ifitbeyourwill S06E28 • link3

Link 3 recorded their slowcore debut with gaming mics and bathroom fans—now it's soundtracking weddings. James and Sunniva unpack the guitar-first writing, dual-vocal chemistry, and DIY grit behind On The Outline, a record that chose intimacy over polish and found an audience craving exactly that. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Artist Introductions
• 1:51 James’s Late Start And Lockdown Spark
• 3:10 First DIY Album And Letting Go
• 5:33 Sonny’s Early Writing And Performance Drive
• 9:08 Influences And Learning By Imitation
• 9:19 Forming Link 3 And Finding Each Other
• 11:16 Why Sonny’s Voice Fit The Vision
• 12:35 Joining The Project And Blending Aesthetics
• 14:00 Songwriting Roles And Creative Editing
• 15:20 Making On The Outline In Five Weeks
• 16:46 Reception, Resonance, And Fan Stories
• 19:00 Slowcore Aesthetics And Dual Vocals
• 20:05 What’s Next: Studio Debut And Strings
• 22:04 Closing Encouragement And Goodbye

Transcript

colleyc: 0:34

Alright, people, welcome back to another episode of ifitbeyourwilll podcast here, season six, Chuggin, Chuggin, Chuggin. Today I got a great bunch of artists here. Two excellent artists. And they're from She Nu, right? These are well, they're expats, but they're living here in Montreal, which I'm so psyched about. They know where to come to find good music and good connections with their music. So I have sunniva and James here from Link Three. And this is a really great band. I was just mentioning that it's this kind of like revival of slow core and this restraint and space in their music. And I just love it. This is some stuff that I've always loved. And I'm so glad that these artists are doing it. So Link 3 is we have Australian and we have British combo in Montreal doing Flowcore. You cannot get better than this. And I'm so happy to have you guys here on the show today. So thanks for taking some time to join me here.

James Barry: 1:37

Oh, but so glad to be here. We're really excited to have a chat. So yeah, no. Totally. Thank you now.

colleyc: 1:42

So I mean, I typically start these guys with a little walk down memory lane. I guess, James, I'll start with you. What was music starting to become serious to you? Like, what were some moments that kind of made it like, yes, I think that I want to do this for a long time and put myself out there? What were some of those moments that happened that brought you to that?

James Barry: 2:07

I feel like I was kind of late to the party. Like it's strange when I like think about it. Because I would have been like 19, like when I first really started like really getting it sounds like silly, but like really getting into music and like listening to albums and like all of a sudden developing kind of like a whole different perspective on it. Like where I used to be just kind of like a casual sort of music listener and not really taking it, you know, very seriously. All of a sudden, I was really enamored by the idea of like the artist and the album, like the project and the context behind it. And I I found myself getting really into that. And that was also during COVID lockdown. Like in Australia, like we were kind of confined, like indoors, we had like 30 minutes of activity or whatever. So, you know, I was just listening to heaps of music, going for these occasional walks and just you know, listening on my headphones, and that's where I kind of developed this idea where I was like, you know, I I actually feel like I really want to try that out, you know, I want to try to make an album. So I went into songwriting and into learning guitar with the immediate motivation to make an album.

colleyc: 3:11

Wow. And and James, you you first put something out on Band Camp in 2022, right? So just after kind of COVID had had settled down a little bit. Was that was that what you wanted to do? Like, was that first record capturing that essence of what made you fall in love with music again?

James Barry: 3:29

A little bit. I think it was kind of just like a stepping stone. Like it was kind of it's hard to explain in the sense that I knew that what I was doing was like extremely amateur and chaotic, and it's kind of it was recorded on like a gaming. I don't know why I like I like traded a really good microphone for like an even worse like gaming microphone from like one of my like roommates. I don't know why I did that, and then I recorded it like that whole pretty much that whole album, like with the mic and the shoe with like my bathroom fan on. Like I don't know why I kept the bathroom fan. Like it was just stuff like that, but like I knew I knew that I just had to put it out there and get it off my chest, otherwise, like I would just be stuck on it forever and and not make as much progress as I'd like. So I'm actually just really lucky that the album, you know, wasn't torn to pieces by anyone that listened to it. Like people actually appreciated certain parts of it. So yeah.

colleyc: 4:24

Um well, sometimes in that too, and I love what you said too, that if you don't do it, you know, you just think about it and think about it and think about it, it takes that action and then it gets the ball rolling, right?

