Local indie four-piece Segue Safari are set to launch their second EP Salutations this Saturday June 10 at The Bird. Salutations follows on from their Friends EP last year and well-loved RTRFM single Colour TV. This release shows a marked development for the group, stepping forward from the lo-fi bedroom production of their previous releases to a stronger and more collaborative effort. BRAYDEN EDWARDS caught up with singer and guitarist Jeremy Segal to discuss the formation of the group, learning how to DJ, becoming part of Group Therapy Records, and the album that’s coming next.
You’ve done a fair amount of shows and a lot of recording already for a young muso. I remember seeing you playing in Llama’s Tide a few years back but this is a whole new thing altogether. How did Segue Safari come about and how is it different to what you were doing musically before?
It began with me putting together a bunch of songs I’d written myself because I was looking for a way to get them out. I originally recorded three songs myself at home and put one of those out before we even had a set together.
So you recorded it yourself initially and then you were like “How do perform this live … there’s only one of me … I’m going to need some buddies on board?”
Yeah we started out just learning those initial songs and started writing more and more from there. The more it goes on the less I actually bring in myself, I can just bring in just a fraction now instead of a full song and let the others be a bit more collaborative.
Last year you put out the Friends EP and then the Colour TV single. Was that a stand-alone single or did that make it onto this release as well?
Yes it’s actually on this EP but it’s a different version that’s actually a bit longer. The single had a shorter intro and a whole chunk of the outro which we thought worked better in the context of an EP but not when it was just by itself.
So how is this EP different from Friends? You’ve said the others have become more involved so did that influence the style and approach at all?
I think so. As a group we definitely paid more attention to detail and put more effort into the arrangements this time. We spent more time rehearsing the songs and dividing stuff out. With the first one we kind of went with whatever happened and it turned out fairly lo-fi which was cool but kind of expected given we were working from a bedroom mostly.
So is that where and how you recorded Salutations as well?
Most of it. We did it a little bit differently especially with the vocal and the drums. Our friend Marcus has his own studio and we went there for a day and recorded the drums and then I tool the drum tracks home we recorded over the top of it there and then took them back to the studio again to do the vocals.
The studio treatment really makes a difference for the drums and the vocals but you felt you could get the sound you wanted for the rest of it in your own space?
Yeah those are the two main parts you can really tell the difference in.
You’re just about to put out an EP but there’s already been talk of an album in the pipeline. Is that more of a prospective thing at the moment or is it actually underway?
Yeah the same thing happened after our last EP because you can write the songs but it can be year and a half until they’re ready to go. We’ve been writing this album and writing towards it for a month or two now but we have six or seven songs there already and we’re in the process of writing the rest of them and I think we’ll start the recording in the next month or so. I’m thinking this will be slightly less home recorded. We’ll be looking to go to a studio a little more again.
You’ve just become part of the newly formed Group therapy Records who held a launch party recently. But I noticed you were listed on the event poster as Segue Safari DJs and not just as the band. Is that some new kind of direction for the group? The club sound or something? It was a bit unexpected for me.
(Laughs) That was mostly our guitar player Daniel’s work. He’d never DJ’d before but he decided to try it and did really well I thought. He used actual vinyl and was spinning the decks which was really cool. I tried for just half an hour or so at the beginning and then he took over with his huge record collection.
So what’s different or special being part of Group Therapy Records?
It was Em Burrows’ idea initially, about forming a group of bands that can all collaborate and help each other with releases and gigs and stuff like that. For example for this release I was supposed to write a press release and I was really struggling with describing us and our sound for example. So I messaged Lyndon from Heathcote Blue just asking for a couple phrases and he helped out a lot.
So to avoid the most predictable question next of “how would you describe your sound” I can instead ask “How did Lyndon from Heathcote Blue describe your sound?”
There were a couple of descriptions I thought were really fitting like “modulated guitar pop” and “lo-fi/ high contrast”.
I can definitely hear that in your new tracks but especially a bit of a Strokes’ vibe on the title track.
Yeah that’s definitely the most Strokes-sounding song we’ve ever done.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Who else is playing on the night and what can you tell us about them?
There’s the Regular Boys, Lana Rothnie and Ryan Beno who also just launched an EP on Saturday at the Bird. We’ve also got Caspar Swindells doing a public exhibition. He took the photo that we’ve got on the cover and he’s going to have bunch of black and white photos up so I think he’s spending a lot of his days in the dark room at the moment so it will be great to have that element for people to experience as well.
Salutations is now available via Bandcamp and Soundcloud.
https://soundcloud.com/seguesafari/sets/salutations-ep
