Interview: Matt Fackrell (THE OMNIFIC)

It happens sometimes that we upload forgotten photo galleries and interviews that, for various reasons, fail to be published in time. Today it's the turn of an impromptu interview with Matt Fackrell from Australian trio The Omnific. Matt agreed to talk with us right after the band's first concert in Sofia in June 2023. Now the band has a second full-length album and they are coming back to Bulgaria on 19.01 as supporting act for TesseracT.

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Welcome to Sofia, Bulgaria please introduce yourself and the guys from the band because I know you're a long way from home – Australia.

Yes, yes long way from home but it is a pleasure to be here. We are the Omnific. My name is Matt, and I am the bass player, one of the bass players in the Omnific. We have two bass players. The other bass player’s name is Toby and our drummer’s name is Jerome.

The first time I saw you guys was a week ago in Prague. I was really impressed with your style and music. How can you describe your style because the first thing that comes to my mind is “Drum ’n’ Bass(es)”?

Well that is technically correct.

Technically yes, but it is so far away from the truth because your music is so full and atmospheric.

“Bass and Drums” we started calling it the other way around because it is not Drum And Bass as it is a totally different genre. But how would I describe us…? I guess on the surface we ‘re just two bass players and a drummer and that's it. that's the only members in the band, but... I guess the essence of our music is we have a lot of programming, piano orchestration, sampling etc. which really helps reinforce the sound. Because we are just two bass players and a drummer, and it is going to be just low-end. Adding all these extra elements it becomes a lot more atmospheric and enjoyable Genre wise I will just call progressive rock as a broad term, but we like to incorporate a lot of different genres from classical to metal, jazz, atmospheric, cinematic.

Have you ever wondered if something is missing in your music? I’m asking this because a lot of my friends that I have brought here today. They didn’t believe me that 2 bases and drums can be so awesome. They were like ... “What? No guitars and vocals? That sounds like a crippled lineup to me” But now after the show they cannot believe their ears.

This is a very interesting question to think about, because when we started doing the band it was very trial-and-error to figure out how we made this work. I think we've sort of found a very strong sound that sounds full for us as you mentioned, also doesn't interfere with just being only low end or only Hi-end. We try to fill the whole spectrum. As previously mentioned, having the synth to fill that top range that the bass can't get to really helps fill out the sound. In terms of missing instruments, I think that's sort of a hard rule - we're just never going to have guitars just out of principle of having the two bases in the band. But with vocals we never missed not having them but in the future on our new album we have got a couple of vocal parts so that's a very new realm for us. Nothing like leading vocals or anything but some backing vocals.

Yes, you should try something with Bulgarian folklore singers. There were some songs that we heard today, and I really think Bulgarian folk singing will fit in perfectly.

Yes definitely. If I think about it, all our songs you could add vocals to it and same song with vocals will be a brand-new song now so… We're not opposed to say that one day The Omnific might feature some guest pop singer for live performance or do an album or redo our albums with vocals. That it's not something that we discussed or anything but it's not something we are opposed to either. Because we could do it, but that takes time, and we are on the other side of the world at the moment.  Anyways we always wanted to do new music as well so that’s what we have been working on in the last year or so.

Having in mind that your music is quite difficult to perform and compose; How relaxed you need to be to start thinking over new songs? Because most of the bands are even writing new music while being on the road and on tour. But for your type of music I think there is more solitude and privacy required... How actually you are writing your music?

Yes, I will start with that. Songwriting for us again as I mention for a different question is very trial and error based for the last 7 or so years cos, we didn't really have a reference point where to start. How are we currently writing? Well Tobby and I have quite a different process which does create a similar result in the end. A lot of our songs are like an individual's idea but it's kind of like almost a full song idea and then bring it to the other guys just to work on it. Could be over the span of a day or can be over the next 4 months. So yeah, my process is usually I get the whole idea for the track in one day. Usually it's one of those days when I sit down and write a song in 6 - 8 - 10 hours. Then usually I present it to the others and then we do that tweaking to it. With Tobby is a very similar process but maybe, over the span of a couple weeks, he will really really like delve into the ideas of the song and then after he's really happy with it – he will bring it to us. So it's the same approach but in different mindsets. And for writing hard and complicated stuff that's not our goal at all.

So, you are not competing with each other or other musicians?

I think we both are very fortunate that we both can play really well, which really helped a lot and there are no limitations. That was years and years of work before the band. Just growing up playing bass aspiring to be what we both want to be as musicians.  Now we're together in this band, we are grown together as well as separately but writing hard songs was never the goal, but we never want to write something that's boring. Because it is boring to us it will be boring to anyone else.

You have one full length album and 3 EP’s already.

Yes, the EP‘s were before the album. I like to think of it as a journey. Like figuring out what we like, what our sound is. Because if I listen to our EP from 2016, I will say that it was really cool for us when we started, but we've come a long way.

 That actually was my next question. Do you think there is general progression and evolution in the band? Looking back and forward to what is coming in the form of new music?

Absolutely! we can visually and audibly see it throughout our releases. We added techniques, growth in our melody writing, growth in our structure. I guess we matured as musicians, which is a term that you hear from every musician. As a kid you just want to do as much as you can, but when you grow up you get to be more musical. That takes us to “Escapades” for us still two years later. This is a very solid release and we are very happy with how it is structured. And with our new music moving forward, we hope we can do the same thing. And if we are happy with it we hope that everyone else will be happy with it.

