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We're here with TesseracT, why don't we go around and introduce everybody, and your parts in the band.
I'm Jay, and I play the drums.
I'm James and I play the guitar.
I'm Acle, I play the banjo.
I'm Amos and I play bass.
I'm Elliot, I'm the second drummer.
So you have a lead drummer?
We harmonize.
So Elliot, you're the band's new vocalist. How did they approach you?
I got an e-mail from him. One day, when I was lying on my couch in my underwear doing nothing...
That's not a joke, is it?
They just told me what was going on. They were kind of in a pinch, so they reached out.
They sent me a clip to audition over, and it all came together really quickly. I would say a week and a half.
From when he e-mailed me to already planning on what we were going to do, it took no time at all.
Is it true that the members of The Safety Fire recommended you?
Yeah, that's true. It was Derya, the guitarist mentioned it. And Daniel Regan as well.
I'd totally been listening to Haunted Shores earlier and listening to what Elliot was doing for that,
and for some reason didn't make the connection.
Only when James - you were at a gig, pissed - 'let's try Elliot' and then I went 'yeah he's really good!'. So it fell into place, square peg round hole.
So why did you guys choose Elliot, were there any other people on the table?
A few other people, but we've got a bit of a strong vision for what we want to do, and Elliot fits into that really well.
Everybody here are really big fans of the soulful style that Jeff Buckley did.
Elliot does that just naturally, but he's got his own little twist on it, and we thought that's really gonna work with what doing.
Secret weapon!
Can you share any more detailed information about Dan's departure, as in: how long the process was between the arguments, when he wanted to leave...
No arguments, that's the thing. I know everybody says "we're all totally amicable, we're all good friends", but the fact is, we are.
That's the reason why it's been so easy for us to have this transition.
Dan just wants to do different things, he's got other plans in mind, he's got a family he wants to be with...
And that pig farm in Bristol.
You've got to look after your pigs. Being on the road, pigs turn to cheese.
They start eating each other.
I hate to say it but there's no scandal. There's absolutely no scandal, it's a boring story.
Not like when Portnoy left Dream Theater.
He literally said he couldn't do it, we hugged, and then - we cried a bit.
So the reception of Elliot was quite controversial amongst your fans.
You even jokingly stated that your second full-length album could be titled Neophobia. Did you expect some of this controversy?
What was funny about that is that Radio 1 in England - BBC - actually announced that the new album was going to be called Neophobia.
The biggest radio station in the country got it wrong, it was brilliant.
They don't really have much of a sense of humor though.
I even emailed the DJ to let him know, and he didn't respond.
That's it, no more Radio 1. Burned the bridges there.
It's not our fault man, he should do his *** research.
You recently stated in an interview that you're currently working on an EP to be released soon.
The new full-length album is to be released in October 2012 at the earliest. Is that still accurate?
We're almost finished with the EP, we've got just one more track to do, and then we're going to do some vocals for it.
We just finished the single from that, that's a video as well.
That's going to be released some time - we need to talk about that today.
That's it. The album we're going to maybe start writing in January.
This is it, tours keeps hitting off and some of these tours you can't turn down.
Do you think the band's style will also be influenced due to Elliot's different vocal approach?
I think so yeah.
The thing is that "One" was finished before Dan started putting vocals over it.
And in fact Abi [Abisola Obasanya] wrote a lot of Part I, Part II.
Julien [Julien Perier] wrote - Julien was another vocalist way back - he did all the rhythms for Sunrise.
So, we kind of just write the music regardless of what the vocals will be,
but I think we're looking to involve the vocalist a lot more in what's going on.
And now, because the music isn't there, we've got an opportunity to do that.
There's quite a lot of demos...
Yeah, the music isn't finished, so there will be loads of space for Elliot to get on that straight away.
Whereas "One", Dan was singing over finished tracks.
Are you looking forward to that Elliot?
Yeah. Just get an album out, do it from the ground up. Can't go wrong there.
What are the current plans for the EP release, your idea of a timeframe?
We were supposed to do that about now. Obviously we've had changes.
I've had TesseracT coming at the top of my Google account "EP release?" for the last three months.
You can have your band meeting now, we're just going to film it.
It's going to be early next year.
I have a plan for recording the vocals if you're up for it.
We can stop in Monument Valley, just get out of the tourbus, because we're touring America for the next couple of weeks,
stand outside the tour bus and record some vocals in the desert. That'd be so much fun.
Oh, the old hippie approach.
Get a campfire going, shoot some people...
Acoustic guitar, marshmellows.
Neil Young recorded a whole album on a tour bus, use a cardboard box for a kickdrum.
I'm sure it sounded awful.
No it sounded good. I've seen where they've mixed that, it's in that... Rick Rubin's haunted mansion.
It totally changed - so it wasn't mixed on the tour bus.
You've been touring with Between the Buried and Me and Animals as Leaders for the Saints and Sinners tour in the US.
This is your third tour in North America. What are the differences and similarities between the North American and European djent scenes?
It's not like we've done the LXD tour over there, so...
It seems like kids don't stand as much in America, they move around a bit a little more.
He's American and he moves around a lot.
From my limited experience over there I don't think America is quite as sectioned off into little scenes as in Europe.
You've got people who are into proggy, djenty metal and you've got your hardcore kids and deathcore kids.
Although those things exist in America, it's a little bit more integrated.
