PLEASURE, NOT TERROR
SYDNEY LEFTFIELD ELECTRONICA TRIO SEEKAE RELEASED THEIR CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED DEBUT ALBUM THE SOUND OF TREES FALLING ON PEOPLE BACK IN 2008. MATT O’NEILL QUIZZES GEORGE NICHOLAS ON WHY THE BAND HAVE TAKEN SO LONG TO DELIVER ITS FOLLOW-UP +DOME. he sound of Seekae could perhaps best be characterised as the sound of several contrast ing genres brawling in slow-motion. Quiet and contemplative with blasts of minor aggression and throbbing undercurrents of malicious intent, the Sydney trio’s work has always been something of an unpredictable composite – encompassing aspects of hip hop, IDM, ambient and any number of additional genre splinters without betraying any clear allegiance to one specific genre.
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The Sound Of Trees Falling On People, the band’s 2008 debut album, is a case-in-point. Haphazardly juggling shuffling hip hop rhythms with pristine electronic manipulations, waves of ambient texture and a smattering of live instrumentation (including, surreally, a handful of delay-heavy melodica lines), The Sound Of Trees... sounded both clinically electronic and spontaneously raw. While cohesive and consistent, the record was very much defined by its st ylistic variety and stripped-back sound. “I do think we have specific sounds. I mean, from my perspect ive, there are a few specific sounds I associate with Seekae. Speaking from a technical standpoint, there’s a specific synth sound that is associated with the band: a square wave with reverb on it!” George Nicholas – one third of the trio of multi-inst rumentalists and producers – laughs. “In terms of like a sound in the way the songs are const ructed, we’re trying to make one. We’d like to change it with every release, though.” Th is could, in part, explain why the Seekae have seen so much success over the past three years. In addition to being signed to boutique Sydney label Rice Is Nice, the trio have supported acts as high profi le as PVT and Midnight Juggernauts, earned favourable reviews from mainst ream inst itutions like Rolling Stone and had their debut album described as one of the top ten albums of the decade by legendary independent Aust ralian radio station FBi. “I think the vast majority of our audience is act ually in that kind of indie scene as opposed to dance or elect ronic kind of audiences,” Nicholas considers. “It’s really quite interest ing. We toured with Cloud Control and we were really surprised to find ourselves kind of embraced by their audiences each night. We kind of thought the music wouldn’t work well with those audiences – but there you go. I’m not really sure why it’s happened like that, to be honest. “I don’t know what indie is as a genre but I think it’s a lot broader than a genre or category like techno,” the producer reflects. “Maybe indie listeners are a lot more broad-minded because their sources of incoming music tastes are a lot broader than one specific genre or category? I don’t know. If you look at something like Pitchfork, all kinds of music gets posted on a website like that and that could maybe explain why a band like ours has managed to do so well.” Of course, such st ylist ic confl ict could also explain why the band have taken over two years to deliver a follow-up record. Originally discussed as far back as late 2009, Seekae’s second album +Dome has only recently been awarded with an act ual release and one can’t help but suspect that the trio’s diverse st ylist ic interests were the key obstacle.
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“We were all working on solo material and I guess there were a few differences in opinion about what the album should sound like,” Nicholas explains. “We scrapped a lot of material and we re-worked a lot of material. It was only about four or five months ago that we really started to get to work crafting an album. Before that, we just didn’t seem to have a really st rong focus as to what we wanted from it. “After the fi rst album, which was really elect ronicbased and computerbased, we thought we’d st rip it back and do something really live with just guitar, drums and synths and go for a really raw kind of album – but we realised that wasn’t such a good idea,” he elaborates. “After that, we were listening to lots of hip hop and decided to go in that
direct ion – but that was kind of shit as well – and then we were here.” Impressively, though, the record is act ually Seekae’s most focused and ambitious st atement to date. +Dome veers from dense st ring sect ions to shuddering elect ronic beats and glacial ambience. There is a polish and consistency to +Dome which seems to almost contradict the band’s previously collage-heavy approach to genre. “I think that came hand-in-hand with writing tracks to put on an album as opposed to writing tracks just for fun. You know, I don’t think the fi rst album was intentionally lo-fi or poorly-mixed or whatever but it didn’t have the ambition we kind of had with this one,” Nicholas says of the record. “There was the intention that these tracks would be released and showcased so we took them to a st udio and had them mixed and mastered and brought them together like a real album. “You know, we ended up with something quite different,” the producer laughs. “I don’t think we ended up with anything as simple as a hybrid of those two earlier ideas. You can’t really put this down to one genre. Maybe that’s its downside. Maybe it’s not as consistent as some other albums. I do think it’s a good album, though. I’m already thinking ahead to the next one – though, admittedly, that could be a long way off...” WHO: Seekae WHAT: +Dome (Rice Is Nice/Popfrenzy) WHERE & WHEN: Woodland (Brisbane)
Friday 15 April, Manning Bar (Sydney) Saturday 16 April, The Toff (Melbourne) Monday 25 April