This leads to my next question. What can we expect from The Omnific in the future? Album or another EP?

It will be an album. It's 8tracks but some of the songs are a little bit longer so still going to be a full length. The goal is to tour that album back home in Australia and hopefully back again in Europe, all over Europe as well.

We will be waiting for you!

We will be back in Europe for the Euroblast Festival in September. So that's 3, 3-4 months time so it will back then and hopefully in Bulgaria as well.

That would be awesome. You were touring with Ne Obliviscaris and Persefone recently, I was at the show in Prague and I saw that the audience is accepting you really well. And today to be honest I didn’t know what to expect because it was a headline concert, but I was blown away!

Yes thank you, I guess with Ne Obliviscaris being a lot heavier and with vocals and violin as Тheir fanbase is obviously going to be a little different to ours because of their genre. So we were going on this tour and we do what we do and try to win new fans but we don't know what is going to be like.

That was obviously a success. Because that’s how I found you guys.. and that’s why I’m here today, and that’s why I’m speaking to you now!

Awesome! Тhat's the reason we're coming here to build a fanbase over here so we can hopefully come back again. So Yeah, those shows with Ne Obliviscaris and Persefone were great. It was so fun to hang out with professional bands on the road and learning from them as well. Cos we've only toured Europe once before 4 years and that was a great experience as well, but this is the next step. We're hoping just to keep doing that. We learned a lot from the tour, like how to properly manage sleep vs having fun vs getting exercise, enjoying sightseeing, etc. And it's definitely something everyone can enjoy.

Now tricky question… the world right now it's insane about artificial intelligence AI…

Sure, Sure

Do you think it has a place in music? A lot of bands are already using AI for lyrics and artworks. Do you think that this somehow removes the “Human Element” from the music?

I don’t think so… Humans are always going to want to hear humans making music. Тhey can tell what human input is. I have not used AI that much in terms of music but some of our album arts feature it.
Our artist actually, not us. Like we used it to assist us in building a very awesome design that might take hours and cost us all our money just to get made. I think it is a really cool concept. I'm sure there's things we might find to use in the future but I don't think it'll take over people's jobs anytime soon, in the music industry or change anyone's creativity. But to be used with creativity it's going to be really cool. We don’t want it to replace our playing but to enhance it - absolutely

You guys are two bass players. What musicians are you influenced by?

When I think about myself personally, growing up learning how to play bass... I was really into metal. I wanted to play like John Myung, I wanted to play Dream Theater music. Or to play like Alex Webster from Cannibal Corpse. I always like really, really technical proficient dudes.

What about Steve Harris (Iron Maiden)?

Steve Harris as well, yes definitely!

I saw a lot of your techniques are similar to his.

Yes, the quick fingers and the three finger technique. Which is typical for Metallica, Dream theater again… the list goes on and on. But for myself maybe when I was 16-17-18 years old and we started The Omnific when I was 18 as well. Around that time I was getting more intrigued about playing guitar solos. I'm based kind of more towards those lead lines which is something you can hear in our music as well. That element and I know Toby would have been down the same route as well being like I want to do more than the average bass player.

This is what actually fills your music. Instead of being just in the low end as you said

Yeah we don't want to be just two bass players, playing the bass line which is very cool in the right context, but for us it's not going to work.

As you said.. you don't want it to be boring.

Yeah well “Boring” is an interesting choice of words. Because boring to us might not be to others. But we want to enjoy what we do. As influences for the band is another very, very tough question. I do want to say Animals as Leaders but it wasn't as well. It just fell into that type of music because they're two guitars and drums and we are too basses and druma. It’s almost like we just copy them and do the opposite, and we didn't really think about it like that just kind of ended up like it. But they are influences of all three of us musically like how they play and how they write. How good they are at their instrument. That sort of inspiration definitely made us want to develop even more. But I guess inspiration doesn't always have to be music. I'm into a lot of Sports and the way they treat their warm-up, training and recovery and how they approach games and all that, I find that adding this to music is amazing.  Like I got to make sure I'm well stretched and warmed up then I'm going to be able to play better. That's it’s all over the music industry. Looking after your body especially on the road. Тhat sort of approach to playing shows and kind of trying to be in Tip Top shape while also not just obsessing over it as well.

Мy brother says “Do the best you can and let the worst happen”

Yeah. You prepare yourself to be this good, like really high up, so then you can always perform at a certain level, but you strive to be absolutely perfect.

Okay so I'm really out of questions and  I’m really happy that you guys are here and I'm already looking forward to seeing you again!

We love to be back!

I would like you to leave a message for our readers that will be reading this interview.

Leave a message? Let me think about that…

Ha-ha The toughest question?

I'm trying to think of a witty one yeah, okay that's the hard part I guess…
Ok thank you to everyone who saw us around Europe and keep your eyes for our new album!

Thank you very much for this interview and I'm really looking forward to seeing you guys in the future!

Thank you, we'd love to be back!

Author: Nikola Petras
June 2023

The new album of The Omnific is already out. You can find the band on all major social networks.. And this sunday don't miss out on seeing them as support act of TesseracT

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