Sound Culture

Tom Sheldrick admits that the first thing you notice about anything Amy Pes is involved with is her voice. Luckily for himself and buddy Chris Vasyli, the melodious vixen is currently wielding the mic as the centrepiece for their group, Tokyo Denmark Sweden. The Sydney three-piece are doing their best to make you forget about overseas acts like Metric and Dragonette, and after a year of constant climbing have risen to become one of the brightest indie dance prospects in the country.

The trio's self-titled EP has been garnering praise and airplay from all the right places, the five-track connected, alluring and with a great grasp on melody and hook. This makes it all the more surprising that there wasn't any real consistent headspace as far as where the tracks emerged from, for although they might be a tight band, their different styles and ideas work better alone, at least in the beginning anyway.

“We can't write together, basically,” Sheldrick levels. “We don't sit down in a room like other bands, y'know, 'Give me a G' and let's start writing. We put [the songs] together individually, then bring them to the table where they get turned into the band's sound. So you could have one intention with a song but then when it goes to the group it could come out with a totally different vibe to what you envisioned.”

With club culture rife throughout the band's hometown of Sydney, a young Sheldrick fast found inspiration in his formative years and as a young adult dancing across tiles around the city. “When you're younger, like 13 or 14, it's more about punk, but as you get older and you start going out, [electronic] music is a bit more out there and I dunno, drug culture might have a little bit to do with it,” he laughs. “You just wake up to all the different music, and I think for me and my friends, Daft Punk and The Chemical Brothers were the big, 'Heeeey, electronic music can be cool; you don't have to just listen to guitar bands', and then you filter down from there. Then there was that explosion about five years ago with like The Presets, Cut Copy, and there was all this world-class music being created in our backyard. That's how I got turned on to it I guess.”

But now, established in a city littered with CDJ spinners and laptop warriors, the Tokyo Denmark Sweden crew are looking to set themselves and their bag of tunes out from the pack by incorporating even more human energy on stage to create a sound programmed to get bodies moving. “We've started working with a live drummer, which initially was something that we didn't want to do; we like working with the three of us, and when you bring in another person it can be great but it can also just be another personality, another chance for a clash,” he remarks. “But when we started playing with one, and on our level, when you don't have a [massive] light show it was really good – it added a lot more energy.

“We've been working on our live show a lot; with the style of music we play it's got to be a bit more polished. There's times where we'd love to be in a garage rock band and just get maggot and go nuts on stage, but for our music I think we need to be a little more on the ball and polished. That's what we're working towards, just being a better live unit.”

Tokyo Denmark Sweden will be playing the following dates:

Friday 11 January - The Beresford, Surry Hills NSW