Inventions are an alternative rock band based in Melbourne, Australia. Freshly formed in late 2013, they are completely independent and have decided to take on the industry on their own terms. Tomatrax caught up with Jake Leaney, the band’s lead singer, to ask some questions.
How did the band form?
I had been living in Melbourne for about a year, when I magically found Ryan through a musicians wanted forum. We jammed some songs I’d written and it worked, I knew that he would be great to work with. Not long after we found Will through the same process and loved his hollow body guitar, Keli with her badass attitude, and then we called Sean after we’d recorded our debut EP and he was in (we’d met him at the same time as Will). Boom. Inventions was, err… invented.
Your name comes from the intention to perpetually reinvent, is it important to constantly find new sounds and styles?
Totally nailed it! It is hugely important for us to always be moving forward and surprising ourselves with what we create. We will always have a base style that we each gravitate towards when writing but there’s much more artistic satisfaction in creating something new and unique. You won’t find us doing the same thing twice. Well, unless you count ordering pizza at band prac.
What’s it like to have your debut EP out?
A dream come true really!! It’s incredible and satisfying to achieve something that we’ve all been working so hard towards for a long time. Even before we formed Inventions we were all working towards the goal of making music that we are proud of and can play in a great band. Putting in the energy, time, and money into a production that we love has been a huge step in progressing our careers and our lives.
What made you decide to make the EP self titled?
As our first footprint in the world as Inventions, we felt that it made sense for this EP to be self titled! The thing tying the songs together really is us becoming who we are as a band. It says “This is us, this is Inventions”.
What was the inspiration behind the video for Shadows?
We wanted this to be a fun performance based clip, as it was our first it was important to introduce us as a band to the world. So fun, dark, slightly weird, and otherworldly, were key words. Ideas just stemmed from there. Or as our guitarist Will puts it so simply; “Because strobes and confetti is the dream”.
You’re currently working on your debut LP, how has that been going?
We’re still in the very early stages of this, but so far it has been great to start discovering how far we can go and how much we can push ourselves! The more new experiences we have the more we are inspired to write. The songs on the EP were mostly written by me with the exception of a few bridges/instrumental sections, and then finessed with the rest of the band to give it the Inventions sound and make it work for us. Now we are collaborating a lot more for these new songs which is a new and wonderful experience for us that we think is going to make for an even stronger set of tracks!
Do you know what it will be titled?
Personally I’m hoping for ‘Purple Monkey Dishwasher’ but I don’t know how the guys feel about that. I think the album title is something that will come closer to the end of the process.
How will the LP compare with your EP?
It will be stronger, more mature, have more depth, and have a much bigger range of expression- with an EP you really only have 20 minutes to get your idea across, however with an album you have time to explore so many more things! There will definitely be some softer songs, I spent most of my years before this band playing by myself at a piano so there’ll be some of that in there. The recording of the EP was quite rushed, so we will take our time with the production side of things for our full length.
You’ll be touring the country next month, what can fans expect from your shows?
FUN!! The more we perform the more we love it. Writing and recording are slightly more serious parts of the overall process for us, so being able to just tour and play shows and have fun with the songs on stage is what we’re looking forward to the most. There will be much rocking out to be had. We also have a few songs that didn’t make the EP that we play live so everyone will get to hear something fresh too.
Your website states that you’re completely independent, is it important for the band to remain independent?
There’s becoming a clearer pathway for bands to become successful acts independently, so we are really working towards pushing that wide open and getting ourselves as far as we can without the need to have a major record label do it for us. Being independent doesn’t mean doing everything on your own though- lately we’ve been working closely with people from PR, management, and booking agencies to help us go where we want to go. Our aim is to simply always stick to our vision, and be proud of knowing that we are the ones defining who we are. That’s what independence is to us.
You’ve entered songs on Triple J’s unearthed, has that had any impact on your music’s coverage?
At this point we haven’t had much luck with getting on the Triple J rotation, from what I understand they typically only have 5 or 6 tracks like ours on rotation each month so it’s pretty stiff competition! Shadows is sitting at about #30 in the charts though, so hopefully we’ll get lucky soon!
Do you ever listen to your own music?
Of course, I think any musician would be lying if they said they didn’t! I obsess over songs that I’m writing a lot. If we demo a song that I’m really happy with, I’ll listen to it a hundred times in a row. Then I’ll take whatever ideas have formed in my head over those listens and continue working on it.
What other music do you listen to?
Right now I’m into The Danger Bees (a new and underrated US band, go, listen!), and the other guys are listening to stuff like Brand New, Man Man, and Oasis. At any one time we could all be listening to insanely opposing genres though. This gets messy when we have 10 hour car trips with each other. Lucky we’re all nice people.
What do you plan on doing after your tour?
Organising our next tour! Our tour in October and November misses out on a few places that we really want to go to i Australia, so we’ll be back on the road by early next year. Over the summer we will have a large focus on writing music too, so we can try new songs out when we tour again- we want to make sure all of our songs are as fun to play live as they are to record. Shows are where we get to engage the most with fans and friends so we want to give them the best experience that we can! Expect there to be talk of overseas shows within the next year or so, as well as how we’ll be putting our full length album together!
Inventions are about to tour round Australia. Venue and dates are below. Check out the band’s website to find out more!
2 Oct – The Curtin in Melbourne for the video and single release of ‘Shadows’
3 Oct – Upstairs @199 in Brisbane, with Perth band ‘Roswell’
8 Oct – Rosemount Hotel in Perth, with Perth band ‘Sail On! Sail On!’
10 Oct – YaYa’s in Perth, with ‘Roswell’
11 Oct – HQ in Perth, with ‘Roswell’
18 Oct – Bang! in Melbourne
