Five Minutes With Segue Safari (Big Splash Heat #8 Winners)

Words by Bob Gordon.

Segue Safari on winning Heat #8 of The Big Splash: “Our Big Splash heat experience was definitely a positive one. It was our first show together in over a month (Sam was in Europe for all of July), so we were pretty pumped. Andrew and Maria, the judges, and all the other bands were really nice, and Pete Barr was in top form as per usual.”

Slow and steady wins the race for these up-and-comers.

Semi-Final #2 of The Big Splash happens at Badlands this Friday, August 26, with Figurehead, POW! Negro, The Crystal Moth, Segue Safari and Moana (DETAILS HERE).

If Segue Safari sound like they have it together there’s a very good reason for that.

Sam (Blitvich – bass/vocals), Jake (Sartori – drums/vocals) and Jeremy (Segal – vocals/guitar) had been jamming together since their mid-teens and by the time Daniel (Zeljko – guitar/synth, a high school friend of Jeremy’s) came aboard 18 months ago songs started locking in, followed by a succession of gigs and, as Segal notes, “Segue became a thing.”

“I think our vision for what kind of band we want to be is constantly getting more specific/focused, but also changing as we get into new kinds of music and learn more about songwriting and recording. Broadly speaking, I've always wanted to make pop music that's kind of quirky and weird, and I've always liked the idea of recording and mixing at home.”

With everything in its right place, Segue Safari are on track to make ‘pop music that's kind of quirky and weird’ especially given that all members have equal creative input.

“I think we are,” Segal says, “probably because of everyone putting a bit of their own flavour into song arrangements and production. The songs always seem to come out as something better than what I imagined in the first place once the other guys get around it.” 

Segal says that the band’s gigging experience in Perth so far has been really positive. “I think we're really lucky in Perth to have such a supportive, close-knit community of musicians, bookers, people who write about music, etc.” He describes the band onstage as being “a little bit awkward and hopefully somewhat enjoyable for the audience.” 

Segue Safari’s songwriting process sees new tunes slowly coming into the fold and only being considered as ‘complete’ after being allowed to bake for a while.

“I'll usually sit with a song for a month or so before I bring it to the band,” Segal says, “and we usually spend several months playing the songs live before we think about recording them. I'm pretty sure I spent a month sifting through vocal takes for one song on the first EP, and we're still adding final touches to a single that we started tracking in June. I’m not sure if that's 'letting the tracks bake for a while' or complete inefficiency on our part!”

The band were pleased with the reception to their EP, Friends, and learnt much along the way as they work their way towards another release.

“We were pretty stoked with the reception of Friends,” Segal states. “RTR played some of the tracks a bunch of times which was real sweet and we got a few shows out of it. So many lessons were learnt though, particularly about recording and mixing. Lower frequencies need to be tamed!”

Highlights so far in the band's history thus far include performing at RTRFM’s Distant Murmurs event earlier this year, as well as the 2015 WAM Festival Saturday Spectacular. They’ve also joined the Gun Fever booking roster and are now looking forward to that second EP release.

“We're pretty close to finishing another EP which we're hoping to get out soon,” Segal says. “Other than that, we just want to write more music and play more shows. Playing a few shows over East is something we'd love to do as well.”

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