Seekae

By now you’ve surely heard “Somebody That I Used To Know,” the surprise hit by left-field Australian artist Gotye. After all, the video has racked up, at last count, over 135 million streams on YouTube — more than Beyonce’s “Run The World,” Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” or anything on Kanye West’s Vevo channel.

In recent months, a flurry of hype has descended upon Gotye and his Oceanic entourage. New Zealand native Kimbra, who currently lives in Australia and shares the mic on Gotye’s hit, was snatched up by Warner Music. Together, they’ve sold out every large venue between San Francisco and Stockholm.

The way things go in the music industry, we’d bet that a label exec is hungrily eying the Australian indie landscape in search of the next Gotye. And it just so happens that Australia is booming. The nation that brought us ACDC and Savage Garden is bursting at the seams right now with innovative acts, from catchy, disco-tinged Electro-Pop to harmonized Indie-Folk. - MTV

By now you’ve surely heard “Somebody That I Used To Know,” the surprise hit by left-field Australian artist Gotye. After all, the video has racked up, at last count, over 135 million streams on YouTube — more than Beyonce’s “Run The World,” Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” or anything on Kanye West’s Vevo channel.

In recent months, a flurry of hype has descended upon Gotye and his Oceanic entourage. New Zealand native Kimbra, who currently lives in Australia and shares the mic on Gotye’s hit, was snatched up by Warner Music. Together, they’ve sold out every large venue between San Francisco and Stockholm.

The way things go in the music industry, we’d bet that a label exec is hungrily eying the Australian indie landscape in search of the next Gotye. And it just so happens that Australia is booming. The nation that brought us ACDC and Savage Garden is bursting at the seams right now with innovative acts, from catchy, disco-tinged Electro-Pop to harmonized Indie-Folk. - MTV

American ears often unintentionally miss the music emanating from Australia. Sure, there's Cut Copy, Tame Impala, Wolfmother and the Avalaches, but barring an encyclopedic knowledge of Oz, the average citizen of the United States could probably only invoke AC/DC.

So it's not surprising that you've probably never heard of Sydney's Seekae. The strain of imported electronic music that typically makes waves stateside is of the eminently danceable variety, usually pushed by a large label like Modular or V2. The perfect example is Cut Copy, whose disco rhythms are struck by a four to the four pulse that Giorgio Moroder might envy. Of course, there are smaller outfits like Pivot, who record for the renowned electric label, Warp Records. And Stones Throw recently signed the swirling electronics-animated Jonti.

Indeed, Jonti recently shouted out Seekae as among his favorite acts in a piece for Impose Magazine, describing his experiences in the nascent Aussie beat scene as such: "every time I would feel like there was no chance my brand of beat-based music would ever have a chance in Australia, I would usually bump into one of [Seekae] in random spots and they would encourage me to go down that path which I've always appreciated. They've released 2 albums. The first album The Sound of Trees Falling on People is a classic and I still listen to it all the time -- almost always when travelling! They just released another album called '+Dome' and it's also a brilliantly vivid experience. But you gotta see them live, really really amazing live!"

Indeed, the trio sell out shows all across Australia, but have failed to make much of a dent in the United States so far. That should change with the release of their new record ("+Dome"), plus their first local appearance at the Low End Theory on Oct. 26. And while Seekae's music might be anomalous in their homeland, it definitely fits at home among the digital chaos in abundance at the Low End and in England.

Indeed, the group shares a stylistic kinship with the likes of Shlohmo and Mount Kimbie, as artists clearly inspired by dubstep and beat music, but who take things into more organic dimensions, with guitar pedals, loops and ambient washes of sound. In fact, Seekae half-jokingly describe themselves as "ghetto ambient."

I'm not sure what Australian ghettos look like, but I imagine they lack the brute concrete trappings of the American iteration. And though Seekae can get ambient, there's nothing ghetto about their music. Their brand of electronic is Arcadian, full of gentle glitches and ethereal atmosphere -- like the sort of thing you'd play at an Arbor Day celebration. That said, it should work fine in the first flushes of fall.

Today, Pop & Hiss is premiering "Sir." It ought to command suitable respect.

- See more at: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/09/pop-hiss-premiere-seekaee.html#sthash.Vp1n7r6C.dpuf - LA Times

American ears often unintentionally miss the music emanating from Australia. Sure, there's Cut Copy, Tame Impala, Wolfmother and the Avalaches, but barring an encyclopedic knowledge of Oz, the average citizen of the United States could probably only invoke AC/DC.

So it's not surprising that you've probably never heard of Sydney's Seekae. The strain of imported electronic music that typically makes waves stateside is of the eminently danceable variety, usually pushed by a large label like Modular or V2. The perfect example is Cut Copy, whose disco rhythms are struck by a four to the four pulse that Giorgio Moroder might envy. Of course, there are smaller outfits like Pivot, who record for the renowned electric label, Warp Records. And Stones Throw recently signed the swirling electronics-animated Jonti.