James Barry: 4:35

Or you just think about it forever and you just say it's hard because you write a song and it's like your baby and you want it to be like perfect and like you want it to reach its full potential, but it's it's it's kind of ironic because if you you know sit on that thing forever, like it just never actually gets anywhere. But sometimes you just have to release it into the world when it's it's hard to know when it's ready because it never will feel ready. Right, you just gotta do it when it's totally yeah, because you can muck with it until it, you know, the cows come home. But yeah, and if you and honestly, if you muck with it too much, sometimes it loses its whole soul and it becomes something that all of a sudden you're like, oh, I actually preferred it like the first take on my like fire, you know. I miss the uh the bathroom fan going in the back. Yeah, exact, exact. And yeah, it's but then I don't yeah, no, it is it is funny how it works like that. But yeah, I think that's what I was just going for. I think I was just trying to, you know, just get get something off my chest, get it out there and see what the feedback was and actually just at least you know take my first step. Right.

colleyc: 5:32

Love it. And Sonny, what about you? What what what's your musical journey starting pages of your novel that you're writing here?

sunniva: 5:41

Yeah, I mean, I've always been a pretty like animated person, like a very animated kid. I was always kind of performing. I love singing since I don't yeah, but pretty much since I was talking, I was also singing. So I think that for me, it was always something that I wanted to do, not only kind of be recording, but I wanted to be performing and I wanted to be kind of in a band and have this whole like part of my life of these live performances. So in terms of writing music, I've been I've been writing since I I guess actually since I was about 12 was when I put like my first song on on YouTube, which is a pretty funny one, and that's archived and like hidden.

James Barry: 6:23

It's crazy. Like listening to her songs that she made when she was like 11 years old, and I'm like, what the hell? Like this is like this game, this is like child genius. Like it's crazy. Like an 11-year-old shouldn't be able to write like a legitimate like piece of music. You could, you could at that point, you genuinely could.

sunniva: 6:42

It was just always something I wanted and I loved and had so many artists that I looked up to and adored everything about what they were creating. So I think that yeah, for me, ever since then, I've been wanting to find something more serious in this kind of like hobby that I always had. And especially, yeah, meeting James and being able to start not only kind of not only perform, but also have this whole side that I hadn't been doing at all before, which was kind of actually recording music, not just kind of recording it on my laptop or recording it on phone, but actually kind of figuring out the software a little bit more and figuring out this whole process that you were talking about as well. That you were saying, like kind of putting things together and and like knowing when it's done. And I hadn't kind of had any experience with that before. And it I definitely changed a lot of my songwriting too, like understanding that this might be the biggest, it feels like it's so big, and this is exactly how it needs to be done. But by the end of recording an album, it's actually like your favorite song is one that you started midway through even recording it. So it's been really it's been incredible, and it's something that's just kind of developing. Yeah.

James Barry: 8:01

Yeah, and you're really at the start of your journey, you know what I mean? Like in terms of the releases or yeah, deciding. Right.

colleyc: 8:08

And so I'm just curiously, like, what were those captivating artists at that young age that you were like, I can do that, or I want to do that. Like, did you give us some some some clues into that?

sunniva: 8:22

Oh, of course, yeah. I mean, I was really young, so I would have to say Little Mix was like huge for me. I loved the idea of like a girl band and the fact that they were all had their distinct voices and their distinct moments. So a lot of it's funny, you can see it obviously kind of shifts. Like that was when I was like 12, but then it goes more into like there was um like MXM tune was a big one for me, and you can see the way in which the songs I'm writing, before I really knew how to write songs, I could just try to write a song like if they wrote this, how would they write it? So you can see a lot of development from point to point, whoever I'm listening to most, until I kind of started finding my own songwriting voice and kind of my own style. It was a lot of just like, how would they do this? I want to do everything they do.

colleyc: 9:10

Right. Well, I mean, that's that's how we learn, right? We gotta copy, we gotta practice, we gotta steal some things sometimes. Like that's all part of that process as well. I'm super curious, guys, about how you two came to be. Because sunniva, you just joined on this last record, right? The one that just came out uh on the on the outline.

