Surroundings recently released their brand new single Elizabeth. You can check it out below! We also caught up with the band to ask them a few questions about it.
You’ve just released your new single Elizabeth. What’s the story behind it?
Elizabeth is the first of two new singles. Originally we had toyed with a few other ideas, but we ended up with what we have now, a dual single release with a concept tying the two tracks together. It’s written about holding blame within yourself. Having someone close to you that you don’t want to let down or hold back from the things they want to achieve.
Can you describe the writing and recording process for it?
We took a slightly different approach to writing process than usual with this track, usually our guitarist Drew writes a majority of a track and thenwe fine tune things as a band, however this time a much larger majority of the track was written collaboratively and arranged in the rehearsal room which was definitely an interesting change.
Regarding the recording of the track, our new bassist Matt handled the engineering and mixing which gave us much more control over the process as a whole. Sonically we made the decision to keep things as natural soundings as possible using tube guitar amps and leaning away from an over reliance on drum samples to bring what we feel is a fresh and interesting perspective to a genre which we feel can often sound overly processed.
As this track is your first release with your new lineup, has anything changed about your music as a result?
We’ve definitely matured a lot as a band over the years and the addition of new members has certainly brought fresh influences and perspectives to the writing process, in particular we’ve been exploring the bass guitar’s role within our music allowing it to be more melodic and reactive to the guitars rather than sticking to providing a foundation.
What made you choose this track as a single?
We chose to release this track as the first of the two as we feel it somewhat bridges the gap between our older material and some new ideas that we’re working into future material.
So would you say Elizabeth is representative of what fans may be able to expect from your next release, or is it more of a standalone piece?
We’re constantly experimenting and working towards a unique sound. This piece is just one of many representations of our sound you can expect from us in the future.
You’ve also filmed a video for the song – how did that go?
The filming process was over two days and the video was directed by our guitarist Drew and our good friend Kori Reay-Mackey. We initially decided on doing a straight-performance video but later decided we would incorporate a narrative into the clip. We tried our best to keep the narrative simple and concise whilst servicing the lyrics as best as possible.
Any interesting anecdotes from filming it?
We filmed the video in an old theatre that was last used in the 1930’s. It was covered in pigeon poo and had old admission tickets littered on the floor. The owner told us that no matter how many times the cleaners swept the floors and removed the tickets they keep on coming back… haunted perhaps?
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