Indeed, Jonti recently shouted out Seekae as among his favorite acts in a piece for Impose Magazine, describing his experiences in the nascent Aussie beat scene as such: "every time I would feel like there was no chance my brand of beat-based music would ever have a chance in Australia, I would usually bump into one of [Seekae] in random spots and they would encourage me to go down that path which I've always appreciated. They've released 2 albums. The first album The Sound of Trees Falling on People is a classic and I still listen to it all the time -- almost always when travelling! They just released another album called '+Dome' and it's also a brilliantly vivid experience. But you gotta see them live, really really amazing live!"

Indeed, the trio sell out shows all across Australia, but have failed to make much of a dent in the United States so far. That should change with the release of their new record ("+Dome"), plus their first local appearance at the Low End Theory on Oct. 26. And while Seekae's music might be anomalous in their homeland, it definitely fits at home among the digital chaos in abundance at the Low End and in England.

Indeed, the group shares a stylistic kinship with the likes of Shlohmo and Mount Kimbie, as artists clearly inspired by dubstep and beat music, but who take things into more organic dimensions, with guitar pedals, loops and ambient washes of sound. In fact, Seekae half-jokingly describe themselves as "ghetto ambient."

I'm not sure what Australian ghettos look like, but I imagine they lack the brute concrete trappings of the American iteration. And though Seekae can get ambient, there's nothing ghetto about their music. Their brand of electronic is Arcadian, full of gentle glitches and ethereal atmosphere -- like the sort of thing you'd play at an Arbor Day celebration. That said, it should work fine in the first flushes of fall.

Today, Pop & Hiss is premiering "Sir." It ought to command suitable respect.

- See more at: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/09/pop-hiss-premiere-seekaee.html#sthash.Vp1n7r6C.dpuf - LA Times

See link for full feature - The Fly

See link for full feature - The Fly

The first gig of the evening sees a capacity crowd pack themselves into the intimate confines of one of Brighton’s newest and hippest hangouts to see a band whose credentials are more than worthy of the setting.

Seekae do for ambient Electronica what Mylo’s Destroy Rock & Roll did for Dance. Their hazy melodies are easy on the ears and their syncopated grooves are liable to cause involuntary gurning (you’ve been warned).

Colourful bursts of melodica blend seamlessly with swelling 8-bit synths whilst the elegantly controlled rhythms roll-on with more groove than your dad’s garage roof.

With the release of their stunning debut album back in 2009, the Australian three-piece are most likely to be lumped into the IDM category (a genre so vaguely titled it’s a wonder how the name’s stuck for so long). But there’s so much more class to this group than that label suggests.

As the lights dim, the unassuming young men couldn’t look more relaxed onstage, and dispel any pomposity with a look of genuine excitement on their faces. They stand casually at their alter-like consoles, thumbing the controls as if searching for that elusive 12” in their favourite record store.

As the sparse beats begin jutting from the speakers, the audience meanders slowly forwards, gazing longingly at the band like campers round a fire. The delicate intricacies and tight angles of the music are balanced perfectly by the groups’ keen ear for melody, even if it does take form through obscure lyric-less samples.

It doesn’t take long though before the award-winning band has the entire venue under their spell, with each member punching buttons on drum machines before switching to play the visceral beats on a real acoustic drum kit. At points, the crowd are so entranced that there’s an awkward silence as each song subsides (followed of course by a rapturous applause).

The great thing about this band is that they wear their influences on their sleeve. Selected Ambient Works, Music Has The Right To Children, Agaetis Byrjun, even; they all here in some form or another. But the key point is that Seekae filter their own creativity through all these inspirational records, to produce some of the most original and hypnotic digital music of the last ten years. And all without falling prey to pretence like so many electronic bands do.

There’s a deep melancholia to the overall vibe this evening that captivates and exorcises with the sweetest form of catharsis.

And as the show draws to a close, the audience look energized, as if having had the best therapy session of their lives.

Seekae’s debut album ‘The Sound Of Trees Falling On People’ is out now on Rice Is Nice. - XYZ

The first gig of the evening sees a capacity crowd pack themselves into the intimate confines of one of Brighton’s newest and hippest hangouts to see a band whose credentials are more than worthy of the setting.

Seekae do for ambient Electronica what Mylo’s Destroy Rock & Roll did for Dance. Their hazy melodies are easy on the ears and their syncopated grooves are liable to cause involuntary gurning (you’ve been warned).

Colourful bursts of melodica blend seamlessly with swelling 8-bit synths whilst the elegantly controlled rhythms roll-on with more groove than your dad’s garage roof.

With the release of their stunning debut album back in 2009, the Australian three-piece are most likely to be lumped into the IDM category (a genre so vaguely titled it’s a wonder how the name’s stuck for so long). But there’s so much more class to this group than that label suggests.

