Features
Seekae: ‘We’re Too Busy Forging Battle Plans’
By Andrew McMillen
While other bands are out partying, Sydney’s Seekae are too busy playing LAN games backstage. Ahead of the release of second album '+DOME', they talk to ANDREW MCMILLEN about poverty, illegal downloading and how they recently “annihilated” Cloud Control on ‘Starcraft’.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Since releasing their debut album The Sound Of Trees Falling On People in December 2008, Sydney trio Seekae have become one of the most interesting independent acts in the country. Both in the studio and on stage, their set-up consists of laptops, MPCs, live drums, keyboards and melodica; their sound, a distinctive and complex brew of electronica. Rarely do vocals work their way into the mix, yet the band have a reputation for delivering: they won a Sydney Music, Art and Culture (SMAC) award in 2009 for ‘Best Live Act’, and re-released Trees with a bonus disc of remixes (and a PVT cover) upon signing with indie label Rice Is Nice.
So how have the trio – John Hassell on synth/guitar, Alex Cameron on synth/drums and George Nicholas on synth/melodica – spent the couple of years between their debut album and its forthcoming follow-up, +DOME? Playing too much Starcraft, according to Nicholas, though he confirms they still attempt to record new ideas each day, even if most of it is “absolute garbage”. It’s fitting that a video game would distract these three from their artistic calling; they were originally named after the DOS game Commander Keen, before shortening to a stylised version of its initials after discovering that the name had already been taken.
Though Cameron was initially scheduled to do this interview, some unexpected laptop problems ahead of a show supporting Mount Kimbie in Perth on the next night – simply, a computer wouldn’t turn on – caused him to flee to the nearest repairs store, leaving Nicholas to fill his shoes.
There was an article published in triple j mag in March last year, where you wrote: "Musicians don't have any money. They spend all the money they earned on new instruments and laptops." Is this still the case?
George: Yeah. I think I’m the poorest I’ve ever been, actually. I don’t think we’re going to hit the jackpot for a while. I hope we do, but we’ve still been eating spaghetti for a couple of weeks now, waiting for our cheque to come in.
You’re the poorest now that you’ve ever been?
Yeah. I mean, we put some money into recording the album, and stuff like that. What people don’t understand is that, in order to write an album, you have to take a lot of time off work. You have to dedicate a lot of your time to doing it. I think that’s the main reason why we’re so poor, I guess. But it’s not that bad. We’re not entirely starving. [Laughs]
Does the lack of money bother you?
No, it’s alright. I mean, it does bother me, because it’s always hard juggling a shitty day job and a band. A lot of my friends are going and getting real jobs and careers, but I look at this and just see – although I’m not being paid that much for it – it’s good to be able to do this stuff, and have people listen to it. It’s all fine. It’s all gravy! [Laughs]
You also wrote that you have to “try and convince security that an MPC drum machine is pretty much the same thing as a laptop, and that it was designed to destroy dancefloors, not jets”. I take it this conversation happens every time you're in an airport.
[Laughs] Yeah. We always get a few snickers and laughs every time we go through the x-ray machine. I carry all my stuff in my backpack. I carry my laptop, my soundcard, my hard drive, my MPC, my Kaos pad, all in one bag. There’s like 10 different things. It’s really absurd when you see someone taking out all these suspicious-looking things out of their bag. We get a lot of strange looks. But we always make it through, although every single we time go through, we get the explosives check.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
I remember seeing PVT tweet a photo from their tour in August last year, where you guys were playing Starcraft via LAN backstage before a show. The caption was "Rocknroll".
[Laughs] That’s indicative of all of our touring experiences. Instead of going out and partying, and doing all that stuff you’re supposed to do on tour, we’re usually just backstage watching YouTube, or playing Starcraft. The PVT guys were fantastic, but on the Cloud Control tour it was really good because Alistair, Luke and Jeremy are all big Starcraft players, so we were able to drop into Launceston’s only internet café and have a cheeky game. It was great.
Is there an underground league of indie musicians playing ‘Starcraft’ that we don’t know about?
Oh, maybe! I only know those guys. Actually, Ivan [Vizintin] and Anthony [Warwick] from Ghoul plays as well. Anthony is in the Gold League … I don’t know if that means anything to you, but it means he’s really good. [Laughs] There’s a few people who play. It’s definitely my favourite game. And I think we can all blame that game itself on the fact that this album took three years to make.
So video games are a big source of procrastination for the band?
