riven by the duelling voices of keyboard player Isabella Manfredi and rhythm guitarist Gideon Bensen, the self-styled gothic soul five-piece The Preatures formed in early-2010 after Manfredi, lead guitarist Jack Moffitt and bass player Tom Champion met Bensen playing in another band at iconic inner-city Sydney venue, the Lansdowne. By April that year they'd recorded an indie EP, and now they're signed to a major label and about to hit the road to promote their second EP, Shaking Hands, recorded in Los Angeles late last year. Though it turns out the decision to record there wasn't really planned.D

“It was interesting,” Moffitt remembers. “We had this conversation with the producer at a rehearsal and we were sort of throwing the options around and, you know, they all cost what they cost, and he kind of threw it in at the end, as a sort of joke, like, 'Or we could just go to LA?' And it just stuck with me, the idea of doing it there, and we looked at what it would cost and it really was the same. The only expense that we incurred that would have been more than doing it in Australia was staying in Hollywood, and even that wasn't that expensive for five people.”

So the band headed to LA and recorded the EP over five days with Sydney producer Tony Buchen, whose CV includes records with Tim Finn, John Butler Trio and Gin Wigmore among others.

“Tony's been around since the early days. Gideon had actually done an internship with his wife in a music management firm and Gideon had played Tony some of the stuff that we did when we first started and got in touch with the band expressing an interest in working with us on whatever came next, so he's been a great supporter of the band and helped us to be confident with what we were doing.”

Part of building that confidence came from a task they set themselves as a band, The 66 Project, whereby they would write and record at least six songs over six months, which spawned the five tracks on the new EP.

“There was a lot of writing and demoing and, I guess, learning in that time. On reflection it was a really great way to prick the bubble for ourselves, 'cause we did an EP in 2010 and I don't think a lot of people have heard it – we put it together to recruit a drummer. The first year of our working together we didn't have a drummer and we knew we needed one to get anywhere,” Moffitt chuckles. “So we sent it out and then we met Luke [Davison] and were back at square one. We had all this material – Gideon and I had been writing separately, so there wasn't a shortage of stuff to explore – and then we'd get in the room with Luke and you have to find yourself in the dynamic.

“When we decided to do The 66 Project it was to explore that, and when we got to the end of it we felt really good about who we were and what we could do, and I think we were left with some options of, 'What do we feel the most connection with? And what do we really believe in in terms of what we'd written in the last six to nine months?' and screwing around and having fun with that.”