As the lights dim, the unassuming young men couldn’t look more relaxed onstage, and dispel any pomposity with a look of genuine excitement on their faces. They stand casually at their alter-like consoles, thumbing the controls as if searching for that elusive 12” in their favourite record store.

As the sparse beats begin jutting from the speakers, the audience meanders slowly forwards, gazing longingly at the band like campers round a fire. The delicate intricacies and tight angles of the music are balanced perfectly by the groups’ keen ear for melody, even if it does take form through obscure lyric-less samples.

It doesn’t take long though before the award-winning band has the entire venue under their spell, with each member punching buttons on drum machines before switching to play the visceral beats on a real acoustic drum kit. At points, the crowd are so entranced that there’s an awkward silence as each song subsides (followed of course by a rapturous applause).

The great thing about this band is that they wear their influences on their sleeve. Selected Ambient Works, Music Has The Right To Children, Agaetis Byrjun, even; they all here in some form or another. But the key point is that Seekae filter their own creativity through all these inspirational records, to produce some of the most original and hypnotic digital music of the last ten years. And all without falling prey to pretence like so many electronic bands do.

There’s a deep melancholia to the overall vibe this evening that captivates and exorcises with the sweetest form of catharsis.

And as the show draws to a close, the audience look energized, as if having had the best therapy session of their lives.

Seekae’s debut album ‘The Sound Of Trees Falling On People’ is out now on Rice Is Nice. - XYZ

Australian band Seekae, a three-piece electronic outfit hailing from Sydney, debuts in the day's top ten thanks to Music Alliance Pact's (MAP) monthly listing of up-and-coming music acts from around the world. Blogger Who The Bloody Hell Are They? (www.whothehell.net) shared the track "Gnor" and described the band's upcoming sophomore album, +Dome, as "fantastic." "I'm super excited since their previous album, The Sound of Tree Falling on People, is one of my favourite Australian albums of all time." - The Independent

Australian band Seekae, a three-piece electronic outfit hailing from Sydney, debuts in the day's top ten thanks to Music Alliance Pact's (MAP) monthly listing of up-and-coming music acts from around the world. Blogger Who The Bloody Hell Are They? (www.whothehell.net) shared the track "Gnor" and described the band's upcoming sophomore album, +Dome, as "fantastic." "I'm super excited since their previous album, The Sound of Tree Falling on People, is one of my favourite Australian albums of all time." - The Independent

See link for full feature - Rolling Stone

See link for full feature - Rolling Stone

See see link for full feature - Uncut

See see link for full feature - Uncut

If we’re being fussy, I suppose it’s slightly daft gathering any and all instrumental fare with a propulsive beat, blip and shuffle to it under the umbrella of ‘dance music’ - that implies its ultimate purpose is invariably to get feet moving - but what’s much, much bleaker is the weirdly widely-accepted ‘IDM’. That’s ‘Intelligent Dance Music’, if you’d not figured, obviously being a defective person who (obviously while skiving off important maths lessons) listens to ‘PDM’, aka ‘Prole Dance Music’, and is obviously therefore a philistine. So while ‘dance music’ is often something of a misnomer, it’s also true that one will evidently be less of a bell-end for sticking strictly to it, while slapping back one’s beard-stroke hand when reaching for a vaguely passive-aggressive indicator of one’s notionally superior taste.

The point of all of which is that Australia’s Seekae make something you’re loathe to call ‘Intelligent Dance Music’ in these enlightened times. Although admittedly it borrows beats, blips and textures from a broad palette of traditional dance, hip-hop, R’n’B and occasionally post-rock (if only for the coarsing scope of the thing), to explore a starlit and foreign terrain. But that’s by-the-by, because what’s more important than intellectual cock-waving, decent GCSEs and an intimate appreciation of Scott Walker’s post-1984 output is whether it’s interesting with it (it is), sexy with it (it is) and generally pleasant company (it is). +Dome surges through myriad valley-swoop stomach-lurches and eye-of-the-storm calms. Typical of the album, opener proper ‘3’ draws you into its twiggy tunnels of fairytale awe with a soft, blooming guitar riff, before bombarding its own, crickety foundations with tidal surges of oppressive bass, creating fluid rivers under starry, lysergic flashes of synth. +Dome encourages you to use silly words. The reflective ‘Underling’ swooshes aside mid-album fatigue with silken strings and spacey whelps of bleeping, faintly discordant fuzz, before the smoothly soaring title track slinks and wraps mistily round a dream’s rose-tinted dancefloor, trickling out a funk-laden warmth J Dilla might have sunken into in more reflective moments. It’s warm, joyously restrained and, above all, intimately inviting, and if all those deep-seated stereotypes of laptop-based music being inherently cold, impersonal and sterile haven’t long since been redundanced, Seekae’s is as strong a case as any for how wonderfully vulnerable and brittle a neatly-crafted, tasty splice of Modern - delectable electro-frippery, excitably slippery blippery - can quite consistently be.