Yeah. They work against us. They suck all the creativity out of us. We’re too busy forging battle plans, and thinking of ways to take down the Zerg overlords.
Out of yourselves and Cloud Control, who dominated?
We played a few games. We played a bit of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare. I think they won in that, but in Starcraft 2, we took them down. We annihilated them, in two or three matches. Straight wins.
Some of your stuff reminds me of the soundtrack of a Nintendo GameCube game called Metroid Prime.
I’ve never heard played that. I don’t know what that is. What’s that like?
It’s a first-person shooter game based on the old side-scrolling Metroid games on the NES and SNES. There’s an ice world section, whose soundtrack has an electronic feel. Some of your music reminds me of that – which is a good thing, because it’s a great soundtrack.
Oh, OK. Great! I’m happy about that. I mean, what makes a video game good for me; it’s not just the graphics and the gameplay, but also the soundtrack. I think it was the second Splinter Cell, which had a really amazing soundtrack. It was made by [Brazilian electronic artist] Amon Tobin. I liked the game, but it was really the soundtrack that kept me playing. It was constantly changing and evolving. I think that’s a really important part of gaming. This whole interview is about games!
Is that OK with you?
It’s good! Heaps better than the usual, boring questions. It’s fine.
Do you have a favourite game soundtrack?
It’d be the second Splinter Cell game, or Icy Towers, which was an old platform game. It had a really cool, repetitive hip-hop loop behind it. That’s an old game.
That’s the last of my gaming questions, unfortunately. What's with that quote on your Facebook, in the “About” section, where it says "They're just pressing spacebar."?
Oh! [Laughs] That was because we played an absolutely dreadful show one night, supporting Mouse On Mars at the Oxford Arts Factory. We were really under-prepared. My computer was breaking, and all this kind of stuff. Just a terrible, terrible show; the worst show we’ve ever played. The crowd was getting a bit antsy, I think. We got heckled by this dude who yelled, “They’re just pressing space bar!” And the whole crowd laughed. It was one of the most embarrassing things we’ve ever done. That’s why that’s on there, because some dickhead yelled that out. We weren’t just pressing space bar; we were pressing other keys, as well. [Laughs]
I read in a past interview that you guys try to record each day. Do you treat making music like a job?
It’s not like a job, because it’s fun. Sometimes there’s a lot of pressure, but a lot of it’s just recreational. It’s leisure. You get home from work, or university, and you turn on your computer or get out your microphone, and you make something. It gives that day a certain amount of validity. You can say, “Oh, I wasted a whole day at work doing mind-numbing, boring stuff, but I actually created something that I like!” But usually you don’t create something you like; you create something that’s absolute garbage. But that’s the good thing about making something every day: nine days out of 10 will be crap, but one day you’ll make something good. You’ve just got to keep up the momentum.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
You keep referring to mind-numbing, crappy jobs. Is this true of your situation?
Yes. I’ve got a pretty bad job. I work in an office in Chatswood, transcribing people’s conversations. It used to be really exciting, but I’m getting really sick of the same people having the same boring conversations. It’s for a voice recognition software company.
As a journalist, I feel your pain.
Because you’re going to have to listen back to this interview, and transcribe the whole thing! [Laughs] It’s terrible.
Moving on. Is it true that the track 'Rock's Performance' is named after a MySpace comment?
It is, actually, yeah. A chap from Italy, I think, didn’t have the best grasp of English. He made this incredible, incredible comment chock-a-block with misused superlatives and terrible grammar. And he finished it off with “rocks performance”. So as a tribute to this guy, we thought we’d name a track after him. And it happens to be the most un-rockish track on the album.
Is it a pain in the arse to name songs?
Yeah. We don’t put too much thought into it, really. It’s not a pain in the arse, but it’s a thing that none of us really read into. They’re totally arbitrary. I think the main thing is because none of the tracks really have lyrics, there’s nothing to really name them after. Even the ones that do have lyrics, like ‘Wool’; I don’t think Ivan [Vizintin, of Ghoul] sings “wool” at all. It was called ‘Turn To Stone’, but we called it ‘Wool’ just because … I don’t know. We’ve never really named tracks after lyrics.
How do you pronounce the new album's name?
Plus dome. A lot of people have been saying “dome”. But it’s definitely “plus dome”. You need the “plus” there. That’s half of it.
Tell me about the final song, 'You'll'. It's the least Seekae-sounding track I've heard from you.
