriate.
Joe, Sez, Jon and Janita all dropped by randomly to throw down sweet vocal ideas and other bits of pieces of instrumentation and thus the songs slowly began to morph from riffs and beats into fully fleshed out space jams. Man.
Having decided enough was enough, Simon and Aleks headed to Sydney over Easter 2011 to mix the album. Borrowing an ancient and downright lovely Neve console from Simon's uncle Wayne Connolly, Simon mixed and Aleks edited frantically for a week.
On February 14th, Facts will be released unto the world, as both a digital download (iTunes, amazon, bandcamp etc) and 12” vinyl from good record stores and bandcamp.The Ramps will be touring in support of Facts so keep an eye out for dates nationally in March.
Listen back to Against the Tide with Monica for a live set from Aleks and the Ramps.
