If You Seek…
Text: Jasper Marlow
SEEKAE are a three-piece electronica outfit from Sydney. They make music perfect for socialising, sex and scrabble. Recently I sat down with George, one heavily bearded piece of the SEEKAE puzzle at a pub in Newtown. He had just returned from exploring the world. We talked about all the important issues facing the world and their upcoming remix album!
Jasper Marlow: What was travelling like?
George Nicholas: Good! I went over to Chicago for 6 months. Doing a sound design thing for COFA. My major was analogue synthesis. They have one of the world’s biggest analogue synthesisers.
JM: How do you feel about the Analogue vs. Digital thing?
GN: I don’t use Vinyl personally…Getting Analogue instruments nowadays is pretty difficult. We use hardware but they’re usually digital…for a while there, we were doing live shows where we didn’t even have a computer…but now we do.
JM: Do you guys still not midi-sync live?
GN:Yeah. I still think its kind of good. It brings another element of danger to the whole performance aspect. This way we have to trigger things with our hands and we have to use our heads.
JM: Has stuff gone wrong?
GN: Yeah. I think it’s the nature of performing with all these electro-instruments… something will fuck up.
JM: The music Seekae makes is pretty down-tempo..how accurately does that reflect your personal music taste?
GN: Well. …. I don’t know. I used to listen to some Techno. But usually its been mostly Hip-Hop, IDM and anything electronic… post-rock and psychedelic music…I like ‘pretty’ music as well. Mogwai, Sigur Ros.
JM: How was the response to your first album The Sound of Trees falling on People?
GN: Pretty good. Everyone we spoke to seemed to like it. Got good reviews. But didn’t get enough distribution.
JM: How hard is it to get distribution?
GN: Fuck, I don’t really know.….we didn’t get it….although we actually just signed last week for distribution….at a label called ‘Rice is Nice’. It is going to be in JB-HIFI in a bit.
JM: You started on a new album?
GN: Not really. We got a lot of new ideas… I kind of find in retrospect, the past album was a little bit too ‘happy’. Too nice. So we’re hoping the next release is going to be a lot darker. Get distorted guitars. Get dirtier. Bit more experimental.
JM: All 3 of you produce… how do you guys start making a track..
GN: It depends. Someone will usually come in, John for example on his Synthesiser and will have something written and play it. Then Alex will put some samples on top or vice versa…or someone will write something on their computer…and we work from there.
JM: Tell us about the remix album?
GN: It’s four bands we work with. All friends. Parades, Bear Hug, Ghoul and Mega-Stick Fanfare. We’re doing remixes of their tracks. Right now we’re actually sharing a studio with guys from Bear-hug in Alexandria. We’re going to have that launch on with all the profits from the CD going to FBI.
JM: How important has FBI been to you guys?
GN: Pretty important. They gave us Album of the Week, which pretty much helped us, 1000% and gave us exposure. All the presenters are fucking rad as well. Always happy to have us on!
Catch SEEKAE’s remix album launch tonight at the Oxford Art Factory in Sydney.
…And if you miss that you can see them again on August 28 at The Metro.
