Sea Life Park: Ship Shape.

Sea Life Park launch Like Ships at The Healer on Friday and Ric’s Café on Saturday.

“We’re working on our new album,” explains Sea Life Park drummer Reid. “We’ve got two days left to finish it. We’re just tracking at the moment before we do keyboards and vocals, but the house we’re in at the moment just had a for sale sign put up out the front, so were going to have to finish somewhere else. We’ve been thinking of blacking out the agent’s number on the sign…”

Such are the trials and tribulations of home recording. Also emerging from the Sydney house is the band’s new single Like Ships, an ethereal, spacious and understated gem of a track. It’s backed with a live version of Panel Beater and an obtuse remix of Spare Key, done by Adelaide electronic muso froSt, who accompanies them on their release tour.

“I always want to play something different myself, but I’m finding that attitude to music can be limiting in itself,” he continues. “If you’re always trying to do something new you might just make shit rather than put together something that you know is really good. It’s tricky. It’s a learning thing. But you can play something that you think it shitty and hear it in a different context and it can really work.”

How does Like Ships fit into the grand vision?

“We kind of had that song written just after we finished recording Wildlife Documentary (2001). We’ve been playing it life for a while, so we just whacked it down. We haven’t been playing live very much, and I wanted to play more, so we put it out so we can do this mini tour.”

How did you hook up with froSt, it seems like an odd pairing.

“We met him in Adelaide the first time we went there, and we also recorded the live track on the single while we were there. He played before us live, and we liked his style. We sent him the whole CD to remix, just pick a song and do, and he chose Spare Key. I love the way it came out, it’s so different.”

Did you have any expectation of what the remix would be like?

“Not at all. It’s something we wouldn’t have thought of doing, and I don’t think he would have looked for a song like that to work on himself. It’s been pretty amazing.”