Overall the follow-up to 2009’s The Sound of Trees Falling on People strikes a delightful balance: without insulting our intelligence, Seekae have rounded the flagrant edges off FlyLo’s sprawling imprint of historically clued-in modern-sounds and crafted a soundtrack that won’t scare off the dinner party guests, which is hardly the highest treason. What the trio lack in pure, ear-fizzing originality, they happily make up for in solid listenability - again, better than it sounds - and essentially +Dome makes for a gently deafening return to what’s fast becoming a drastically overpopulated market. So yeah, all in all I suppose it is pretty brainy, if you’re asking. - Drowned In Sound

If we’re being fussy, I suppose it’s slightly daft gathering any and all instrumental fare with a propulsive beat, blip and shuffle to it under the umbrella of ‘dance music’ - that implies its ultimate purpose is invariably to get feet moving - but what’s much, much bleaker is the weirdly widely-accepted ‘IDM’. That’s ‘Intelligent Dance Music’, if you’d not figured, obviously being a defective person who (obviously while skiving off important maths lessons) listens to ‘PDM’, aka ‘Prole Dance Music’, and is obviously therefore a philistine. So while ‘dance music’ is often something of a misnomer, it’s also true that one will evidently be less of a bell-end for sticking strictly to it, while slapping back one’s beard-stroke hand when reaching for a vaguely passive-aggressive indicator of one’s notionally superior taste.

The point of all of which is that Australia’s Seekae make something you’re loathe to call ‘Intelligent Dance Music’ in these enlightened times. Although admittedly it borrows beats, blips and textures from a broad palette of traditional dance, hip-hop, R’n’B and occasionally post-rock (if only for the coarsing scope of the thing), to explore a starlit and foreign terrain. But that’s by-the-by, because what’s more important than intellectual cock-waving, decent GCSEs and an intimate appreciation of Scott Walker’s post-1984 output is whether it’s interesting with it (it is), sexy with it (it is) and generally pleasant company (it is). +Dome surges through myriad valley-swoop stomach-lurches and eye-of-the-storm calms. Typical of the album, opener proper ‘3’ draws you into its twiggy tunnels of fairytale awe with a soft, blooming guitar riff, before bombarding its own, crickety foundations with tidal surges of oppressive bass, creating fluid rivers under starry, lysergic flashes of synth. +Dome encourages you to use silly words. The reflective ‘Underling’ swooshes aside mid-album fatigue with silken strings and spacey whelps of bleeping, faintly discordant fuzz, before the smoothly soaring title track slinks and wraps mistily round a dream’s rose-tinted dancefloor, trickling out a funk-laden warmth J Dilla might have sunken into in more reflective moments. It’s warm, joyously restrained and, above all, intimately inviting, and if all those deep-seated stereotypes of laptop-based music being inherently cold, impersonal and sterile haven’t long since been redundanced, Seekae’s is as strong a case as any for how wonderfully vulnerable and brittle a neatly-crafted, tasty splice of Modern - delectable electro-frippery, excitably slippery blippery - can quite consistently be.

Overall the follow-up to 2009’s The Sound of Trees Falling on People strikes a delightful balance: without insulting our intelligence, Seekae have rounded the flagrant edges off FlyLo’s sprawling imprint of historically clued-in modern-sounds and crafted a soundtrack that won’t scare off the dinner party guests, which is hardly the highest treason. What the trio lack in pure, ear-fizzing originality, they happily make up for in solid listenability - again, better than it sounds - and essentially +Dome makes for a gently deafening return to what’s fast becoming a drastically overpopulated market. So yeah, all in all I suppose it is pretty brainy, if you’re asking. - Drowned In Sound

Seekae's sophomore LP +Dome, has been crafted in the wake of post-hip-hop Brainfeeder raves in the US West Coast and the post-dubstep diaspora worldwide. It had to be. This Sydney group has likely had little personal contact with the stuff firsthand. But that's where +Dome's strength lies. Equal parts rock, hip-hop and experimental, it's one of the most interesting records of the year thus far.

Much like the genre-weaving Mount Kimbie accomplished on Crooks & Lovers, +Dome defies categorization. And like Mount Kimbie—for whom they were handpicked to support on the duo's Australian tour earlier this year—the group makes music that's designed to be played. On the Seekae stage, a drum kit is thrown together with an MPC and several synthesizers while the band's members scramble to trigger samples from a Roland SP-404 and two MacBooks.

