Louis Richter - vocals & guitar
Ryan Merry - bass
Jonathan Edmonds - drums
Discography
*Flag Festival ep - 2002*Summer In Disguise ep - 2003
*Lost & Lonesome For A Million Years cd - 2005
*Odds album - 2006
Album Tracks - Real Audio
*Best Intentions from 'Odds'
*Million Years from 'Odds'
Mid-State Orange have a Myspace page at www.myspace.com/midstateorange
'Odds' Album Background
Hi there. I’m Louis and I play in a band called Mid-State Orange. I write the songs, and I play guitar and sing. My friend Ryan plays bass, (and Jono plays drums) and we’ve been playing together since we were both in our very first band, brought together by our mutual friend Ian, who has since absconded to Beijing. I’m not even going to tell you the name of that band, because we were easily the worst band in the entire history of the known universe. But we had an enormous amount of fun, and Ryan and I kept playing music together. We have played with many, many bunches of nice people over the years. In fact, just for fun, they are (in rough chronological order of joining): Ian, Wilch, Coxy, Matt, Ryan B, Dave, Ryan B again, Matilda, Justin, Chris, Tim, Jonno, Christian, Morghane, Freedaddy, and Ben.
In the past, we’ve put out a couple of EPs and a split single with the wonderful Ladybug Transistor. But, even though we’ve been going for quite a long time, this is actually our first proper album (ignoring the fact that our demo was over an hour long- there were only a hundred of them made, and I can’t even find my own copy of it). Anyway, this album took us a long time to put together. First we recorded some songs with our good friend and sonic mentor Gareth Parton. Gareth lives in London, but his girlfriend Kate is from Melbourne. Being the lovely guy that he is, he moved here with her for a year and that’s when we recorded our second EP, Summer in Disguise.
When Gareth and Kate came back for Christmas the next year, we quickly abducted him, and managed to wring three more songs out of him. They were: Best Intentions, The Casualties of Casual Ties, and Million Years. Then we started to think we wanted to record an album. We thought we would do some demos first with our good friend Anthony Cornish, who recorded our first demo. He’s been in lots of great bands in Melbourne, like Blessington, and Adam Cole’s band, the Pollen Choir. A couple of those demos got ripped apart and put back together in surgery and found their way on here. Funnily enough, those two tracks, Introduction to City Lights and Pathways, bookend the record now. The body of the record we recorded with our good friend and all-round sound-and-computer genius Marcus Barzcak. He also mixed the record, and generally oversaw the putting-together of it all. Francois Tetaz and James Wilkinson mastered it at Moose.
Notes On The 'Odds' Album
It strikes me that, a lot of the time, my writing is based at least as much around melody as it is in the substance of the lyrics. Or, at least, I think (I hope) that the melody might play a part in conferring some of the meaning of the lyrics. I mean, I know that’s the point of song-writing, as opposed to poetry , but there are a lot of song writers whose lyrics stand up on their own, without music. I think mine probably don’t. I could be being to hard on myself… I’m not sure. I mean, I’m happy with that— that’s just the way it is, and I hope that the songs can speak for themselves, and maybe communicate something of the feeling I might have when I’m writing them, or maybe the feeling that I’m trying to convey. If people dance, then I’m resolutely unconcerned. But there are a couple of reasons I’m bringing it up. The first is that this makes my approach a little different from a lot of the other Candle songwriters, whose work I admire and love, and that, secondly, when I try to talk about a couple of the songs on our new record, you shouldn’t expect too much!!
So, I suppose a lot of my songs are pretty impressionistic. They might come from a set of circumstances or observations, but I when I try to bring that out, they can get a bit more obscure than I might have initially intended. “Cracks (Evolutionary Psychology 101)” is a pretty good example of that. It started out as being pretty specific, albeit in a very impressionistic kinda way: “Here I am, walking in the street, this is how I feel”. You get the point. Sounds a bit Lou Reed or something? Alright! Then it started getting a little odder, becoming filled with a lot of images of things that I might daydream about: igloos; helicopters; peak oil; soace exploration; cats;a bit of old-time religion. I guess the oddness of it, for me, is in contrasting the really large-scale stuff with very small personal things.