That was a weird one. That came up late in the mix, actually. John was just havin’ a sing, and playing some guitar. He played it to me, and then we wrote a rogue synth line at the end, and put some effects on it. We weren’t really thinking about having it as a track, and then we were like, “Ah, fuck it. It’s fine.” It doesn’t really fit, but I guess why it’s the last track.
Are you going to pursue that style of songwriting more in future releases, or was it a once-off?
I have no idea. Maybe. Probably not that exact kind of thing. I don’t think there’s going to be that many vocals [in future tracks]. But … could be. We haven’t started writing new material yet. We’re going to the UK in May, and staying at John’s Mum’s house in Cambridge. We’re going to play some stuff over there. We’ll start writing an EP, or an album over there. That’s when we’ll start thinking about Seekae stuff. For now, in terms of writing new material, we’re more focused on writing solo stuff.
I know you have other recording monikers, but I want to keep this conversation to Seekae. You mentioned the track 'Wool' from the first album, featuring Ivan, which was one of the most striking songs. Will you be looking to collaborate with vocalists much in future recordings?
Yeah, I’d love to. It’d be really good to collaborate with vocalists. It’s always good to have a vocal on a track; I mean, in terms of getting exposure, having a vocal is an easy way for people to relate to a song. That’s not our main focus, but I definitely wouldn’t dismiss the idea of having some guest vocalists on the next release.
Well, look at PVT, who added vocals on their last album. Maybe it’s coincidental, but they seem to be getting more exposure as a result of having words, and vocal hooks in their songs now.
Certainly. Not having vocals, you’re immediately losing three-quarters of the music listening audience by having instrumental music. That’s totally understandable why they’ve had a rise in popularity, because they’ve added catchy lyrics. Their album is a lot more accessible than their last one.
On the topic of PVT, I thought your cover of PVT's 'O Soundtrack My Heart' was beautiful. I know you've done some remixes, but have you done any other proper covers?
Thank you. We sometimes do a live version of White Town’s ‘Your Woman’. You know that [sings], “I could never be your woman”? We play that one sometimes, which is pretty fun. I think that’s about it. I know John’s got a version of a J-Lo song up his sleeve. We’ve got a few, but we don’t usually play them live.
I saw you live for the first time in April last year, at Empire in Brisbane. I was impressed by how you all synchronise your bobbing to the beat. Is that planned, or unintentional?
[Laughs] It’s just a natural, bodily response, I guess. We’ve got the snare drum to keep us in time. We don’t have any otherworldly connection between the three of us. It’s a purely natural thing.
“Instead of going out and partying … we’re usually just backstage watching YouTube, or playing Starcraft.”
At that show, Alex only played live drums for a few songs - less than half of the set, I think. How do you decide which tracks to live-drum on?
A few of the tracks on the new album have got live drums, but we play it by ear, really. We don’t want to force live drums onto things that don’t need it. I think roughly half of the songs now have live drums. We see if live drums work, and if they don’t, we’re pretty happy to scrap them. I think it’s important to add the drum element into it, just to give it another element of … live-ness, I guess.
You're touring the UK and Europe from May onwards. Are those the band's first shows overseas?
Yeah. I’m really excited about it. We’re playing at The Great Escape festival in Brighton, and then a few other shows that I can’t talk about, because they haven’t been confirmed and it’d be really embarrassing if I told you and we didn’t end up playing them. But we’ll be playing a few shows over there.
I have a feeling that, because you’re instrumental, it’ll take away any language barriers that would exist for other English-speaking bands playing in Europe.
I hope so, yeah! I’ve never actually thought about that. It’s an interesting point.
Hopefully some foreigners get into your stuff.
Yeah, there won’t be that communication breakdown.
Finally – I saw that the new album leaked a couple of days ago.
Oh, I know! It’s pretty bad. I don’t know how that got out there. It must’ve been one of the people we gave out press copies to. But I’m not that fussed, really. I’ve been downloading illegal music since I was a young kid. It is a bit frustrating, but I’m kind of just happy that it was a good-quality rip, and that they had all the track names right. I know that our label will be a bit angry about that, but there’s nothing you can do, really.
Do you consider that kind of thing lost income for the band?
Yeah, it is. But it’s also increased exposure. It might even out.
You’d think that the people who’re downloading it are those who rabidly want to hear it, and who’ll therefore go to your shows, and buy your merch.
Exactly. It was going to get illegally posted on the internet at some stage, anyway. It would be cool if we could have a big launch, where everyone could hear it around the same time, rather than dribs and drabs of some people hearing it, and then a few more. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. I’m not that fussed
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