Interview with Twin Haus ahead of Blurst Of Times

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Brisbane band Twin Haus already have had one busy year. Having just released their latest EP 'Nothing Lavish', and have only just embarked on their biggest national tour yet... lucky for us they will be hitting the stage this weekend at The Blurst of Times in Brisbane. Daniel Grima, lead singer took some time out of his busy schedule, whiles wandering the streets of Brisy to have a chat. 

So just a brief history of Twin Haus, how did you guy’s come together?
A couple years ago, we started jamming during the last year of school and found ourselves a rehearsals space with a few other bands

Oh did you guys go to school together?
Zack and I went to school together but we didn’t really hang out too much at school, we were just in jazz band together and I knew Nick from trick or treating one year, something stupid!

So were you all musically trained?     
Yeah we all took music in school, Zack and I studied at the young conservatorium for a few years and Nick and Iti both did they’re own respective private lessons, I think Iti was clarinet or piano at the time and Nick was doing pipe band drumming, so yeah everyone kind of had they’re on avenue to invest in musically and then we all just kind of came together.

So we’re not that far into 2016 but you guys have had a pretty big couple of months already, releasing Nothing Lavish? – How have you found the feedback so far?
Yeah good – it’s cool. It’s nice having that out, having something out that I think we’re all quote mutually proud of compared to previous releases.

The record is incredibly tight musically but it doesn’t come across over produced, Did you get to experiment much with this one?
Yeah I mean like it’s mostly a whole different bunch of jams, like motifs we were playing in jams and rehearsals.  Sometimes things that would be used as passing tracks between songs live and atmospheric points that were in a live set that ended up transforming into songs at some point, which turned out to be most of the track list on Nothing Lavish but yeah we had been jamming on all that stuff for quite a long time so it’s nice to have somewhere where we can hear all that in one space.

So is that how you guy’s usually work, music first then lyrics?
Most of it will just come from an idea in rehearsal then we’ll just try and unfold it from there

In comparison to Waxen Myriad, it’s definitely a more mature sound for you guys, You’ve definitely got some sophisticated song writing on there, what’s your favourite track on Nothing Lavish ?
‘Synthetic Egg’, there’s something super familiar about adding horns into any of our music. That was the second time we’ve put horns in one of our songs and for me it always feels super familiar and something that I’m good at just because trumpet was my main instrument initially. It’s kind of nice coming back sometimes and not feeling super out of my depth in the band and having some kind of musically aspect to hold onto. And the process of writing ‘Synthetic Egg’ was so natural and free, without sounding super lame but the whole process of that was literally just jamming and experimenting live and we would put it in a set list and say ‘let’s just jam it here’ and it would be different every time we did it. Then it just got closer and closer to being more refined and what it is now is just a bi-product of months and months of just fucking around with it really. 

The Revue, 11 minutes long, starts off kind of dream like then you hit the 2 minute mark and the heavy bass lines, and guitar, roaring drums come through then it kinda breaks  down into something completely different and that slow build kicks in again? Tell us about that track...
'The Revue' started as most of the other tracks did, the first section was a jam that we had written in a really cool jam space in Melbourne called Bake House once. That kind of just sat there for ages, never really touched it again. Then we walked on a track with a label in Sydney called Real Deep Records that never ended up being released but there was a section from that song that we pulled and changed slightly and kind of wrote the review around that. From there it just pulled on a whole different bunch of riffs we had in the bank but hadn’t touched before and they seemed to work with a bit of tweaking and we kind of brought it into some kind of linear flow. It made some sort of sense, I guess it mostly tied in lyrically but on the instrumental aspect, we just tweaked it to a point where it flowed and we felt good playing it live. It was jammed as an instrumental track that we played live in our set for quite a while and it wasn’t until we were driving down to Sydney for the final mixing process of the EP that I actually finished the lyrics. It’s definitely not what I expected it to be at all but it’s cool, I’m down for it.