What separates them from Mount Kimbie, though, is their musical pedigree. The Mount Kimbie sound is arguably, for the most part, a product of dubstep. Seekae's has emerged from a musical diet that seems to encompass everything and nothing at the same time. "Go," a lesson in violent build and release if there ever was one, has an aggressive tension that rears its head throughout +Dome intermittently. It contrasts markedly with the smooth textures that the album is primarily comprised of. On "Blood Bank," a brooding intro gives way to a fuzzy bass workout, triggered vocal chops and hazy synthesized chords.

While the more ambient moments show Seekae's knack for experimentation, it's atop of a thick kick drum that they work best. The ambitious strings across "Underling" and layered vocals of "You'll" never quite match the brooding melancholy of "+Dome," where keys and white noise mingle with a beat with a BPM that hovers in the mid 60s. And while parts of the album just don't quite fit—"Yodal," an awkward ode to 8-bit hip-hop, sticks out like a sore thumb—the caliber of the soundscape as a whole more than makes up for these occasional lapses. - Resident Advisor

Seekae's sophomore LP +Dome, has been crafted in the wake of post-hip-hop Brainfeeder raves in the US West Coast and the post-dubstep diaspora worldwide. It had to be. This Sydney group has likely had little personal contact with the stuff firsthand. But that's where +Dome's strength lies. Equal parts rock, hip-hop and experimental, it's one of the most interesting records of the year thus far.

Much like the genre-weaving Mount Kimbie accomplished on Crooks & Lovers, +Dome defies categorization. And like Mount Kimbie—for whom they were handpicked to support on the duo's Australian tour earlier this year—the group makes music that's designed to be played. On the Seekae stage, a drum kit is thrown together with an MPC and several synthesizers while the band's members scramble to trigger samples from a Roland SP-404 and two MacBooks.

What separates them from Mount Kimbie, though, is their musical pedigree. The Mount Kimbie sound is arguably, for the most part, a product of dubstep. Seekae's has emerged from a musical diet that seems to encompass everything and nothing at the same time. "Go," a lesson in violent build and release if there ever was one, has an aggressive tension that rears its head throughout +Dome intermittently. It contrasts markedly with the smooth textures that the album is primarily comprised of. On "Blood Bank," a brooding intro gives way to a fuzzy bass workout, triggered vocal chops and hazy synthesized chords.

While the more ambient moments show Seekae's knack for experimentation, it's atop of a thick kick drum that they work best. The ambitious strings across "Underling" and layered vocals of "You'll" never quite match the brooding melancholy of "+Dome," where keys and white noise mingle with a beat with a BPM that hovers in the mid 60s. And while parts of the album just don't quite fit—"Yodal," an awkward ode to 8-bit hip-hop, sticks out like a sore thumb—the caliber of the soundscape as a whole more than makes up for these occasional lapses. - Resident Advisor

Electronic trio Seekae – aka Alex Cameron, George Nicholas and John Hassel – surprised a lot of people in 2011 with their lauded second album +Dome, not least because its glacial, icy tones seem at odds with the fact they hail from sunny Australia. Having just signed to Future Classic (home to the likes of Flume and Jagwar Ma), the band's new, as-yet-untitled album – which they've been working on with Caribou collaborator David Wrench – will be their first to feature vocals, and if current single Another is anything to go by then it's a pretty good decision. Full of restraint and an acute sense of dynamics, Another constantly feels like it's about to erupt, as if the bubbling electronics and sporadic drum claps are about to pierce the relative calm of the song's surface. The song's all the better for the fact that that never happens. For the video – filmed in Bolivia by director Ian Pons Jewell and premiered here – the song's atmospherics are anchored to a clip featuring a grizzly Bolivian custom based around killing and burying someone in a plot of land that's about to be built on. Apparently it's thought to then bring the owner good health, which is probably of little help to the main character in the video.
- The Guardian

We’re all amateur singers at home, yes? Much more than private guitarists we sing alone, crackling towards unavailable notes. This then is the pleasure of seeing someone do it live and well; hit those highs that we all scratchily strain to achieve, the connection where our own vocal chords dip and gulp to meet the singer on stage. For an instrumental band (and not a DJ, not someone providing the dance track) to make that connection with a crowd is a test, especially if the players devote their performance to downcast eyes, twiddling and fiddling on sequencers and screens.

Like some sugar-stuffed child reaching to register subtle flavour tones on his tongue, my mind will always try to graft story onto voiceless songs, pairing them with imagery that would never occur had there been vocals in place. A philistine kid raised on pop instead of classical. So how then to visually score Sydney’s Seekae? Perhaps an HBO-lush and serious take on The Legend of Zelda, futuristic and retro, the human journey of an 8-bit boy. Seekae’s sonic toolbag seems sourced from the other-worldly, and this is heightened outside the headphones’ sphere. What living sound-grabs there are feel laboratory-twisted, processed and fed and regurgitated. It’s often the oozing, tweaking bleeps that are the easiest to emotionally connect to.