“Rivers” is a bit less abstruse. I really wanted to write something very straightforward. The first line is a good example of the melody being part of the meaning of the line. It’s a pretty simple line, and I hope the singing gives it some of the weight it needs to portray the feeling behind the song. Cat Power, here we come.
Second in a Two-Horse Race is really straight forward. I’ve spent some time in the modern sweatshop—the retail environment, and I also did a stint at a telemarketing company. It was almost ten years ago, I only lasted two hours, and I will never, ever forget it. When I arrived for my second shift, I locked my bike outside, walked into the building, took the lift up to the eighth floor, walked up to my new supervisor and went to say: “Hi David, where should I sit?”, and, instead the words “I’m sorry, I have to quit” came out. I was every bit as surprised as he was. He was very understanding about the whole thing, telling me that I was not doing too badly: a complete lie, on his part.
Anyway, this song is just about how much I hated that job. I know it seems a bit rich to complain so much in such a generally wealthy and secure society, but my feelings were, I should point out, vindicated by a recent German study showing that people who were required by their jobs to be nice to everyone suffered from more health problems than comparable people who did not. I hope you’re ok, David, wherever you are.
“Dying in Good Society” is also really straight forward. It’s about that feeling that everyone knows, when you see someone you used to go out with, or be close to, somewhere, with someone else. It’s about when you go all woozy, can’t concentrate, think it would be a good idea to skull some cheap champagne—maybe at someone’s 21st or something, you know where the room is full of people who understand the situation and can only watch the train wreck you’re about to become—generally put your entire well being in the hands of friends who, hopefully, are looking out for you, make a complete fool of yourself, maybe throw up in someone’s front yard, stumble home (taking at least four times as long as you thought it should), and wake up feeling like you might want to write a weepy country ballad, but being unable to rid your head of a slightly jauntier rhythm. And you can’t find your shoes. I actually wrote this song a really long time ago, and we recorded it once, completely drowned in distortion and howling feedback and about half the speed. It didn’t even make our demo.
Album Tracks - Real Audio
*Best Intentions from 'Odds'
*Million Years from 'Odds'
Mid-State Orange have a Myspace page at www.myspace.com/midstateorange
'Odds' Album Background
Hi there. I’m Louis and I play in a band called Mid-State Orange. I write the songs, and I play guitar and sing. My friend Ryan plays bass, (and Jono plays drums) and we’ve been playing together since we were both in our very first band, brought together by our mutual friend Ian, who has since absconded to Beijing. I’m not even going to tell you the name of that band, because we were easily the worst band in the entire history of the known universe. But we had an enormous amount of fun, and Ryan and I kept playing music together. We have played with many, many bunches of nice people over the years. In fact, just for fun, they are (in rough chronological order of joining): Ian, Wilch, Coxy, Matt, Ryan B, Dave, Ryan B again, Matilda, Justin, Chris, Tim, Jonno, Christian, Morghane, Freedaddy, and Ben.
In the past, we’ve put out a couple of EPs and a split single with the wonderful Ladybug Transistor. But, even though we’ve been going for quite a long time, this is actually our first proper album (ignoring the fact that our demo was over an hour long- there were only a hundred of them made, and I can’t even find my own copy of it). Anyway, this album took us a long time to put together. First we recorded some songs with our good friend and sonic mentor Gareth Parton. Gareth lives in London, but his girlfriend Kate is from Melbourne. Being the lovely guy that he is, he moved here with her for a year and that’s when we recorded our second EP, Summer in Disguise.
