Aussie rapper, Seth Sentry, chats with AARON BRYANS about the success of his debut LP, This Was Tomorrow, ahead of his Under The Stars tour with Bliss N Eso and Horrorshow, which stops by Signal Park, Bunbury, on Friday, May 2, and Wellington Square, Perth, on Saturday, May 3.
Following nine years of live performances and appearances in the Melbourne underground hip-hop and a self-produced EP, Seth Sentry would harness the positivity received from reviews and release his 2012 debut album, This Was Tomorrow.
The self-released LP would be the jump Sentry needed to push himself into the Australian hip hop industry, forming numerous bonds with other rappers and fulfilling a life-long dream.
“It’s awesome,” Seth proclaims. “I’ve been able to switch my hobby and my jobs around. Music has become my job. It’s weird; I never anticipated this. If you want to be a successful musician you need songs. So I made some music. I’ve been rapping since I was young. When I started I didn’t even know there was any other rappers. Then I met one other rapper who was my friend and then I thought there was two of us. I moved to Melbourne and there was a little group of us. It was crazy how underground it was.”
The LP featured production from Styalz Fuego (360), Trials (Funkoars, Drapht) and Matik (Pez, Bliss n Eso), showcasing the limitless creativity within hip hop, exhibiting a combination of classic samples and cuts, and live band energy. The guest producers aided in the airplay of three singles but forced Sentry to balance the final sound of the LP.
“I found it difficult to balance them,” Sentry explains. “Obviously you don’t want anything to stand out on an album. My favourite albums are ones that are quite cohesive; that don’t sound like a collection of songs but rather an album. It was a bit of a balancing act but we didn’t over-think it. I just liked the beats and I’d worked with Matik before; Trials I’d always wanted to work with and Staylz had just wrapped up work on the 360 album, so it all kind of just came together. It was cool that even though I worked with three different producers, all of them got a single played on the radio.”
Having self-produced his prior EP, The Waiter Minute, Sentry believed it was easier to self-produce This Was Tomorrow. However, the success of the album and the growth in Sentry’s popularity would result in Seth requiring a little extra assistance.
“It was a bit of a no-brainer for me. I did the EP completely grass roots, and I was mailing out every copy of the EP myself. After that it only made sense that I do all of that for the album myself. There’s a team in place now, I’ve got a couple of managers (Ross Macpherson and Rowan Robinson) who came on board who have their own label Ten To Two records and we had a lot of help with Inertia Music so it was less hands on but still maintained the same feel to it.
Whilst continuing the writing and recording process for his next LP, Seth has been touring in promotion of This Was Tomorrow; and now the Melbourne-based rapper has the chance to tour with some of his best friends in the business, Bliss N Eso.
“I’m fucking excited man. I’ve seen the venue sizes that they’re playing and they don’t fuck around. They’re massive. Some of them are 10,000 capacity and it’s just stuff I’d never be able to do on my own. It’s really exciting to be a part of it.”