The difference between recorded and live for Seekae has to be the nonstop sense of focus in the tracks – never before meandering in scope, in the flesh each song pounds onwards, the triptych of bobbing heads amidst the mist onstage leading a charge towards some pixelated destination. Lost along the way is the playful noodling, the crooning tunes of some ’70s sci-fi ‘bot. Highlighted are the harsher clicks and tacks, the teeth grinds and dislocations, those sounds of an organic transformation. Brief interludes of melodica humanise the proceedings, but the scuffed beats proceed throughout.

If Seekae went huge, if this music swept through the mainstream like the Presets did a couple of years ago, then they could do worse than have the tale of the fire alarm in their past. Each and every punter present shifted gears to realise that the wails and warnings from the loudspeakers were not sampled by the band, but a recording that would ebb and flow on the beat for the next five songs, until it was disarmed. Seekae played through the sirens and the smog, and the floor of the Manning Bar followed them forwards.
- The Brag

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/sep/24/seekae-another-new-music - The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/sep/24/seekae-another-new-music - The Guardian

Please see link for full feature - Mojo Magazine

Please see link for full feature - Mojo Magazine

It’s been two years since Sydney trio Seekae have released new original material. Premiering on Triple J’s 2013 program, ‘Another’ is the first single from the groups forthcoming third record. It also sees Alex Cameron take the reigns of vocals. I must say, I was interested, maybe a little apprehensive when hearing this new development for the band, but right now, it’s pure bliss. - Allidoislisten

Toward the end of high school, data discs got super hot. It’s not that MP3s weren’t a thing, but there was something appealing about loading like 500 MP3s onto a plain old CD-R and popping it in your car stereo. This data disc trend coincided with my early, somewhat-uneducated obsession with electronic music. Mostly, I just tried to figure out if I liked Boards of Canada. My memories of this time revolve around being perplexed by long instrumental songs and a brief obsession with a Bjork Greatest Hits album for some reason. I say all this because it sets the scene for Seekae, an electronic group that are perfect for anyone around my age who had this same experience with electronic music. It’s not that their sound is consciously retro (can we really call the year 2002 retro?), it’s more that they’ve got all the best aspects of the electronic music of that era down. Pastoral passages of ambient sound, glitchy moments and then—here’s something a lot of those earlier artists never really bothered with—ecstatic release. It’s a risky move to throw all your emotions at the wall like Seekae do when “Mingus” blooms into something gorgeous and open, but they pull it off. +DOME is out right now.

Read more: http://www.thefader.com/2011/11/01/seekae-mingus-mp3/#ixzz2frmmk99o - The Fader

Toward the end of high school, data discs got super hot. It’s not that MP3s weren’t a thing, but there was something appealing about loading like 500 MP3s onto a plain old CD-R and popping it in your car stereo. This data disc trend coincided with my early, somewhat-uneducated obsession with electronic music. Mostly, I just tried to figure out if I liked Boards of Canada. My memories of this time revolve around being perplexed by long instrumental songs and a brief obsession with a Bjork Greatest Hits album for some reason. I say all this because it sets the scene for Seekae, an electronic group that are perfect for anyone around my age who had this same experience with electronic music. It’s not that their sound is consciously retro (can we really call the year 2002 retro?), it’s more that they’ve got all the best aspects of the electronic music of that era down. Pastoral passages of ambient sound, glitchy moments and then—here’s something a lot of those earlier artists never really bothered with—ecstatic release. It’s a risky move to throw all your emotions at the wall like Seekae do when “Mingus” blooms into something gorgeous and open, but they pull it off. +DOME is out right now.

Read more: http://www.thefader.com/2011/11/01/seekae-mingus-mp3/#ixzz2frmmk99o - The Fader

Please see link for full feature - Rolling Stone

Please see link for full feature - Rolling Stone

Seekae are a three-piece electronic outfit from Sydney, Australia. Since releasing their debut long player ‘The Sound Of Trees Falling On People‘ they’ve been building themselves up to form their sophomore album ‘+Dome‘. Both their reputation and music have grown and developed considerably since their debut, receiving acclaimed reviews from a variety of publications including The Independent who featured them in their article ‘Most blogged artists: TV on the Radio, Seekae, The National‘ in March 2011.

Their sound ranges from post-dubstep to experimental ambiance. Their album +Dome is already set for stardom and I’m certain it will become a marker for young producers trying to emulate that post-dubstep sound of Mount Kimbie and Seekae. This exclusive mix was recorded for IA by the trio AKA George, John and Alex. They also called on their close friend and local producer Bardeya to help structure the mix.

The mix features tracks from +Dome as well as Nosaj Thing, Instra:Mental, Mosca, Pangaea, Modeselektor, Ramadanman, Autechre and dBridge. Read the interview below and click the PLAY button to the right to stream the mix.

