Sunshine Terror Babies finds the Melbourne via Perth electronic duo, Flower Drums, truly at home with their sound. With tracks off their debut album in motion since 2014, the atmospheric sounds of Flower Drums’ Aden Senycia and Leigh Craft have lived through multiple journeys back and forth from Australian east and west coasts. The result, is a lush synth narrative that takes a listener through all their intimate highs and lows experienced in the album’s long time in the making. The pair take some time out to chat about moving cities, recording and producing the album themselves and explain the meaning behind the radical album title.
For those who haven’t heard the Sunshine Terror Babies yet, what’s 3 words you’d use to describe what it sounds like?
Late night
Driving
Ambient
All 11 tracks on the album seem to transition quite seamlessly together. Were they written in a similar period of time?
Most of the record was written together in our studio in Footscray over 2016/17 but there are some songs dating back to 2014 that started out in Perth. “Playing Games” was written via the internet just before the album was released as we were traveling around at the time.
We like the idea of capturing public ambiance as well as field recordings to join songs together and have always been drawn to interludes on records. I think that even though the songs were written over such a long period of time it is these things that link them together.
What was it like recording the album, especially considering you guys produce and mix it all yourselves?
We recorded, produced and mixed this album over quite a long period of time and this, I think, meant that every type of emotion was felt and explored along the way. We feel better about not having to rely on anybody else to mix or produce our songs, it means we can make it exactly how we intended.
The production and words on songs like “No Guarantees” are so intertwined and seem to play off one another, I’m curious to know how you write your songs as a duo? What comes first, lyrics or beats?
It is always different, as cliche as that sounds. We do tend to write a near-finished song, then dissect it all, re-write almost everything and build it back up. This process can happen over and over again. For example “Bottled Water” has had 9 or 10 different drum arrangements.
“No Guarantees” is one of our favourites. We wanted to create an alternative to the super separated, clean and slick sounds that tend to dominate electronic-pop. We wanted to blend everything a bit more and have the power of the song not come from an obvious place.
The single “Night Swims” provides a very lavish soundtrack to what you describe as “the daunting reality of settling down”. What do you mean by that?
It is an exploration into our need to keep creating and finding new areas, physically and metaphorically, that keep us moving forward and avoiding complacency.
You guys are from Perth, when and why did you make the move to Melbourne?
Flower Drums actually started in Melbourne strangely enough. After playing for a few years around Perth we just decided to make a more permanent move to Melbourne to finish the record off. It really suited our lifestyles at the time and seems to just be a good city to write music in.
What’s been your experience creating music between two cities that are so far apart from each other?
They offer such different things. Perth is kind of all about nature for us but Melbourne tends to suit our songwriting better.
You recently had your album launch, what’s it like translating the recorded songs to a live band/set?
It has been really fun, our friend Satoshi is playing bass with us at the moment and he adds in really cool bass runs occasionally. In the past we have been a 4 piece with drummer and bassist, it would be cool to get drums back into our set.
I’m a huge fan of that 80’s style, Phil Collins-esque gated drum sound that you guys feature pretty prominently throughout the record. What/Who inspired that sonic direction?
I think it happened quite naturally. We both like detuned synths and reverb-heavy snares. We use quite a few different types of drum machines as well as a Prophet 6 synth, I suppose it is this combination that creates an 80s vibe.
Sunshine Terror Babies is such a radical name for your album! I think ‘Terror’ is the complete opposite of your sound, where did the title for the album come from?
It is from a book by Ryu Murakami called From the Fatherland With Love which I was reading over a few months of the recording process. The main characters within the book make up a group of outcasts which when translated to English are called Sunshine Terror Babies. Our music tends to be written in minor (dark) keys but is also kinda chill, so we liked how the words “Terror” and “Sunshine” represented those things. Also we just kinda like how ridiculous it is.
What’s next on the horizon for Flower Drums?
We are releasing a few videos for some of the songs off the record. We also plan to head over and play to Perth/Fremantle at some point, as well as release Sunshine Terror Babies on vinyl.