Project Description

Q&A With

HIDDEN CURRENTS

Interviewer: Kelsey Hentschel

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Melbourne indie outfit Hidden Currents are excited to be  embarking on a tour to bring their tunes from debut album After Image to the Australian Eastern seaboard. The band consists of singer-songwriter Christopher Sprake, Richard Jelbert (guitar); Nyk Lee (keys/guitar); and Ruvith Abraham (drums/percussion). Hidden Currents are excited to be hitting up Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane with their bright shiny debut of impassioned indie-drenched songs depicting tales of love, lust, and what comes after. Band members Chris & Richard answered some questions that  Amnplify interviewer Kelsey was itching to know.

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Your debut album ‘After Image’ has finally be released. Its been a long time coming. How does it feel to finally have it out there?

Richard: A relief! This batch of songs have been around for a long time, and feels good to finally have a permanent document of them that, we hope, people can enjoy as much as we do.

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Was there a specific time or event that you could pin point when you decided that music was something that you wanted to make a career out of?

 Richard: Any Monday to Friday at about 3 pm…

Chris: I started playing shows in my late teens, so it was probably already in mind then, but it was only really about eleven years ago that my studio and live work took over.

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Your music has such a 80’s nostalgia to it. Is that something you actively try to create?

Richard: No, it’s not. Most of us in the band are children of the 90s, and we now mainly listen to contemporary bands, so the strong 80’s vibe that people are hearing comes as a bit of surprise. We thought in putting it together it had more of a maximalist post-rock vibe.

Chris: We tend to have a strong focus on melody and atmosphere which maybe harks back to an ‘80s feel, but it’s not something we consciously pursue.

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Who are your main musical influences?

Chris: We tend to all enjoy music with atmosphere, detail and good song writing, so artists such as Radiohead, The National, Connor Oberst and Sigur Ros, alongside local Melbourne indie bands.

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Do you think they are reflective in your music?

Richard: We think they are certainly evident, though we try to avoid doing anything that’s obviously derivative. We’ll let others judge how successful that’s been.

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What are the themes explored on the debut album After Image?

Chris: There’s a range of themes – social justice, gender roles, the worth of art, – often these are explored as relationship conversations. Someone described it as a break up album, but I feel it is closer to an exploration of the things we love and pursue, and what happens when those things are incompatible with the world we live in.

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What most inspires the song writing?

Chris: I would have to say my own relationships, and my local community. Through my studio I have run many programs for at risk community members – refugees, people experiencing substance issues, racism, financial difficulty. A song like ‘Updraft’ combines me exploring my own long term relationship entering uncertainty and refugee issues. I worked with a person, now a friend, who didn’t want to leave his country but was forced too. After committing the crime of “playing romantic music in public” he was imprisoned and whipped. He continued to receive death threats after he was released and fled to Australia with his young family.

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How long did it take to put together this Album? You’ve released a few singles already, how did you decide which songs to release ahead of the album?

Richard: Its been the best part of three years’ work all up. The singles in many ways were progress markers of the transition we were going through within the band in terms of song writing and arranging. They represent what we felt was our strongest output at the points in time when they were released. Having single releases meant that we could keep small immediate goals in sight, which was necessary to keep us motivated and give us a sense of progress given the stop-start nature of how the recording process took place.

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Speaking of those releases, you staggered the song releases quite sparingly. Was the plan always to straight out release an album with no EP’s?

Richard: An album was always the target, it just took longer to bring to realisation than was anticipated. The album slowly coalesced from songs that Chris brought to the rest of the band in the early days, and songs that we developed largely out of jams in a full band environment. Managing that transition proved more time consuming than we expected at the time.

Chris: I think we all still like the idea of an album as an immersive experience with a larger collection of songs to explore similar themes.

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What’s your favourite track you guys have ever released?

Richard: Collectively, we are most pleased with Updraft, Ring, Small Folk, Only Star in the Sky, My Town, but we all have our individual favourites.

Chris: Ring and Small Folk best showcase the band writing together, and as a writer I probably enjoy Ring the most as it has a stronger narrative avoiding verse/chorus repetition. Nyk also plays some great guitar on My Town.

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You guys have a bunch of shows coming up over April & May. Are there any shows you’re particularly excited for?

Richard: Well, the album launch at the Night Cat goes without saying, and the following dates in Sydney and Brisbane will be our first interstate shows for this band, so those are definitely exciting prospects too.

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What are your goals for 2018 with your music career?

Richard: Play shows, build our audience and complete the writing process for our next album. We’re confident that it will be a lot quicker this time around.

Chris: Any opportunity we get to share a moment or an idea with other people through what we do is worth it.

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Connect With HIDDEN CURRENTS:

Website       Facebook       Twitter      Instagram

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