‘The Eighth Note’ is 8 quick Questions with Wellington Musicians.

A chance for us to catch up with people & see what they’re up to, or introduce you to a new musician/band and their music.

Today’s guest’s are new Psych band The Spectre Collective.

Who are you? Tell us a bit about your music:
We’re a paranoid psych band from Wellington, and we play warped and uneasy grooves that are both catchy and wonky. At the moment we’re a multi-instrumentalist 3-piece, but we’re looking to expand our live line-up and add more limbs to this strange beast over time.

What have you been working on lately? Any new tracks or albums on the way?
We got together as a band at the start of August and released our debut album ‘Paleofuture’ at the end of September. It all came together extremely quickly, so we’re relying on that momentum to keep churning out new stuff. We’re currently writing our second album that we’ll hopefully release by the end of the year. It expands on the paranoia of the first album and gets even darker. We’re playing around with a bunch of different styles; there’s some off-kilter swampy shit as well as some space rock, catchy kraut grooves, psychedelic horror and doom. It feels both earthy and spacey, like a mix of folklore and science fiction. Apart from that, we’re just practising and trying to book more gigs for 2019!

Where is the best place people can follow you & find your music?
You can find our tunes on our Bandcamp page, and it’s the best way to directly support the band. There’s also Spotify, etc. You can find out about upcoming gigs through our Facebook page.

What were the 3 most influential albums to you growing up?
We’re bad with questions like this, so we won’t answer it. HOWEVER, the 3 albums we are currently cranking as a band are Masana Temples by Kikagaku Moyo, Mirror by Orchestra of Spheres, and Polygondwanaland by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. (Special shout outs to You by Gong, Mulatu Of Ethiopia by Mulatu Astatke, and Dead Magic by Anna von Hausswolff).

Which other Wellington musician (s) would you most like to work with?
Orchestra of Spheres, Earth Tongue, Mermaidens, Linen, The All Seeing Hand, ONONO & Spook The Horses.

What ’s your favourite Wellington venue to play in?
Valhalla has great sound and lighting, and San Fran has a nice vibe for both audience and performers. It’d be fun to play in a sweaty lounge somewhere and make the wallpaper peel. Someone put on a house party.

In your songwriting or composing (or the band’s songwriting) how do the compositions and songs take shape?
The process will likely evolve over time, depending on who’s involved. Currently, our drummer Will leads the charge on the songwriting front, and will approach Jono (guitar/keys) and Lochie (bass) with riffs, beats or ideas that they can embellish or improve on, and then we jam them out and see what other magic happens. Other times, we’ll find the song in the mixing stages and overdub a bunch of stuff. Will also writes the lyrics – sometimes they’ll dictate the direction of the song, and other times the lyrics/vocal melodies are shoe-horned into a pre-existing structure based on whatever we recorded in our jam sessions.
We record all of our jams on a phone so we can listen back and see what works, what doesn’t, and where other things can come into play. We have a song on the album called Pissed Uncle that was completely improvised and recorded on a phone, and that made the cut because fuck it, why not. It’s definitely the outlier of the album, but there’s a chaotic insanity contained in that song that could only have been achieved through wild improvisation, and it felt right to archive it, warts and all. Funnily enough, it’s usually the song names that become the most important aspect of the songwriting process. They help set the tone. If a song has no name, it has no identity.

Where/when is your next gig?
We’re playing at Bush Bash on Sat Dec 8th up on Polhill Reserve in Aro. It’s an awesome one-day mini music fest that our friend Ben Jones puts on, and there’s a cool assortment of bands, artists, poetry, etc. No door sales so get in quick before they sell out!
We’re also playing at Welcome to Nowhere on the weekend of Jan 11th, out near Whanganui. Two days of solid bands and sun out in the middle of nowhere, where you can go for a swim and run around with dogs and shit. It’s awesome.
There are some more exciting gigs to come in 2019, but we can’t announce them yet…