Orogeny

Tue 8th Dec, 2009 in Features

Local prog band Orogeny has been making a name for themselves around Perth of late, having recently supported Tangled Thoughts of Leaving and Eleventh He Reaches London, they sparked our interest initially because two of their guitarists are left handed. After proving themselves to be mightily impressive musicians, speculation ran rife about whether it was the lefties that gave them the creative edge over other bands with a similar musical aim. While the jury is still out on that question, we had a chat in the days leading up to their demo launch at the Civic Hotel and got some straight answers to some other questions, and the good news that they have more releases planned for the near future.

What’s your creative process like? Is the workload shared equally, or do one or two members do most of the songwriting?

When we started, lead singer/guitarist Jon Jenkin had a bunch of material ready to go and in the end that made up a large amount of our debut album. About 2/3 of the way through writing the album we ‘caught up’ so to speak and our writing process became much more collaborative. Now we all contribute pretty evenly to the writing process. Generally the common goal is to meld our different influences and create something that we think is unique.

Do you have any key influences? As your music is more ambient in nature, almost like the score to an unfilmed movie, I’m interested if you could name any non-musical inspirations that have influenced your sound.

We’re largely influenced by progressive artists like Oceansize, Isis, Pelican and the Mars Volta and post-rockers like Sigur Ros, Godspeed You!Black Emperor and …And So I Watch You From Afar. Then there are countless peripheral influences, some of which we all dig ie like Battles and Pivot and then some others which maybe one or two of us may like.

It’s interesting that you mention the similarity of our music to soundtracks; Jon’s studying music composition for films at the moment and we recently had the opportunity to score a short film as a band, which was really good fun. I think the filmic element to our music comes from our post-rock inspirations; bands whose music is reminiscent of film scores. In terms of non-music influences, many of our song themes gravitate towards nature and centre around animal characters or natural phenomena because we like looking for things in nature that reflect the human condition. I guess thinking about it, that was a decision that might’ve subconsciously come with the band name because it seems to have happened since we changed it to Orogeny.

Given the more abstract nature of your work, how do you feel you fit in the Perth music scene? Are there any artists you feel a kinship with? Who do you enjoy playing with?

Rob, Jack and Jon were already mates with members of Eleventh He Reaches London before our band started so we’ve played a few shows with them to date. As well as being friends I think we share the common desire to cement a progressive scene in Perth. And it’s an exciting time to be sharing such a goal as there’s so much good stuff coming through at the moment! The First Snow, The Silent World, The Wire Forest, Dusk and Ibex are just a few names that spring to mind. Also, we’ve been swept up by the complexity and energy of Tangled Thoughts of Leaving who, besides being a great bunch of guys to play shows with, I think share many similiar influences to our own.

What does the future hold for you, both immediately, and further down the road?

Immediately, the aim for us is to continue to write more music but to record some of the tunes which we have been playing around town this year. So hopefully by mid 2010 we hope to have an EP ready to go. Further down the track we’d like to record another full-length which we can get behind a tour with.

Orogeny hits the Civic Hotel Back Room on Saturday December 12th with support from Ibex, Over Unity and The First Snow. This is prog like you’ve never heard it before, it will take you on a journey through prehistoric landscapes and far flung galaxies. Proudly presented by Fasterlouder.