New Zealand's City Of Souls are setting up an absolutely epic 2019 with a slew of new announcements and signings, their appearances at Progfest (Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane), and brand new music and music video in order to whet the appetite of the hordes of awaiting fans.
The six-piece Auckland-bred alternative-progressive powerhouse have signed to Australian record label Wild Things Records (also home to The Ocean, Circles, AlithiA) worldwide for the release of their debut album due later this year.
"We don't want to 'Be' anything or adhere to a particular idea of what our sound should be," the group's vocalist Richie Simpson says. "We simply want to create for the sake of creating and to leave something behind that I am proud of."
Eli Chamravi, head of Wild Thing Records is beaming about the signing. "I'm honoured to have New Zealand's premier alternative/ progressive rock act, City Of Souls, join the Wild Thing Records family.
"Their new album to be released later this year is a phenomenal body of work, and I think they're onto something very special."
The band have also released a new video for 'Wolf' lifted from their forthcoming album.
Ahead of the Progfest shows this weekend, Richie shares 5 tips to help you write your own music.
1. Listening is the most important thing
Really listening to what the song needs comes from enveloping yourself in the mood of the song, feeling where to speak and when not to. It's much like getting a read on a conversation; as I've gotten older, I listen more and that begins to show in the music. I used to try and do too much, prove too much and am still in the process of unlearning that.2. Leave space
All to often with instrumentation, we try to make too much noise and in turn the size of the music suffers; even though you think adding more is going to increase the size of your sound, it generally doesn't.I've tried to get more minimalist because things just SOUND better, especially if all of the instruments are recorded beautifully. Getting busy all the time with your ideas leaves no space for the sounds to vibrate with each other and create mood.
3. Make stupid noises
I begin writing vocals by skating or finding melodies and phrasing that fits the music by using nonsensical words. I record that first, which helps me discover which melodies, vowel sounds and placement of consonants work best.Once I have that down, comes the extremely difficult part of injecting meaning into the jibberish phrasing framework, aka making jibberish words into real ones with similar syllable counts, consonants and vowel sounds.
It's surprising sometimes where that takes you in terms of subject matter. Almost like improv where a word is thrown at you and you have to develop a meaning around it based on what you are feeling emotionally.
4. Don't change your ideas to quickly
Telling a meaningful story over music can be an absolute nightmare when the ideas are constantly changing without being set-up properly. It's like reading a book then skipping two chapters; you disconnect as a listener because all of a sudden there's no frame of reference for what you're reading.This is a huge problem of mine with a lot of modern progressive music. You can't attach properly or meditate on an idea.
I think Tool do it well because there's always a frame of reference or constant red line through the song. Even if they veer off into crazy territory, there's still something that holds the listener to the original, singular idea of the song.
5. Have fun
When the energy is there and everyone is relaxed, enjoy it. It really shows in the recording if you try and capture it as soon as possible while the idea is still fresh and everyone is passionate about it. It happens rarely, so when it does HIT RECORD!Progfest 2019
Sat 26 Jan - The Croxton Bandroom (Melbourne)Sun 27 Jan - The Factory Theatre (Sydney)
Sun 28 Jan - The Valley Drive In/The Brightside (Brisbane)
