Soccer Practise Photo: Supplied
There's a lot going on in the debut album from Soccer Practise. Twisted beats, powerful vocals and surging guitars combine with both English and te reo Māori lyrics, to create something truly unique.
The band's vocalist Geneva Alexander-Masters explains her hypnotic and passionate melodies:
"The way that I sing is repetitive because Thom’s beats are so complicated and so chaotic that I feel like I need to be a guiding voice through the chaos.
"So regardless of what language I’m speaking or singing in, I'm like this repetitive pathway that allows the listener to be guided through the song.
SoccerPractise Photo: Supplied
"When I sing in te reo it’s the same way that I’d sing in English. Because I’m bilingual I interpret the world in both ways."
It was perhaps Geneva's tendency to sing in both languages that led to SoccerPractise being chosen to perform Hall of Fame inductee, Moana Maniapoto's 'Tahi' at last year's Silver Scrolls. Although, this bi-lingual approach isn't something Geneva wants the listener to overthink.
Related: Soccer Practise performs Moana Maniapoto's 'Tahi'
"I want the listener to relax about it and feel invited to engage with the song rather than just the language or just the beat or just the visual or just the guitar.
"We want to blend it all together and have our own sound and our own format and I don’t change that format for anything."
Although their self-titled debut has only just been released, SoccerPractise are already thinking about the next project. They say this first album is a document of where they've been, but they're more excited about where they're going.
Related: Kicking it with SoccerPractise
Beat maestro Thom Burton's eyes light up when he starts talking about their new music.
"We’re a third of the way through recording our next album. It’s a lot less lo-fi: the songs we’ve got back so far are quite big and it almost feels like it’s drawing on the music of The Skeptics or BailterSpace."
The band have been giving new tracks to the record labels: "Someone said, ‘This kind of sounds like Killing Joke.’ which is kinda cool that people are getting that. I don’t think we’ve set out to go, 'this genre that genre' we’re just doing our own thing."
