Melbourne astral space-rockers Alithia (Greek for ‘truth, verity’) blast off for their national ‘Psychedelic Street Dogs’ tour where they’ll perform songs from the debut LP, ‘To The Edge Of Time’.
“We recorded that album in Budapest, Hungary when we did our first European tour and it was a really awesome experience,” says bassist, Tibor Gede.
“We were in a studio that was inside an arts precinct. The building was an old, 19th century ex-college turned into a space that had heaps of 24-hour recording studios, rehearsal spaces, community radio stations and exhibition spaces.”
Released in 2014, ‘To The Edge Of Time’ album tour has been a long time in the making, and will include the band’s first festival headline when they play El Grande Festival in Brisbane. “It’s the first time we’ve headlined a festival, so we’re really excited and it’s a cool bill of bands doing really left-of-centre things,” Tibor says.
“You’re definitely going to see some bands that don’t sound like anyone and they’re not doing the typical indie rock thing, so it’s a really awesome night of music.
“We’ve been on the road a lot in the past couple of years, so we’ve got a lot of friends in every state so the tour’s going to be heaps of fun. We’re going to have a big party every night and everywhere we go; we’re going to be catching up with friends and making new ones, so we can’t wait.”
Alithia are currently working on a follow-up to ‘To The Edge Of Time’, but Tibor is looking forward to getting out of studio and back to what he says makes the band happiest: playing live to adoring fans. “We’re really a live band, so we kind of get depressed when we’re not playing gigs, we get a bit down.
“Ideally, we’re the kind of band that would always be on the road; we would be totally happy not being home and just being on the road if that was possible. We’d be rapt because we’re built for that: we sleep on any floors, whatever, it doesn’t matter. We love the experience. We really thrive on it so it doesn’t matter how rough it gets, it actually just makes us excited.”
Although the forthcoming album is as yet untitled and a release date has not been confirmed, Tibor says the band have been hard at work on new material.
While progress has been good, he says they’re taking their time in producing a well-structured and meaningful record. “We’re demoing it right at the moment… I’d say maybe we’ve three-quarters written it and we’re going to Turkey in the European summer; we’ll go to Istanbul to record it and then the release date really depends on label plans.
“Also we don’t want to rush it. Sometimes these things take longer and it doesn’t matter if you lose a bit of time as long as you create something that you really think is awesome. At the same time though, you don’t want to be perennial; you don’t want to get to the point where you just take forever for the sake of taking forever.”
Alithia Tour Dates
Sat 27 Feb - Cherry Bar (Melbourne)Fri 4 Mar - The Factory Floor (Sydney)
Fri 11 Mar - El Grande Festival @ New Globe Theatre (Brisbane)