I suppose the difference in languages - I know everybody in Europe has a smattering of everybody else's language.
If you're from Germany you can probably speak a bit of Dutch. You can definitely speak English.
But in America everybody speaks - well that's it, American.
You'd be surprised, they can't understand a *** word I say. I mean, come on.
Well, don't worry, I'll do all the talking. You can translate.
Translate from American to English.
You recently released the instrumental version of your debut album "One" through iTunes.
Why did you decide to release it, and why now?
It's actually an early release, we were thinking of doing it in December.
It just felt right. Let's do it. There's all this crap in the press about us, let's just put out this album now.
We talked about it for quite a while. It had to go. It was a good idea to do it.
The really cool thing now is that we've got this double LP.
It's the vinyl edition of "One", but also the instrumental, which we're starting... today is its release.
It's going to sell at the show tonight, online and hopefully at the shows in America as well,
if we don't break them taking them home. They're pretty fragile luggage.
So it has nothing to do with the vocal change?
Not at all. I kind of understand why people would think that.
It's not me singing on that album, so.... Nobody's gaining anything by removing the vocals.
When we released Nascent as a single, that had an instrumental version as well, so it's always been in the pipeline.
Especially fans that are on the got-djent.com forums and sevenstring.org,
they all have been asking to release an insturmental version, from the day that we released the full version.
The fans want it, the fans ask, we give.
The album has been done for so long instrumentally, it makes a lot of sense...
We work very hard making the music stand up without any vocals involved.
It just sounds better with vocals, but a lot of people think they prefer it without.
We're one of the few bands that can release both. Mastodon did it as well.
I often listened to both albums back to back, it sounded great.
And Periphery...
I haven't heard the instrumental one.
There are a lot of people who'd take it over the vocal version as well.
They feel it sounds different or something.
You know the guys, did they remix it or just take the vocals out?
They just took the vocals off.
When they master it it will change the sound.
Doing stuff like that really benefits people that want to learn instruments.
It's easier than to just hit you up for the stems and the tabs. They can learn it by ear off that without vocals clouding it.
Also the vocals become the main focus of the music.
If you take that away you can certainly pick out guitar parts which you may not have noticed before.
In fact our next release is going to have an instrumental, a normal and just pure acapella.
So it's Elliot Coleman just doing TesseracT on his own.
We should just release that for the next one. As long as it's barbershop though. Yeah that would be amazing.
You've recently been working on a music video for Eden which is directed by Ganesh Rao.
How did you get in contact with him and why did you choose him?
Come on man, have you seen his stuff? I just saw that on some forum and it's just so good.
It's more the style than the content of the video, which is neither here nor there. It doesn't matter to me.
It's the style of anything that he's done that is perfect.
We just saw the first cut of it three days ago and it's awesome. We're really pleased with it.
Again, you look at it and everybody is going to ask "what is going on?", but it doesn't matter. It just looks beautiful.
That's why we contacted him, he's just good this fantastic eye and he knows how to translate that to film.
And the best thing is, we're not in it!
Not a freezing day in a freezing factory. A green screen day, though.
We didn't have to spend ten hours playing the same *** part, although that did make us play 'Part II' far better.
We spent a good two hours sliding around in actual dog ***.
Wasn't it pigeon ***?
No it was dog ***.
It's when the guy who owned the building let his dog...
Do you know what's the worst thing about that? He tried to clean it with a hose.
Oh I remember this story.
Spread *** everywhere.
I had to throw my drum mat away after that. I took it back with me in the car and the car just smelled like ***.
And 'Part II' is just four minutes, and Eden is nine. Can you imagine that?
Epic rough.
So when should we expect it to be released?
When our label turns up today, because they're German, we'll discuss it.
But it's going to be in the next month.
What is different about this song in the video from on the album?
It's a video edit so it's 4.5 minutes long now - 4:22 - so that's quite hard to sort of condense, like you were saying.
And we've re-recorded drums and guitars, Elliot sung it as well. It's a completely new recording of it.
You said last night that you reduced the instrumentation because the album version is so layered.
Yeah, it's more the key parts.
So this will be the first official song with Elliot?
Yeah, it's a weird track. On the album it's very produced, overproduced some people might say.
So it's really slick and polished.
We've unintentionally made it a bit more energetic, a bit more vibrant and raw.
It's just got more of a bounce to it. It's pretty much the same vibe.
There's something...
*** Swedish people!
There's something totally...
It's almost like a different band is playing. And there's a killer middle section.
We've got a nice groove.
Eden on the album, when it hit the middle bit where it all broke down, it did just become really soft and wishy-washy, and this is just funky.
So this new version will be a live song now?
Yeah I think so.
Your last appearance at Euroblast was at the 2009 edition with the exact same combination: you and Textures.
In retrospect, how much has changed since then?
Two vocalists!
Was it 2009?
It was a long time ago.
I thought it was 2008.
It was three years ago.
But anyway!
We've been through hell. We've traveled so much.
When you think about it the average American tour is - a month - long.
I'm thinking it's 16,000 miles each tour. We've traveled to Australia, to India, ...
Yeah ***, we went to Australia for three days.
It took us two days to get there, then we played for three days and got on a plane again for another day. We've seen the world.
We've certainly got a better idea of it.
Yeah lots of stuff has happened.
Well thank you for sitting down with us and I hope you guys have an excellent show tonight.
I'll definitely be up there with you.