A Quick Chat with Close Counters

Congratulations on the release of the ‘SOULACOASTA II’! How does it feel to have it finally out? 

Thank you! It feels great, we are really proud of this body of work. Some of the demos for the songs we started 4-5 years ago, so it’s really exciting to finally be able to share them around now.

Tell us a bit about how the album was created. Did you plan to create it, or did the tracks come first and slowly develop into a collection? 

That’s a great question - I don’t think there was a point after the first album where we sat down and said “Right, the first album is done, now we need to make a sequel to it that uses a similar approach to the record narrative and structure”, but that’s how it ended up! Over the years we made heaps of demos, and they would slowly get put into different projects. We had some more vocal featuring tunes appear on our REFRACTIONS (2019) and FLUX (2021) EP. And as we put these ones in the bag, we were slowly accumulating a bank of instrumental, soulful tunes - where it just came to a point that we realised we had enough for a whole second SOUALCOASTA album.

How do you feel ‘Close Counters’ has developed from the first album ‘SOULACOASTA’, to the current album ‘SOULACOASTA II’? 

Whilst I mentioned before that the album uses the first SOULACOASTA as a template of sorts in its structure, in the new record we’ve explored a bunch of new genre pathways with our production. The most notable one is the creation of songs in the Broken Beat genre, a movement that’s really inspired us that was birthed in London in the 90s/00s. GET DOWN!, our second single is working right within that genre, as well as album songs PURSUIT and SECOND STEP. We’ve also turned up the tempo a notch on this album, with songs like SNAP TO IT! and BREAK FROM IT! clocking in at a speedy 130 beats per minute. 

I’ve loved watching the ‘ONLY ONE’ video, how was the process creating that music video? 

The concept for the video was a day in the life of a dancer who’s emerging from a depressive slump and learning to reconnect with the world through dance. The idea was hatched with our longtime collaborator Nathan Guy, who co-directed the clip with Allan and also shot it.

We had the idea in mind for a while but didn’t get ready to execute it until we’d found a location to film the main dance sequences. We landed on the gorgeous main room in the Victorian Quakers’ Centre in West Melbourne. From there we reached out to collaborate with the star Ballet School Dropout and pitched her the idea. We then shot it over a stacked weekend and had an absolute blast. It was also our first time shooting on 16mm film and was a big learning lesson for working within that medium.

What are some upcoming shows that fans can come see you at? 

We have two Tassie shows coming up performing the DJ set - a midnight set at Party In The Paddock, and an all-night-long takeover/album listening party in Hobart at The Grand Poobah on March 4th.

How do you hope to spend the following 10 months now that the album is out? 

We have a heap of other demos lying around and we’d love to start getting that towards a new album. We’d also really love to get overseas to Europe if possible, and get writing and performing some live shows over there.