After A Cathartic Release, We Lost The Sea Are Moving On

We Lost The Sea axeman Matt Harvey takes The Music's call while at home, where he undertakes freelance work in the design/motion graphics/animation field. The 35-year-old insists the Sydney post-rockers are a proudly DIY band in many respects, Harvey often sacrificing his daytime hours "to do some band stuff, so I can work at night on other stuff, or vice-versa".

These duties can have occupational hazards. For instance, he admits scheduling their upcoming first headline tour of Australia entailed considerable effort. "Everyone in this band's pretty good; when it's time to work, we work. But essentially, a band has to be run by one or two people… You can't have four or five head-strong leaders in the band that all want to do something. [Although] if someone's good at something, then you give them that task to do at what they excel at normally, and that's totally fine."

"I'm a bit of a control freak. I like to make sure everything runs to a really high standard. It really stresses me out and it's probably going to kill me one day."

He also believes next time around they'll likely require a manager, or someone in a similar role to assist. "But I'm a bit of a control freak. I like to make sure everything runs to a really high standard. It really stresses me out and it's probably going to kill me one day, but I make sure everything's done properly… Some of the time it gets too much, and the other dudes chip in when they can. I refer to it as my second job, because essentially it is. It's not a full-time thing, I don't make any money off it, but you've got to treat it like that."

During the aforementioned jaunt, the ambient act will perform last year's emotionally and sonically draining Departure Songs album in its entirety. It's a moving tribute to vocalist Chris Torpy, who took his own life in 2013. The remaining members opted to continue as an instrumental outfit.

Does Harvey believe they've sufficiently purged Torpy's death artistically, or could he prove an over-arching theme going forward? "Definitely with Departure Songs, the event of losing Chris was a massive thing, and a cathartic purge of emotions is exactly what it was. It's also got some really pretty moments, which the band has never really done before.

"I really hope we can be, with the next album, we can be in a really happy place and still write an album that really affects people. Because with this album we've had so many people writing to us, week after week, still to this day that pour their heart out and love the album and say thank you. I think regardless of what we do in the future the next album will be very special for us and a lot of our fans. I think next time, I hope, maybe the theme with Chris, I don't think directly, and I think we need to move on. I think the next record, whatever head-space we're in at the time is what we're in at the time, and it might take another two years to develop that album. But it is an inspiration. It was an inspiration to do what it was, and I don't think we could write another album like that, because the emotion behind it was just so raw, and you can't fake that."