TESSERACT (Eng.)
– Hi, and thank you for taking the time for an interview just before two tours! How excited are you about these tours?
Hi there- no problem, thanks for talking to us. We’re really excited about these tours – we’re currently part of the way through our first proper UK headline tour and it’s been great fun so far. Playing with the incredible Chimps Spanner and Uneven Structure rules – I’m a fan of both bands, so to hear them and hangout every night is super sweet, and I cant wait for when we take the show out to europe next month.
We head over to the states to tour with Between The Buried and Me and Animals As Leaders at the end of october… who wouldn’t be rediculously excited about that? haha
These tours are our first with elliot coleman, our new vocalist, so it’s a very exciting time for us overall!
– Being an UK band, which seems the most interesting or important tour for you? The UK/European tour as headliner, or the bigger US tour as a support act?
They’re both as important as each other in different ways. We need to be playing in europe and the US, so regardless of who we’re playing with or what the size of a tour, it’s very important to be playing everywhere possible!
With Europe being our first headliner, I guess it’s our most significant tour as far as achievements go though..
– Just before starting this long list of shows, your frontman Daniel Tompkins decided to leave the band. Do you think that this will impact the band a lot, thinking short term?
Well it was obviously a set back initally, but luckily we found a great new vocalist – Elliot Coleman – very quickly. he fit right in and after a few rehearsals it felt like we’d been playing together for a lot longer! After nailing the set for the tour he found time to put ideas down for a new track idea which we added to the set – check out a little demo we did before we left here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE0B9W9DFGI
many fans are obivously disapointed about dan leaving, as we were, but i’m hoping they come to our shows on this tour with an open mind and check out what elliot can do – as I guaruntee they wont be disapointed!
– How about long term? Your new vocalist, Elliot Coleman, has quite some experience, but his voice can’t really be compared with Tompkins’. Does this mean that Tesseract will adapt its style to these new vocals?
The tesseract sound is something that has always evolved, so a change in vocals wont necisserilly change the instrumental writing process, but it will definitely help by moving the band’s overall sound forward. We already have a lot of ideas for the new album, and elliot’s ideas and new style have brought a lot of the ideas to life and been pretty inspiring. As you say he’s not Dan, although he’s doing a great job singing the old stuff, the new stuff is where he’s really shine. We’re very excited!
– Please tell us in a few words how the band got together. How easy or difficult was it to agree on the genre of music Tesseract would be playing?
The band was started by guitarist acle kahney as a solo bedroom project back in 2003. He started posting clips on guitar forums around about the same time as Paul Ortiz (chimp spanner) and Misha (periphy), and built up a name for the band in the online scene. In 2006 he decided to bring in musicians to play the music live, and met jay (drums) mos (Bass) and myself at gigs our respective previous bands played together, and it went from there. Acle is still the primary composer, although the songs now develop organically in the rehearsal room after the initial demo phase. There’s never been any conscious decision to play any particular genre of music.
– Was the name ‘Tesseract’ chosen to stress the different dimensions your music has, or is there another story behind that?
Acle came up with the name as he found the concept of four dimensions interesting, and as you say, it alludes the mulitple layers in the music. I think he was watching the movie Hyper Cube after one too many magical cigarettes and decided to research the meaning on the internet. Who says drugs are bad eh?
– Is there a funny or embarrassing anecdote you’d like to share with your Spanish fans?
On our last UK tour (with periphery and monuments) Dan has a rather nasty experience. The band, lighting guy and sound engineer, all crashed at his house after the Notthingham show. Everyone showered in the morning as normal, getting ready for the drive to london. Being a fairly clean person, dan gave the shower a quick clean, but after the last shower, whilst cleaning the bath down, he noticed that a rather large amount of hair clogging up the plug hole. As he pulled the hair out he noticed that it was matted together with a gluey white substance… undesolved conditioner maybe? Showgel? He pulled further and then the smell gave it away… he was holding hair soaked in the male bodily fluid no one wants to touch.
needless to say he was horrified- not only had one of us cracked off in his shower… but he was touching it.
To this day we still haven’t found out the culpret, but we have our suspisions 🙂
– Your first full length album, ‘One’, was highly acclaimed. Of how much as a surprise did this come to the band? Did you expect to stand this far after just one album?
We couldn’t have been happier with the response! It’s something that we’d worked incredibly hard on, so for it to be as well received as it has been is amazing. In all honesty we didn’t know what to expect, the industry is incredibly fickle and although we believed that we had made a good album, whether people liked it or not was another thing. Luckily many do!
we had always had aspriraions to be doing what we’re doing, so it feels right to be doing it now. I can’t say whether we expected to be here or not because as I said we had no idea what to expect, but we’re definitely happy with what’s going on right now.
– Tesseract’s music isn’t what can’t be described as easy-listening; most songs are quite complex. Can you tell us something about the songwriting process you have?
Acle generally produces a demo of a few ideas/ riffs and circulates on email, then follows a mixture of us learing the ideas, dicussing arrangements on email and jamming takes to develope the instrumental parts. Vocals are added on top and develop with the track as a whole.
– Your genre is still relatively new; who would you say your main influences are or have been?
The rhythm guitar style obviously takes a massive influence from meshuggah, and fredrick T’s special defects / sol niger project, but for overall sounds and songwriting, the likes of pink floyd and the doors pay a massive part.
– What bands would you love to tour with in the future and why?
Tool, The Defones, Mastodon and Opeth are all great ‘big’ bands we’d absolutely love to tour with. All play epic progressive heavy music, and apart from it fitting well musically, I think it would be a real education whatching these bands every night.
I grew up on metal, so i’d also love to tour with anyone from machine head to megadeth 🙂
– How easy or difficult do you find it to gain popularity as a band in this day and age? Do you have particular plans or strategies for this?
For us the internet has been an invaluable rescource and that’s where pretty much all our early following came from. Sharing music on forums and social networks really helps spread the word. Posting regular intersting updates helps engage your current fans and encourages them to share stuff with their friends etc. although it’s a long old slog, it’s definitely easier to gain popularity by yourself in this day and age.
– What are the band’s plans for the near future? Back to the studio after the tour?
Yes! After the US tour we break for xmas, but the first part of next year is all about album two! We want to get most of it recorded over this period so that we can have it all ready to release in autumn 2012. We will also be doing a full european tour in the first half of next year and will most definitly be coming to spain, so come out and see us!
Before the then we’ll be putting out an EP this autumn, keep an eye out for that too.
– Once again, thank you for your time. We hope to see you in Spain someday soon! If you want to add something for your Spanish fans, the last lines are all yours!
Que Passe! See you in 2012
