Like the leopard itself, a live performance by Western Australian duo Leopard Lake is a rare and wonderful thing.
Comprised of vocalist Storm Wyness and producer Sam Ford, Leopard Lake will be on-stage as part of this year's Fremantle Winter Music Festival presented by RTRFM. “We're stoked to be a part of it this year,” Sam says of the festival.
“We love playing at Mojo's; we've done a lot of shows there and we can't wait to be a part of it. We love RTR, and we don't play that often so when we do play it's really exciting for us.
“When we put on our own shows we like to give it time between shows and have diverse line-ups. I really love the line-up for the [Fremantle] Winter Music Festival and can't wait to get back to Mojo's and have another show.”
Leopard Lake, who released an EP last year, have spent this year working on finishing and releasing a backlog of songs, including their recent track 'Heart Of Yours'.
“So far this year, we've had a bunch of songs that we started writing at the end of last year after our EP came out; we've been trying to put out a single every couple of months just to keep putting out our music, basically,” Sam says.
“There's no real album or EP necessarily in mind, it's more [that] we're going to continue to put out tracks as we finish them off, which is cool because we get to put out music more often doing it in that process.”
Sam goes on to explain why he and Storm prefer releasing new tracks one-by-one, as opposed to complete bodies of work. “It gives you a lot more freedom,” he says.
“You don't so much have to write in a story as you would on an EP where everything has to lock together; you can write a track like what we put out earlier this year with 'Heart Of Yours'.
“We've got a new single coming out soon called 'Slow Motion', which is a totally different vibe, and we couldn't do that if was on an EP – well, you could but it wouldn't necessarily flow too well. So you get a little bit of creative freedom when you're putting out songs on an individual basis.”
As well as being one half of Leopard Lake, Sam is also a producer/ engineer at Tone City Recording Studio that he owns.
He says his work producing for acts such as POND, GUM, Abbe May and many others has gifted him a broad palette of influences to use in Leopard Lake. “It's definitely impacted it, and in a positive way,” he says.
“For example, I've worked on a lot of guitar-heavy music and also on a lot of electronic stuff, like the last Abbe May record was a shift towards that, and it all filters in and blends together.
“Leopard Lake is a blend between an electronic sound and guitar-driven music with ambient music in there as well.”