When Gareth and Kate came back for Christmas the next year, we quickly abducted him, and managed to wring three more songs out of him. They were: Best Intentions, The Casualties of Casual Ties, and Million Years. Then we started to think we wanted to record an album. We thought we would do some demos first with our good friend Anthony Cornish, who recorded our first demo. He’s been in lots of great bands in Melbourne, like Blessington, and Adam Cole’s band, the Pollen Choir. A couple of those demos got ripped apart and put back together in surgery and found their way on here. Funnily enough, those two tracks, Introduction to City Lights and Pathways, bookend the record now. The body of the record we recorded with our good friend and all-round sound-and-computer genius Marcus Barzcak. He also mixed the record, and generally oversaw the putting-together of it all. Francois Tetaz and James Wilkinson mastered it at Moose.
Notes On The 'Odds' Album
It strikes me that, a lot of the time, my writing is based at least as much around melody as it is in the substance of the lyrics. Or, at least, I think (I hope) that the melody might play a part in conferring some of the meaning of the lyrics. I mean, I know that’s the point of song-writing, as opposed to poetry , but there are a lot of song writers whose lyrics stand up on their own, without music. I think mine probably don’t. I could be being to hard on myself… I’m not sure. I mean, I’m happy with that— that’s just the way it is, and I hope that the songs can speak for themselves, and maybe communicate something of the feeling I might have when I’m writing them, or maybe the feeling that I’m trying to convey. If people dance, then I’m resolutely unconcerned. But there are a couple of reasons I’m bringing it up. The first is that this makes my approach a little different from a lot of the other Candle songwriters, whose work I admire and love, and that, secondly, when I try to talk about a couple of the songs on our new record, you shouldn’t expect too much!!
So, I suppose a lot of my songs are pretty impressionistic. They might come from a set of circumstances or observations, but I when I try to bring that out, they can get a bit more obscure than I might have initially intended. “Cracks (Evolutionary Psychology 101)” is a pretty good example of that. It started out as being pretty specific, albeit in a very impressionistic kinda way: “Here I am, walking in the street, this is how I feel”. You get the point. Sounds a bit Lou Reed or something? Alright! Then it started getting a little odder, becoming filled with a lot of images of things that I might daydream about: igloos; helicopters; peak oil; soace exploration; cats;a bit of old-time religion. I guess the oddness of it, for me, is in contrasting the really large-scale stuff with very small personal things.
“Rivers” is a bit less abstruse. I really wanted to write something very straightforward. The first line is a good example of the melody being part of the meaning of the line. It’s a pretty simple line, and I hope the singing gives it some of the weight it needs to portray the feeling behind the song. Cat Power, here we come.
Second in a Two-Horse Race is really straight forward. I’ve spent some time in the modern sweatshop—the retail environment, and I also did a stint at a telemarketing company. It was almost ten years ago, I only lasted two hours, and I will never, ever forget it. When I arrived for my second shift, I locked my bike outside, walked into the building, took the lift up to the eighth floor, walked up to my new supervisor and went to say: “Hi David, where should I sit?”, and, instead the words “I’m sorry, I have to quit” came out. I was every bit as surprised as he was. He was very understanding about the whole thing, telling me that I was not doing too badly: a complete lie, on his part.
Anyway, this song is just about how much I hated that job. I know it seems a bit rich to complain so much in such a generally wealthy and secure society, but my feelings were, I should point out, vindicated by a recent German study showing that people who were required by their jobs to be nice to everyone suffered from more health problems than comparable people who did not. I hope you’re ok, David, wherever you are.
“Dying in Good Society” is also really straight forward. It’s about that feeling that everyone knows, when you see someone you used to go out with, or be close to, somewhere, with someone else. It’s about when you go all woozy, can’t concentrate, think it would be a good idea to skull some cheap champagne—maybe at someone’s 21st or something, you know where the room is full of people who understand the situation and can only watch the train wreck you’re about to become—generally put your entire well being in the hands of friends who, hopefully, are looking out for you, make a complete fool of yourself, maybe throw up in someone’s front yard, stumble home (taking at least four times as long as you thought it should), and wake up feeling like you might want to write a weepy country ballad, but being unable to rid your head of a slightly jauntier rhythm. And you can’t find your shoes. I actually wrote this song a really long time ago, and we recorded it once, completely drowned in distortion and howling feedback and about half the speed. It didn’t even make our demo.