James Barry: 9:30

Is that correct? Like that there was a previous kind of project. That was kind of like a band, that was like the first time me riding with like a lot of different people in the sense that I had like a I had like a lead guitarist that helped me ride a bunch of the lead, and I had a drummer that wrote all the drum parts and a bassist, and sunniva did the lead vocals on most of the tracks. But that was kind of like I feel like that was like a another like stepping stone towards this project where sunniva really that we've kind of refined it to like you know, me and sunniva in this project a lot more, and and sunniva is taking a lot more charge in the vocals, and we're doing a lot more duets and things like that. Yeah, yeah, primarily this new this new rate that how did you guys meet?

colleyc: 10:10

How did how did this come to be, this new evolution of Link 3?

James Barry: 10:14

Yeah, I mean it's kind of a long story-ish, but I ended up in Montreal just trying to make a band, and yeah, I like I was trying every way I could to meet people. I didn't know a single person in Montreal when I moved here, so I was kind of shows, I was like just I was going to soundchecks. Like I tell said, like, I must have been so annoying. Like I was I didn't understand like the culture, like because I'd never been around it. Like I would just rock up at like sound checks and be like, oh hey guys, like I'm leading to Notre. Like, I've it must have been so bizarre, but it worked because I met like people were really friendly. Like, I'm like, if someone rocked up to my sound check, I'd be like, like it's just but yeah, no, they were so everyone was really kind and they introduced me to people, and you know, through that I made that's why I met everyone else to help me do the live stuff. But Sonny, I met on this is like we could we should get sponsored by this website called I think it's called Band Mix. Yeah, yeah. We met on Band Mix, which is like a website where you know that there wasn't really many people on it. But I saw Sonny's like profile and I was looking for a a female vocalist, and yeah, it was just like too good to be true. Yeah, and that's how I met Sonny.

colleyc: 11:21

Wow, wow. And what was it about hearing her that that sparked like, yep, yep, yep, she she she can do what I want, she can fill that that space that I want her to fill.

James Barry: 11:34

What was that about her voice? Yeah, well, she had a YouTube video, like at the time, like she had a one of the songs that's currently out now on her Spotify, she had like a YouTube like live version. And I remember listening to that and just being blown away at the control the like ethereal nature of her voice. Like I think there's just some people that are just born with it like in their soul, and like it's just it's just it just captures people, and you can see that on her like on her YouTube channel now, like how it's just it's reached just hundreds of thousands of people, and that everyone's just blown away at it. Like, and she does it without she does, she hasn't ever, she's never been trained, she doesn't uh do vocal warm-ups or anything, like she can just do it as if she's like talking. Like it's it's incredible. But when I heard her voice in that video and just how easy it was for her to do that, I was like, I have to like please, please play through.

colleyc: 12:24

That's awesome. And sunniva, what what was it about what James had done in the past through Link 3 that that was appealing to you that yeah, I think I think I can find my way into this.

