Melbourne art pop band Hooper Crescent are developing an impressive body of highly original tracks that are about to be released in an album, ‘Essential Tremors’, due out on 5 February 2024 through Spoilsport Records and Earth Libraries. As a taster, they today release the single ‘Karaoke Love’ which is a jaunty, spiky slice of quirkiness.
The sound is a lot fuller than previous releases, with a synth bedrock underpinning the instrumentation. Singer Sam Cummins says of the track:
Karaoke Love is our attempt to move away from guitar driven songwriting, and lean into some of the drum machine and synth experiments we’ve been messing around with for a while. Early on in the writing we were aiming for the sort of synth-driven pop songwriting of bands like Chris & Cosey and mid-80s Talk Talk, but ended up landing somewhere slightly different on the genre map. A lot of credit goes to John Lee on this track who managed to distill our patchwork of ideas into a cohesive song, without
compromising the sonic identity of the band.
The result is a warmer sound and yet still distinctive with its hyperkinetic style and vocal delivery:
The track is available to download and stream through all the usual sites. ‘Essential Tremors’ can be pre-ordered now through the link below.
On recording the album, Cummins says:
After spending the first years of the band recording everything on a shoestring budget, we wanted to see what direction our sound would take working in a more polished studio environment for our second album. When the opportunity to work with John Lee came up, we jumped at the chance. We were such huge fans of so many records he has made at Phaedra, and his studio environment strikes the perfect balance of high end engineering with a DIY atmosphere. John really emphasised the rhythmic/new wave qualities of our music, and pushed our sound into exciting new areas we could never have achieved ourselves. Plus his zen-like aura was a constant source of guidance and tranquility amongst the chaos of recording 13 tracks in 5 days.
This will be highly anticipated.
Feature Photograph: Clara Slewa
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