“We’ve just come out of Summer over here in Sydney. It was spent doing a decent share of partying. These are tunes we listened to whilst on the road, at home, on headphones, or out of laptop speakers. We’ve also had a couple of DJ sets with Bardeya over the past 6 months – some of the tracks on the mix are numbers we were playing.” Seekae

WE DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT SEEKAE OVER HERE IN LONDON, SO WITHOUT BEING RUDE PLEASE CAN WE ASK EACH OF YOU TO INTRODUCE YOURSELVES, TELL US WHERE YOU’RE FROM, AND WHAT FASCINATED YOU WHEN YOU WERE A KID?

Thanks for having us!

Seekae are George Nicholas, John Hassell and Alex Cameron. We all went to high school in Sydney but weren’t musically associated until our final year. We all met whilst on a spring break type holiday and decided that there should be other music besides the annual Ministry of Sound compilation being played in clubs.

John liked rugby but wasn’t very good – he also listened to Pink Floyd and liked to watch washing machines spin. Alex liked Buddy Holly and making things out of blue-tac and George ran a CD burning business until MP3 players took off and he couldn’t compete with medium to large sized logistics companies.

WHAT’S YOUR MUSICAL BACKGROUND? I READ THAT YOU USED TO PLAY IN A BAND TOGETHER, WITH GUITARS AND SHIT, HOW AND WHEN DID THAT FORM, AND WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM IT?

We’ve all played different instruments at different times. George grew up playing the flute, but hated recitals. One time he cried in front of everyone. Then he bought an MPC and got a MySpace. Things were better from then on.

John was trained in classical piano and taught himself the guitar – he figured out he could write music when he forgot his chosen piece at an exam and made up the rest on the spot – needless to say he failed the exam.

Alex played the snare drum in a marching band until they mentioned that he had to wear a kilt. He then switched to Kit Drum and formed a band with John. It sort of taught us about engaging people with your music, on a record and on a stage, no laptops and no drum machines just us. Now things are different, but it keeps us from getting complacent, that experience – everything we do is a challenge.

WHAT MUSIC WERE YOU LISTENING TO WHILST GROWING UP AND WHAT REALLY PROVOKED YOUR CURRENT SOUND?

It was mostly guitar music when we were kids. Music from the 50's, 60's and 70's. In high school we listened to a lot of Hip Hop and rock, and then eventually electronica. Our playlists from high school were pretty diverse. There are acts that stand out as having influenced our career decisions – The Strokes, Radiohead and Aphex Twin were big for us during high school.

WHEN DID YOUR EXPERIMENTATION WITH ELECTRONIC MUSIC BEGIN AND WHAT STEPS DID YOU TAKE TO PUSH THINGS FORWARD?

During our final year of high school we started to use the small collection of instruments we had – John had a MicroKorg, George had an MPC and Alex had a Roland SP-404 – to make I guess what you’d call dance music. It wasn’t until we got hold of some audio software that we were really able to shape our music with plugins. George was always keen on getting shows. We booked one at a local hotel and over time based our sound around our live set.

WHAT AFTER EFFECTS DID YOU ENCOUNTER FROM YOUR 2008 LP THE SOUND OF TREES FALLING ON PEOPLE?

It wasn’t necessarily on a large scale; any sort of impact we had was mostly in Sydney. It was nice to see reviews in big magazines, and to get asked to tour with bands we’d once bought tickets to see ourselves. Touring with PVT (formerly Pivot) was a great experience for us. Getting radio play was also really encouraging. A local radio station in Sydney called FBI Radio heralded our LP as album of the week, which really helped kick start people buying tickets to our shows.

HOW DID YOUR - Inverted Audio

In the two and a half years since Sydney electronic trio Seekae dropped 2008's most universally lauded debut, “The Sound of Trees Falling on People”, it seems much has changed for the group – not only in terms of their musical surroundings, but also through a newfound understanding of their own position amongst them all.

Whilst their first opus dreamt of the euphoria of 90’s Warp, Dabrye and musique concréte, +Dome sees the group tap into a much wider palette – one involving tinges of house, jazz, techno, and the after effects of garage and dubstep. What makes +Dome so distinctive is its incremental interpretation of these flavours, seemingly achieved through the band’s unique isolation from such alienating scenes and descriptors.

Opening with the somewhat Radiohead-inspired ‘Go’, +Dome explores many contradictions – post-garage and guitars, jazz and sub-bass, rhythmic density and well-timed silences – confidently illustrating Seekae’s forward-thinking identity. The sublime ‘3’ bounces through crafty guitars, jaw-dropping micro-rhythms, and an infectious refrain, before soaring into John Hassells’ signature Baroque tonal trajectories. Album closer ‘You’ll’ is a stripped-back lullaby that blossoms separately from the ‘is-it-a-dance-is-it-a-live-band-ting’ tension which is ever-present throughout the record.