sunniva: 12:35

Yeah, I remember I remember like getting the message and like accidentally opening it actually, which is kind of funny. Like, I was like out and I accidentally opened it, I was like, oh my gosh, oh like yeah, that sounds great. And I like the next morning, like was like, okay, like let's actually listen to this. And I remember going to your Spotify and instantly it was the kind of music that I had no clue how to create. It was like this actual kind of produced sound that I honestly I was like, I don't even know how somebody kind of does this. I don't know how they could create this, like what they used to create this. And it was so incredible that I was like, Oh, I want to be any way in which I can be a part of this, I want to be singing for this. And there was also, yeah, like the whole album, there was like this kind of blend between very acoustic kind of songs and then some more actually kind of like produce with like electric guitars and drums. And I was like, I want to be able to it was it was really lovely kind of seeing this other artist making this sound and doing both and how they can actually kind of complement instead of barring like just acoustic or kind of just produced, like just electric. It was something that I really wanted to do. So seeing this and the fact that it's already kind of established, she knows how to do this because like I'm happy to just just yeah, right, right. Any way that you want my voice on this, I'll happily be part of it.

colleyc: 13:53

That's great. And James, how does the how do these songs come to be? Like, do you bring in the lyrics and kind of the melody of, or have you guys collaborated or started to collaborate through your new kind of coming together?

James Barry: 14:08

I mean, like I usually like take the reins, like with link three, it's kind of like, you know, I'll I'll I love the guitar is like really the truest passion for me, like the songwriting on the guitar and the chord progression. So I'll start there, and then you know, I'll usually find a melody, a vocal melody by humming or something, and then usually I'll recall myself humming the vocal melody, and then when you listen back to it, you kind of just start to automatically the lyrics kind of just start coming in. Um so that's usually how it goes, but it's great because sometimes I feel like I can really miss the mark, like really badly. But sunniva is great, like that's up, that's like sunniva's honestly like her most important role in Link 3 is being like the person that that can really she has such a good um, like she's such a good judge of like what's good and what's bad, and she'll let me know. So I feel like that's saved me so many times, and it and it really she is kind of like the pilot, really, in a in a in a sense of the whole project in a lot more ways than she is just the singer. But yeah, but mostly yeah, the songwriting is like usually me, but then sunniva, of course, does has her songwriting for Cineva, and it's really nice we have we both have our space to do that um that we could kind of influence each other, but yeah.

colleyc: 15:20

And how did on the outline come together? This you have a uh a knacker for the last two Januaries to put a new a new record out. What's how did this one on the outline come together as as a whole whole record?

James Barry: 15:39

I think um I kind of like creativity comes in waves, and I think that that was just a particularly huge wave, and I kind of felt that you know I'd done some collabs earlier in the year. I had Harps come out, which is a pretty a very collaborative album for Link Three, like the most collaborative I've ever been on a project. And I kind of felt ready to get a bit more not personal, but kind of just go back to my roots, but try and level it up, you know, go back to recording just with the mic, just producing it all myself, recording all myself, writing it all myself. I felt like I had an inspiration that I could do something a lot better than I had before. I wanted to put everything that I'd learnt from collaborating with other people and from my previous projects to really challenge myself and make something cohesive and and ready to be received. And yeah, that's kind of how it came to be. It was really just like I think I've mentioned this like it was just a four to five week period, just in our studio apartment, just all the writing and putting it all together. Yeah, it just all happened within that space. Amazing.

colleyc: 16:46

And Sonny, what do you think of the results? Like when you kind of look back over the the assembly and the creation of the songs and now it's all packaged and out there in the world for everybody to hear. How are you how you how you like, you know, how are you feeling about it? How how do how is you the reception of it? Has it matched what you thought would happen with it, or where are you at with it?

sunniva: 17:08

Incredibly proud to be involved on this in at all. Yeah, we've already kind of actually had a lot of feedback. Even like recently, we've been looking at all of like the album of the year kind of reviews, this whole website where you can see that. And I think I mean you'll know like better with all of the the kind of responses that you've had over the years of Link3. But this has just seemed to have such a wave of like really kind of intimate experiences people are like having with this album, saying like it like we were talking before, kind of about nostalgia or these really like intense kind of moments of like this is I really love this, and I just yeah, I could I feel nothing but proud and lucky to be to be a part of it.

