Out With The Old, In With The Brutal

From a cafe in Redfern, sleepmakeswaves guitarist Otto Wicks-Green is newly rid of a day job and an appendix, the latter conveniently announcing its presence in a rare window of downtime for the ever-in-motion four-piece. He's feeling fresh and primed to give ARIA-nominated Love Of Cartography its last headline hurrah around Australia, their first with new guitarist Dan Oreskovic, which closely follows a sold out run supporting reformed prog heroes Cog.

"Dan was going to Cog shows back in I think in the late '90s — he was sneaking into them and faking his I.D and all that stuff to the point where he actually kinda knew the band," starts Wicks-Green. "He probably had less beard and a more hopeful outlook on life back then, you know, that kind of optimism that gets lost after a few years playing in a band! When we met up with Cog boys on the first show, Dan kind of hopefully proffered his hand and said like, 'Maybe you're gonna remember [me]?' And there was not even the faintest trace of recollection from those guys which was really funny," he laughs. "We didn't really have any personal relationship with them, but musically for sure they've been a massive influence; they set the scene in Australia, the prog scene for bands like Karnivool and The Butterfly Effect and Dead Letter Circus to emerge in their wake, and then of course those bands gave way to bands like sleepmakeswaves. So in that respect it was a real bucket list honour to be on the road with them."

With an ever-present gratitude for the support of the international progressive rock community — players and fans alike — sleepmakeswaves frequently and generously use their own media and stage platforms to shine a light on the scene.

"I 'spose given that this is the final tour in the Love Of Cartography cycle we'll be reaching into the back catalogue and plucking out some songs we haven't played in many years too. It will be Dan's first time on a big Australian headline tour with us, so we're really excited to show him off… Crucially as well, we're bringing out The Contortionist, who we toured with in the States earlier this year. If you've never listened to them, they're absolutely worth a spin — their latest record Language is really exciting and a beautifully progressive metal album. The singer Michael Lessard is wonderful and his presence on stage is really captivating; the musicianship and songwriting in that band is some of the best I've ever seen, so getting to tour with those guys on two different occasions this year is a real privilege and they're lovely dudes to boot so I'm really psyched to have those guys on the bill.

"Then also Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving are coming out from Perth who are a really heavy keyboard-driven take on post-rock I suppose, and their live show is really worth catching. So the whole line-up I think is really stacked and worth coming out early for."

The tour will likely be a road test for the first tracks of the third sleepmakeswaves album too, tentatively scheduled for recording with Love Of Cartography producer Nick DiDia [Stone Temple Pilots, Powderfinger, Karnivool] in October/November. According to Wicks-Green, the early writing is feeling "Antarctic and austere and brutal".

"[Bassist] Alex [Wilson] and I kind of put our heads together late last year and started talking in a conceptual way about what we wanted to do and shared some bits and pieces, and we were kind of on the same wavelength — that we wanted to make something a little bit darker and heavier in tone, and something a little bit more riffy as well. We've spent time with bands like Karnivool and The Contortionist, but then also having spent time with bands like This Will Destroy You it went the opposite way with these enormous droney soundscapes; we kind of wanted to combine these worlds and see what we could do in a more cohesive way with this record.

"Love Of Cartography — we were super proud with how that went and we're stoked with that record but we were also thinking about its limitations, how it was really a collection of songs rather than a really cohesive album experience," the guitarist admits, while noting the work ahead. 

"It's such an intangible thing to know that you've got to write a great follow-up album… But just through sheer force of will you can't achieve that, it has to be disconnected from your ambition — it has to be something that just happens separately in its own time."