Tritonic’s new album Bend the Arc! explores the necessity of shaping one’s own destiny. Blending sludge, doom, jazz, and indie, they challenge conventions with fretless guitars, raw production, and bold experimentation.
1. Your
new album Bend the Arc! raises a profound question—who ensures the moral
universe bends toward justice? How does this idea manifest in your music?
The answer to the
question is that you must bend the arc yourself and not wait for it to happen.
The idea lies within the creative process itself. You have to make the art that
you want to exist, you can't wait for it to step out of the aether. This theme
of sacrifice for knowledge is the key to unlocking the album. A working
knowledge of third century Gnosticism may also help.
2. Tritonic pulls from a vast range of influences—sludge, doom, hardcore,
jazz, indie, even nu-metal. How do you weave these seemingly disparate elements
into a cohesive sound?
As a band we all have had similar but varied musical upbringings. The
drummer Rob and I played in the rhythm section for a big band / swing orchestra
for a few years whilst also playing in indie and grunge bands. It's almost a
natural convergence of our interests. Generally, we are very amateurish in all
of these different genres, and are very much using that naïveté to mould the
genres into what we want then to be. To the 'bend the arc' if you will.
3. Your use of self-converted fretless guitars is a bold move. What drove
you to remove the frets, and how has it changed your songwriting process?
Originally it was an experiment to change my guitar playing as it felt that
I had hit a wall with what I could do with that instrument. By taking away the
frets it removed the fetishisation of precision which is often so prevalent in
metal genres. It allowed for different avenues and closed off more well trodden
ones.
4. You describe this act as both destruction and creation. Do you see
Tritonic as a band that deliberately disrupts conventions within heavy music?
Genre orthodoxy and boundary maintenance can have its place, but all my
favourite bands growing up we're always seen as radically genre-atheistic.
Tritonic were always going to be heavy, but unafraid to try anything else.
Hopefully with each release our tonal transitions will seem less jarring and
more justified.
5. Your previous releases, Port of Spain and Algae Bloom, mixed aggression
with vulnerability. What emotional or sonic contrasts can listeners expect on
Bend the Arc!?
The previous albums really revelled in how unpredictable they could be,
which I think we saw as a selling point. 'Bend the Arc' was always conceived as
a singular piece of work, so even when you are going from grinding sludge
metal, to free-jazz sound collage and back to stadium rock, the emotion and
thought behind each track is complimentary.
6. The single Demiurge is described as a "statement of intent."
What is that intent, and how does the track set the tone for the album?
In traditional Gnostic thought the demiurge created the corrupted physical
world as a reaction to someone trying to learn about the one true God. So the
first single describes that moment but also invites you to wallow in the
griminess of the physical world.
7. You embrace the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk—the total work of art. How
does this philosophy shape your approach to visuals, production, and
performance?
We may not achieve perfection, but we can strive for it. From the lyrics, to
the artwork, the videos, the music and even to how we are going to release the
album all are influenced by oneanother. It comes down to integrity and by being
uncompromising, so that you can step back and look at it as a single unified
piece.
8. Refusing to use direct inputs in the studio is unconventional in an era
of digital perfection. What are the advantages and challenges of this method?
Through restrictions can come inspiration.
It once again goes back to gnostic ideas of the physical world being base and
corrupted. So we had to make all the sound on the album 'touch' and vibrate the
atoms in physical space. It didn't end up having too much of an impact and we
may have intermittently taken a loose interpretation of this rule, like all
good rules.
9. Your music seems to embrace chaos and ambiguity while still feeling
deeply human. Is there a guiding philosophy behind this paradox?
Chaos and ambiguity are what it is to be human. Aiming to find and
legislate laws of this chaos and ambiguity is also deeply human.
10. How does your live performance compare to the recorded versions of your
songs? Do you improvise or deconstruct your material on stage?
We haven't dared play any of these songs live yet, lest we manage to
actually pass through the veil of perception and touch the indivisible Monad.
We'll still take up any offers from booking agents!
11. Looking beyond Bend the Arc!, do you see Tritonic continuing to push
boundaries, or is there a specific direction you’d like to explore next?
In a previous interview three years I joked that the next album would be a
doom-jazz opus and that came true. So the next album will aim to be the perfect
indie-pop masterpiece
12. For those who haven’t yet experienced Tritonic, how would you describe
your music in a single sentence?
Like a shoal of mackerel trying to build a shed, you can't fault them for
trying.
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