James Barry: 17:49

It's my first time releasing a project and immediately getting kind of like a it resonating with people. Like we've had, like, for example, we had someone message us like, Hey, can you send me the instrumental for Renfre Avenue because we want it for our wedding? And here's a photo of us, and we're you know, and this is we want we want to play this at our wedding, and it's just like what walking down the like are you serious? Like it's crazy. Like, is that not like the best comp like that like for a song to resonate with someone in that way is truly the greatest privilege as a songwriter and musician? And and there was a there was like a guy that that fully learned how to play it used to be fun, and he learnt every instrument and he recorded himself playing every instrument and then he put it together, and it's like this really cool like slacker rock version of it used to used to be fun. It's like great, like I listen to it all the time, but that's the same thing. It's like what a privilege! Like this guy literally learnt every single piece of this song, put it all together and put it out there for the world to listen to, and it's incredible.

colleyc: 18:48

It's it's I agree with you. I think that it's touching people in in a in a bigger way than than haves that you had out the year before. And not that it's not I mean, halves is a really great album as well, but I find that there's a maturity and a restraint also at the same time. And maybe it is because you had more control over that space. In you know, you kind of went back to do it yourself a little bit in the sense where you were collaborating maybe just with a couple of people, and it really has that true sense of of slow slow core to its core. I mean, it's just so good. And I love your your your vocals together. I think that complement, you know, this angelic, you know, with the more of like the downtone, just like we really want to explore that.

James Barry: 19:35

Yeah, I think it's a unique thing for Link 3, like for this project. Like, you don't really see that too often, but when you do it's always you'll feel like it's such a harmonious thing, like the male and female vocals together, and it's really fun, like like having that. So I'm really excited to explore that more.

colleyc: 19:51

Yeah, me too. Me too. I'm I'm really excited that you guys explore that more because I think that that will just amp it up that whole you know, the next level. And yeah, absolutely. So I guess guys, my last question is like what what's the future hold? What are you guys looking at for 2026 in regard to Link 3?

James Barry: 20:13

I think the Link 3 like on the outline was kind of a you know progressing towards something more legitimate and more I wish I always find it hard to explain, like trying to make Link 3 something that can leave like a footprint in in the you know music, you know, culture of today and something that can be critically received and looked at as a serious project. And I think on the outline is really the was a that's what I was trying to do is you know go forward with that, and I think it did that. So now I feel really inspired. This year, of course, like I would love to get another project out that's going down that same path, but a lot clearer, also a lot sonically a lot better. Like I would love the dream is to have a studio debut this year, like to actually get in the studio and and get a producer and put something together that really fulfills that sound. I feel like it's about time for the Link3 had a producer. There's amazing studios in Montreal as well. That's yeah, I'm really excited to say to research and get into that. Like I've looked at a few and there are some really cool ones. I'd love to get some violin on the album, the next album. And check out Hotel de Tango. I mean Hotel. That's one I have heard of.

colleyc: 21:28

Yeah, I would love I need to check it out more. Yeah, yeah. And they they have all those strings. Godspeed is, you know, a product of that. And strings and green.

James Barry: 21:39

I didn't know that. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Well, I'm definitely gonna check that out. That sounds incredible. I because I'd heard of that.

colleyc: 21:44

I'd heard of Hotel to Tango, but I had an um yeah, actually, you know, and I think one of the members is actually one that runs the studio, right? So would be the producer. Anyway, I think that would be a cool marriage, just throwing that out there.

James Barry: 21:59

But that could have. You can be scared of the light. This is giving you a lot of fun.

colleyc: 22:04

Totally. Totally. I want to thank you guys. This has been really great. And kind of like how it started where you just put something out and just keep doing it. Never question yourselves. I think that what you guys are going to have right now is a support to it. And I think it will turn into a nice big huge bonfire eventually. So keep doing what you guys do, and I'm super happy you're in Montreal. I'll be looking now when you guys are going to be playing a show, and I'd love to come and chat with you guys a bit more. This has been a lot of fun. So thanks so much.

James Barry: 22:36

Thank you so much for having us.

colleyc: 22:38

Cheers, guys.