RAAVE TAPES on their debut album
Its here! The self titled debut album from Newcastle’s RAAVE TAPES has arrived. 12 wonderful tracks that lock into the interpersonal relationships the two band members Lindsay and Joab have with the people around them. We caught up with the band to chat about their debut album, writing process and living in Newcastle.
Pleaser: How does it feel to have a debut album on the horizon
RAAVE TAPES: Its very surreal! I don’t know if I can believe this, its been such a long time coming.
P: How long have you been working on the album?
RT: Since the start of COVID- about 2 years we put it together I about 18 months. We’ve been sitting on it for awhile so it’s kind of been ruminating - ready to go.
P: Were there any songs that you had written in the past that you found again or was it all new stuff?
RT: All sort of fresh stuff and all from that time period. When we went in with our producer we had some songs ready to go and he was like “No we’re not doing that, lets start afresh, what are we listening to? What do we like?”
P: So the third single- how does that feel to have this as a piece of the album out in the world?
RT: The first two that came out people were kind of saying “what is this going to be apart of?” We had to keep it quiet for awhile it feels good that now it signals this is part of a bigger piece of work that’s been the big picture for awhile hopefully all the visuals and all the stuff happening on the back end kind of ties in and everyone gets to see it.
P: Coming into the visuals a little more- how did you come up the concept for 'I Don’t Want To Be Alone’?
Lindsay: We started this batch with the first single. ‘Goodbye’ we wanted to do a helicopter, we always had that idea floating around (ironically floating) and we got the helicopter so when it came to the second one we were like we’ve started the bar really high here where do we go? How do we tie it in? So we got motorbikes and we were like well we’ve done land and air so what’s the next environment we haven’t hit and of course it was water so the boat was a really natural progression.
Joab: I couldn’t be in this film clip I get really bad motion sickness. I got to shoot the light and follow the boat, it was nice being behind the scenes.
P: Coming from Newcastle, how does home kind of inspire your music?
RT: I guess quite heavily, this whole album thematically is so intrinsically linked to our friends and our relationships and looking interpersonally at how we interact with our friends and our community and all of that. This album is so Newcastle core.
P: I feel like there’s so much good stuff going on in Newcastle- are there any local bands you’re loving at the moment?
RT: Evangeline, dust, Teddie
It’s a good scene, it’s nice to see so many bands getting out and moving around a little bit because we’ve found Newcastle can be quite insular. We are just that little bit away not far enough for it to be crazy isolated but do tend to be a little insular. Its great to see Teddi getting out and playing and dust going overseas and playing with Bloc Party and doing all the biggest things ever.
