Silent Feature unveil Genius, the first single from their forthcoming debut album

Literally marking the end of an "era" by dropping the word from their name, Silent Feature are on a somehwat new tip in 2018, and Genius is the first taste of their forthcoming debut album. The charming slice of Australiana packs brings it some satrical themes as the band grapple with the ridiculousness of social media influencers, and the merrit in perhaps just being an "ordinary guy".

We dig it, and look forward to whatever comes next, but until then enjoy Genius and a brief chinwag with the group below:

Tell us about about yourselves?

We are a Brisbane-based band made up of one Italian, one prodigy ballet dancer, one possible Jew and one of big foot's many cousins. Together we make Silent Feature. We’ve made prior releases under the name Silent Feature Era, but in the past few years we’ve formed a solid live band line up. As a result, we’ve organically shaped a sound that’s quite different to our previous record, so we felt it was only appropriate to mark the end of an era by dropping it from our name entirely. But to be honest, Silent Feature Era was just a mouthful/pain in the ass to say.

What kinda tunes we talkin’?

It’s always kinda tricky to communicate in words. Sometimes I feel like that’s the listener's job – isn’t ours just to make it? I dunno, I guess if we had to try, I’d say our songs are fairly reflective of each member’s individual taste. Maybe if you could imagine a late-70s/early-80s Australiana and Americana love affair, the child might look something like us? Ugly… but interesting?

Production/writing process:

We’ve been lucky, it’s never really been necessary to labour over the logistics of our songwriting and production process. Our lineup is full of songwriters who have their own musical projects (Machine Age, Leebone Phillips etc). But for Silent Feature, we have one main song writer - Greg Cathcart - who basically writes the chords and lyrics and then the rest is up for collaboration and interpretation by the band. It’s not uncommon for a song to be written with a specific direction in mind, but at the end of the process it’s miles away from what we had initially intended. Each song tends goes through a deconstruction, reconstruction, and demo’ing period - each member putting their own flavour and take on things along the way. However, in the off chance there may be a disagreement, we DO settle things with a fight to the death... which over time has become quite tedious. We’ve now had to hire a full time medium just to continue our writing process, as well as commissioning Microsoft to create a series of holograms so we can perform live. It’s all getting very expensive, so a review of our disagreement process may be overdue.

Can you tell us about your new single, Genius?

Genius is a just a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the “life-expert”. You know that craze that’s sweeping our nation? It’s everywhere - made worse by social media. Everyone claims to be an expert or authority on something right? Whether it’s fitness, clean eating, being in tune with your seven chakras...anything really. Anyone can push a manufactured image of themselves and their life... but off the phone screen you could just be as big of an asshole as the next guy, or even worse... just an ORDINARY GUY. So, Genius is just our response to the “influencer generation” suggesting perhaps we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously. I’m an entrepreneur obvs.

Any shows coming up?

We kind of stepped back from gigging somewhat, in attempt to knuckle down and finish our record. But our next show will be at the Ascot Street Festival Sat 7 April.

What’s the rest of the year have in store?

I kind of gave that away in the last answer, but the main goal is finishing off our record which is very close. We’ll release a series of singles in the lead up – play some shows – have a few fights to death…standard stuff.

Where can we hear more of your music?

LimeWire, Grindr, the future.

Follow Silent Feature: FACEBOOK