‘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 Earth to Zena, who released their debut E.P ‘Transmundane’ late last year. They will be touring the South Island soon to support it, and will be back in Wgtn to play at the Newtown Festival in March.
Who are you? Tell us a bit about your music:
We’re Earth to Zena! We’re a four piece psychedelic dream-pop shoegaze band. We like to combine apparent opposites: dreamy atmospheres with cutting riffs and noise; catchy infectious melodies with noise and a bit of experimentalism. We hope the result is music that’s surprising and dynamic.
What have you been working on lately? Any new tracks or albums on the way?
We’ve recently released our debut EP ‘Transmundane’, and have just started working on a new collection of songs. The first of which, ‘End of the World’, can be heard in our recent performance on RNZ’s “NZ Live”, which can be streamed from their website.
Where is the best place people can follow you & find your music?
The BEST place people can follow us and find our music is in person at any of our upcoming shows. The next best place is our Website. We’re also on Spotify and Facebook.
What were the 3 most influential albums to you growing up?
Each member of the band has pretty distinct backgrounds and tastes, which helps us find our own unique sound. We’re gonna bend the rules a tiny bit and choose 4 albums. We each picked one!
Chronologically:
Pink Floyd – Meddle (1971)
My Bloody Valentine – Loveless (1991)
Mint Chicks – Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No! (2006)
Tame Impala – Lonerism (2012)
Which other Wellington musician (s) would you most like to work with?
There’s so much great music out of Wellington right now, that’s a tough choice. We recently saw Glass Vaults at Space Place and were super inspired. Both sonically and visually that show was so immersive and hypnotic, we’ve talked about it a lot since. So we’d certainly love to work with them. We’re also really excited to share the stage with Hans Pucket when we open for them at Wellington Gardens Magic on 11 January.
What is your favourite Wellington venue to play in?
We had a blast at Moon Bar for our EP release show in September. Caroline has also been very good to us and hosts us regularly. We’re playing SanFran for the first time tonight though, so who knows, that could become a favorite. Overall though we’re really looking to play more outdoor shows now that summer is approaching. …and Space Place, we gotta play there sometime!
In your songwriting or composing (or the band ís songwriting) how do the compositions and songs take shape?
It varies song-by-song, but often Renee (our lead singer and synth player) will bring the bones of a song that she’s written, often just voice and ukulele, and then as a band we’ll transform it into a fully embellished song, each bringing our own pieces to the arrangement. Then later when we record it we’ll hear the song with new ears, add new elements and maybe even restructure things, and then we’ll selectively bring some of those changes back to the live performance. So the songs are constantly evolving really, with writing informing performance informing recording informing writing informing performance, on and on forever.
Where/when is your next gig?
In February we’ll be touring the country, in CHCH on 27 Feb, Dunedin on 1 March, back in Wellington for Newtown Festival on 3 March. Those are just the dates booked so far, hopefully we’ll be adding some stops. Stay tuned!