Szun Waves have an avant-garde pedigree most new bands would envy. The London-based trio is made up of PVT drummer Laurence Pike, experimental jazz-ambient quartet Portico saxophonist Jack Wyllie, and acclaimed producer and modular-synth wizard, Luke Abbott. Following the release of their debut At Sacred Walls, the trio will be performing tomorrow night at Sydney Festival. We caught up with Laurence Pike to find out more about the band, what we can expect from the show and we get the latest on PVT and Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders new shows and new music!
I understand At Sacred Walls was the result of quite a lot of hours of recordings – how do you take all those recordings and decide what ends up on the record?
The music is entirely improvised, and I guess the other element to consider is that the recording was the very first time we’d played together. Which is probably why we recorded quite so much. We liked the concept of working as a 60s jazz group in terms of calling a session date, and playing for two hours and bang – that’s the record. Ultimately that’s what we’d like to aspire towards, but for the initial sessions I hadn’t even met Luke or Jack before I turned up to the studio. We’d only been talking online. It came together quite quickly.
As for what ends up on the record, it was a matter of finding the thread in the conversation. You listen for the moments where the music has its own life – where it feels like it’s “music” rather than “listening to yourself play music”. It’s about finding those moments that stand out, and they become quite obvious to you in terms of what the cohesive moments are and how they represent about the conversation that occurred – it’s saying “this is the sound world these three people are making, and it seems like an enjoyable space to invite people into for 45 minutes or an hour…”.
In the moment though it’s hard to tell. Often you’ll play and think, oh don’t know if we really hit on something then. Music has its wonderful way of telling its own story and being its own entity. And that’s very much what this music is about. It’s almost about making self-generating music in an academic way. We’re explorers in a sense, exploring for something beyond our immediate perception. In the great tradition of many people who have done that before in the jazz and electronic realms. We’re just trying to carry the torch.
How does that translate in the live space? Is it a similar approach?
Yeah, generally. In the live space, the environment is quite different, you tend to play to the space itself. For Sydney Festival we’re playing in a church, so that will undoubtedly affect the type of things we’ll do. That’s the nature of the music, there’s intuition and there’s interaction and it’s responsive and reactive and intuitive music. The space of the church will change the way we hear the sound and we use the sound in the space. Largely the core idea is still the same. To start talking and see where the conversation goes.
What makes the band have a sound is that we’ve developed very quickly over the handful of gigs we’ve done in Europe, we’ve developed a report, and everyone in the band knows our roles; we know our places we occupy, knowing when to start and stop. Very basic things. When that really clicks, the music almost plays itself. There’s a magic in that, which is what we’re trying to achieve for ourselves and for the audience. Starting from nothing, and creating in the moment – this is about as magical as music gets for me. There’s almost a witchcraft quality to it *laughs*.
As a musician who parades in many different projects, some of whom have songs who are expected “staples”of a set – is it freeing to be in a project like this where there aren’t those sorts of expectations?
Absolutely. That’s the huge appeal, aside from getting to work with great musicians that have such strong identities themselves, to come together in a group where we want to come together and collectively share that expression and freedom. It’s really beautiful. And it’s rarer and rarer these days to get back to this essence of what it means to you to make music. From a very early age, improvising has been a big part of my life, in terms of a musical language. It’s a very fundamental form of expression.
I feel like it’s a side of my personality musically and part of my brain that doesn’t necessarily get engaged in all musical circumstances. Certainly the way your ear becomes tuned and the way you listen is something you can apply to any musical circumstance. But the potential of turning up to a gig and not knowing what is going to happen is very exciting.
You can’t really get that from the discipline of performing songs that people are familiar with. So freedom is a good word. I feel like that level of intensity and expression is really needed now – there’s something timely about it. At the same time, it seems like such an antiquated concept. Improvising music has been prevalent for hundreds of years. But that searching for some sort of emotional or spiritualist resonance in what we do and trying to connect that as a collective in that moment, seems like a relevant thing for me to at the moment. It’s a way for people to connect in a way that goes beyond Instagram, or Facebook… it’s something existential.
*laughs* Does that make sense? Am I getting a bit cosmic? But the band is very much about magic, and trying to reach into some sort of cosmic realm in terms of music making.
Sydney Festival is a particularly enjoyable time of year, you were of course a part of it last year with Dreamland. I was actually surprised it didn’t return this year as a residency?
It was such a good gig, such a memorable night. They should definitely have us on every year! I saw a bunch of stuff last year, and maybe it sounds a bit pig-headed to say, but I felt like the vibe in the room (at Dreamland) had to have been one of the better gigs of the festival that year. From the stuff that I saw anyway, it was such a great night, the audience just went off. I’d be more than happy to see it return. We’ve finished another record (with Jack Ladder and the Dreamlanders), so hopefully that will tie in well for next year.
And I know you’ve got some PVT shows coming up in February too.
Yeah, it’s been really good – we’re learning the new record, it’s been really exciting playing music together again. We’d already been playing 2 or 3 of the tracks in our last handful of shows, but most of the record we haven’t played live before. Amazingly it’s coming together really fast. And I feel like we’re all a bit getting back with something we lost touch a while ago, getting back to our roots a little bit.
What did you think you’d lost?
Mainly just spontaneity in terms of performing – we’d gotten locked into a pattern with the sporadic shows we were doing, with limited time to prepare, so we’d have to go with what we knew a lot of the time. As a result, aside from when we started previewing new songs, I felt like it was turning into a greatest hits gig of sorts – not that we ever had “hits”, but it was just going through the motions a bit. We didn’t have the time to explore new things.
But these shows later in the year, this is all about, “let’s put on something totally different. Let’s challenge ourselves and make something exciting for the audience and ourselves.” Just get back to the spirit of what the band was about. We used to do a lot more improvising, it used to be a lot more dynamic and loose. So I feel like we’re heading back in that territory with the new stuff. We’re all feeling rejuvenated. And the record is the best thing we’ve done in years. And I don’t just say that, I genuinely think that it could easily be one of our best records. So yeah, feeling good!
And as for Szun Waves, this will be a no less exciting performance in the St. Stephen’s Uniting Church – the cosmic meeting the spiritual perhaps.
Yeah – though we’re going to keep it reasonably non-denominational. All faiths welcome. People of no faiths welcome too!
Szun Waves perform during Sydney Festival tomorrow, Friday 13th January, 7pm. Tickets are just $20 +bf and the event will be held at St. Stephen’s Uniting Church. For more details, head HERE. For more details on the upcoming PVT shows, head to their Facebook page.
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