Do you ever find it hard to bring your tracks to life from record? Is live performance your preferred medium?
No i wouldn’t say we do, because they all originate in a live setting so no matter what we layer on top of it you know, you’ve always got the foundation there that the whole things based around. It’s never difficult recreating it. Sometimes we have to change things and incorporate different players for particular show’s where we want to showcase different parts, like bringing in horns for 'Synthetic Egg', or getting Iti to play a synth bass in 'Self Love'or whatever it is that need’s to be done. But generally because of the nature we write our tracks it’s pretty easy to play them live.

Iti can sing can’t he? Will he be coming up on tracks in the future?
Yeah he’s got a fabulous voice, he’s great.

You going to share the spotlight with him on the next one?
Yeah totally, I’m always egging everyone to sing more, I liked to play guitar properly to be honest. Everyone in the band can sing I just think I kind of drew the short straw.  Especially in 'The Revue' we’ve been trying to work on a lot more, it’s not so much that we haven’t in the past getting Zack and Iti to sing, I’ve just been so focused on the instrumental aspect of the band and singing’s always taken a back beat for me that I never really thought to delve into harmonies and adding different layers to vocals and since we’ve started doing that it, It obviously opens up the path for the others to participate in the vocal aspect a lot more, so I guess we’ll delve deeper into that.

We actually went and saw your guys at Soundlounge last week and noticed that your drummer plays some whacky patterns and time signatures, is it hard as a guitarist to follow?
Nick is the furthest thing from a metronome in the best possible way. You can kind of just play. He’s just a sick drummer to play with, really free, really chilled but always locks it in. Most of the time you can just go with Nick, like if Nick’s taking it somewhere, and you follow Nick most of the time you will come out the other end content with where you went. We all kind of have this mutual understanding that if you can feel someone moving, or a song somewhere, feel a passage moving in a particular direction whether that’s crescendo-ing  or speeding up or whatever, everyone seems to follow each other and trust each other enough. Nick’s the main dude at that and he kills it!

I also heard to coincide with the release you teamed up with four artists from around the globe, tell us a bit about that?
It was an idea I had coming home on the bus one day. I think it was after we had just finished recording all the demo’s for the Ep, I’m not sure about the other guys but I was super insecure about whether or not it was going to sound good recorded at all, I was a bit worried about it translating live and how other people were going to interpret it. Taken from an artistic perspective I felt people would get a lot deeper into the music if they get a good visual. We really wanted to work with other people and like generate a vibe where not everyone’s competing and it was just really sick to have a whole bunch of independent artists all working together and crossing mediums and just doing it as opposed to everyone worrying about who their supporting or who they’re headlining over, whose acing the hometown at the time and whose getting the slot’s..it’s like fuckkk let’s just do something cool.  All the artists we worked with are all incredible.

So your just a bit through your national tour, your biggest your yet, where are you looking forward to playing most?
I’m pretty keen to kid Radbar in Wollongong, We’re playing there on 420 so that’s a pretty big one. Everyone there is real down to earth and last time we played Wollongong was our first time and we had a sick time but I feel like people might be turning it up on the 20th of April so I’m all about it!

So you’re playing Blurst this Saturday, Did you go to the one a couple years back?
I went to the one a couple years ago and that was pretty cool. I was really stoked on the car park space when I went and saw it all happen last time so I’m pretty chuffed that we’re playing the car park space as well.

Being a Gold Coaster, I’m yet to experience The Brightside car park, what’s the set up like?
Geez, the production’s pretty badass, it’s like real car parky. I guess that’s the vibe you want. I think they’ve got a whole bunch of art on the walls and stuff there now. The productions always really good and the sounds great! It’s a good mix!

If you could pick your top 3 bands to see at Blurst who would it be?
Huge, Methyl Ethyl, I feel like I’m cracking under the pressure. Polish Club & The Murlocs.

To find out what Crayon Dan would choose to be and what he has to say to a penguin walking through the door, wearing a sombrero listen to the interview on Soundcloud now! Otherwise get your asses to The Brightside Carpark at 7.30PM tomorrow to catch the boys set!

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