Success seems like it’s only a footstep away as TEAL members JOE SURGEY and ANDREW QUIZON sit down with LOUIE SMITH to discuss the launch of their new EP, Hearth, and the realisation that “there’s more than just rockin’”.
You’ve been hard at work on your upcoming EP, Hearth, with producer Lucius Borich at Keysound Studios, how’s that been going?
Andrew – Yeah, it’s taken so long but it’s coming out on August 22nd and we start touring it on the 28th.
Joe – It’s just a case of getting it together now that we’re on a label. We’re on Birds Robe Records, which is like 65 Days of Static, Sleep Makes Waves and The Red Paintings.
I believe you played the HiFi with The Red Paintings a few weeks ago?
Andrew – Yeah it was, funny.
Joe – It was an experience.
Andrew – We met their bassist Mitch, he was sick.
Joe – It’s crazy, just all the different alleys that people come to find music and why they do it is interesting and sometimes extremely infuriating. But we met a lot of cool musicians/people.
How was recording with Lucius compared to working with producer Greg Stace?
Andrew – Oh so different, they’re polar opposites. Stace records us and does everything super quick right there, but grids everything to the track. I mean all of our tracks were first take kind of deals.
Joe – He got what he needed and then worked around it.
Andrew – Surrounds (EP produced by Greg Stace) sounds pretty good, I’m heaps happy with it.
Joe – Yeah I’m really happy with how it came out.
Andrew – Lucius is about the all natural, in every way.
Joe – Getting an authentic live sound. It was a lot of fun in the studio with ‘Loosh’.
Andrew – Just tonnes of vibe.
Joe – Trying to capture the soul of music and that kind of bullshit, which was really good. We had chakra crystals and all that kind of stuff. He’s a lovely dude too, got us all onto all kinds of organic shit. I still drink his tea. He taught me how to make a sweet vocal tea with ginger and that kind of junk.
What can we expect from Hearth?
Joe – The sound that we have now is kind of like a culmination of everything travelling up to this point. Now we’re comfortable together and we can start actually making some fucking noise. We want to do really dangerous, stupid stuff and our manager (Hamish Smith) is scared shitless.
Andrew – Ha, yeah Hamish is a little concerned. It’s heaps funny.
Joe – We want people to be scared, because that’s what I like to listen to. Scary stuff.
Andrew – It takes a good while to warm up to good albums. Hamish should be a little freaked out.
Exactly, you need to push the boundaries in order to stay progressive.
Joe – That’s it hey, it’s like fuck it. Fuck trying to be comfortable because that’s what everyone does.
So I hear you have some surprises up your sleeve?
Joe – Ahh well we’ve got a new member, Shane, on drums.
Yeah, wasn’t Andy having some trouble with his arms?
Andrew – Yeah and still teaching drums!
Joe – He’s on the guitar now and smashing it. But that’s our big announcement. We’re mixing up the whole thing because of the new sound and because of the line up change. It’s inspired us.
Andrew – We’re going to get all MIDI! We’ve got a few songs that were written with MIDI that we want to change into band songs.
Joe – It’s just like, that’s the music we listen to and we’ve all grown up enough to be comfortable in making that kind of music, rather than doing what we can physically perform as a band.
Andrew – Plus we get to switch from our instruments to that! (Pointing at the Ableton Launch Pad).
Do you write together when you’re jamming or do you write individually?
Joe – It’s always been a mix.
Andrew – Lately we’ve just been trying to write all the skeletons and then fleshing them out as a band.
Joe – We’re diggin’ on the idea of collaborating a lot more rather than Mitch and I sitting in a room getting the full song ready on two acoustic guitars and then plugging in and turning it up. It’s a lot more dynamic.
The song ‘Use Of Light’ from earlier this year starts off really ambient and then by the end it’s just intense screaming. I haven’t really heard anything like that from Teal before.
Joe – Ok, so ages and ages ago I did a demo and I brought it to Mitch and he said this thing to me, he said “I feel like that’s more of a piece than a band song” and I thought about that for ages. I guess that idea just kind of transcribes into ‘Use of Light’ and where we’re trying to go musically. There’s that idea that people like what’s familiar to them but we wanna do stuff that comes from the other side, and grows on them.
Yeah I can see that influence in the song. It’s Teal but more refined.
Andrew – Well there you go. There’s more than just rockin’.
Joe – The thing is we’ve always communicated how happy we are with each other and each other’s ideas. Even when Mitch is overseas, like now, we know that we can demo shit and he’ll come back and love it. So that’s the dynamic of Teal, ha ha.
You’ve got a bit of a following now as well as some out of town fans.
Joe – There were two disabled guys from Sweden asking for our autograph on Facebook. I kindly replied and told them to get in touch with our email and thanks for the lovely message, but they never got back to us. I hate to think it was a spammer and I kept seeing it, so I kind of did the worse thing, and deleted it, ha ha.
Andrew – Now we just look like collldd muthaasss, ha ha. But your right, Newcastle is looking good.
Joe – We have a few super fans.
Andrew – They’re awesome. They come to all the Cambo shows and sing along to all our songs. When we played The Factory in Newtown, they came down just to see us and then missed their train just to stay and chat. In fact you should look up Posto’s Kitchen on Youtube. That shit’s grand.
To finish up, where can we purchase the new EP?
Andrew – We’ve got pre-orderable Ep’s on the Teal Facebook page and tickets for the launch. We are also doing a crazy online stream with The Music (www.themusic.com) on the release date. The Sydney launch will be on the 27th of September at Spectrum.
August 28th – Yours & Owls – Wollongong
September 5th – The Brunswick Hotel – Melbourne
September 7th – The Epsy – Melbourne
September 13th – The Elephant Arms – Brisbane
September 19th – The Small Ballroom – Newcastle
September 20th – The Entrance Leagues Club – Central Coast
September 27th – Spectrum – Sydney
Nice, sounds interesting. Nice little run of shows there. 😉