One of the most rewarding tunes here is ‘Reset Head’, a spatially melancholic progression, which, when coupled with a brilliant syllabic grab, floats between the saccharine glow of Mount Kimbie and the fragility of post-rock. However, the LP’s best tune is its eponymous number, an after-hours lover’s ballad, which twists a revolving vocal and resonating Rhodes over stunningly well-swung percussions and staggered live drumming.

There’s no shortage of potential singles on +Dome either. Prime radio cut ‘Gnor’ wades through mid-tempo contemplation, before quickly ascending into radiant feel-good vibes. Although slightly self-aware, ‘Blood Bank’ takes the crossover potential of Glasgow’s Lucky Me crew, and succinctly transports it into daytime radio territory.

In contrast, ‘Two’ is a much grander encapsulation of the four minute pop tune, moulding decayed ambience into a blushingly pretty garage riddim. ‘Mingus’ is another statement of intent, expanding upon the band’s wayward grooves, by stabilising them with an unconsciously Chain Reaction techno motif.

From the outset, +Dome depicts a far more ambitious vision of the future than any other Australian act has ever attempted, delivering a signature sound that is as accessible as it is sophisticated. As the stigmas of electronic music in this country have fallen by the wayside in recent times, a proposition like +Dome is now so digestible that it will act as the perfect gateway for many potential converts both at home and abroad.

Seekae’s latest creation is a certainty for end of year album honours – primarily due to its unrelenting differences. From its stylistic dexterity to its emotional intensity, +Dome is heavily layered. As such, +Dome is certainly Seekae’s most cohesive musical statement; held together so well by both its eccentricity and deceptive playfulness. It is also sure to garner international repute.

Put simply, +Dome is shadow-like in its surprising turns; opening up with each successive listen, with its schizophrenic nature surely to Seekae’s utmost advantage.

Written by James on 01 / 04 / '11 - Inverted Audio

In the two and a half years since Sydney electronic trio Seekae dropped 2008's most universally lauded debut, “The Sound of Trees Falling on People”, it seems much has changed for the group – not only in terms of their musical surroundings, but also through a newfound understanding of their own position amongst them all.

Whilst their first opus dreamt of the euphoria of 90’s Warp, Dabrye and musique concréte, +Dome sees the group tap into a much wider palette – one involving tinges of house, jazz, techno, and the after effects of garage and dubstep. What makes +Dome so distinctive is its incremental interpretation of these flavours, seemingly achieved through the band’s unique isolation from such alienating scenes and descriptors.

Opening with the somewhat Radiohead-inspired ‘Go’, +Dome explores many contradictions – post-garage and guitars, jazz and sub-bass, rhythmic density and well-timed silences – confidently illustrating Seekae’s forward-thinking identity. The sublime ‘3’ bounces through crafty guitars, jaw-dropping micro-rhythms, and an infectious refrain, before soaring into John Hassells’ signature Baroque tonal trajectories. Album closer ‘You’ll’ is a stripped-back lullaby that blossoms separately from the ‘is-it-a-dance-is-it-a-live-band-ting’ tension which is ever-present throughout the record.

One of the most rewarding tunes here is ‘Reset Head’, a spatially melancholic progression, which, when coupled with a brilliant syllabic grab, floats between the saccharine glow of Mount Kimbie and the fragility of post-rock. However, the LP’s best tune is its eponymous number, an after-hours lover’s ballad, which twists a revolving vocal and resonating Rhodes over stunningly well-swung percussions and staggered live drumming.

There’s no shortage of potential singles on +Dome either. Prime radio cut ‘Gnor’ wades through mid-tempo contemplation, before quickly ascending into radiant feel-good vibes. Although slightly self-aware, ‘Blood Bank’ takes the crossover potential of Glasgow’s Lucky Me crew, and succinctly transports it into daytime radio territory.

In contrast, ‘Two’ is a much grander encapsulation of the four minute pop tune, moulding decayed ambience into a blushingly pretty garage riddim. ‘Mingus’ is another statement of intent, expanding upon the band’s wayward grooves, by stabilising them with an unconsciously Chain Reaction techno motif.

From the outset, +Dome depicts a far more ambitious vision of the future than any other Australian act has ever attempted, delivering a signature sound that is as accessible as it is sophisticated. As the stigmas of electronic music in this country have fallen by the wayside in recent times, a proposition like +Dome is now so digestible that it will act as the perfect gateway for many potential converts both at home and abroad.

Seekae’s latest creation is a certainty for end of year album honours – primarily due to its unrelenting differences. From its stylistic dexterity to its emotional intensity, +Dome is heavily layered. As such, +Dome is certainly Seekae’s most cohesive musical statement; held together so well by both its eccentricity and deceptive playfulness. It is also sure to garner international repute.

Put simply, +Dome is shadow-like in its surprising turns; opening up with each successive listen, with its schizophrenic nature surely to Seekae’s utmost advantage.

Written by James on 01 / 04 / '11 - Inverted Audio