Shape of things to come

Even before Shapeshifter's new album, The System is a Vampire, went to No 1 in the charts, New Zealand's premiere drum and bass band was already flying high.

Dutchies, the first single off the  album, had already made the top 20 singles chart.

When I catch up with Sam Trevethick in a break during rehearsals for a Shapeshifter live show in Christchurch, he admits to being chuffed.

"I just heard that. It's pretty amazing. We've been having rehearsals for the town hall gig and Sydney as well, so it's all going pretty well. "

The album title is a lyric from the song System. "We just wanted to have a title with bite ..  ha ha ha. As a band we are about positive messages. We like to dwell on the music and the feeling that you get from enjoying and listening to music.

"What we're trying to say is that you've just got to watch out for the vampires in the world and the things that want to take your energy and your soul. You can combat that by being positive and being conscious."

The album encompasses varied styles, mostly with a drum-and-bass tempo, but Trevethick says this time around, the group were also influenced by their favourite bands.

"Yeah, most of it is drum'n'bass tempo but I wouldn't call it drum'n'bass. Led Zeppelin, Kings of Leon and Radiohead are bands that we like and appreciate energy-wise and vibe-wise on their recordings, as well as the electronic music and dance music that we're into.

"We wanted to capture what we have as a live band. There are a couple of songs that are quite heavily reggae- influenced tunes, one I would call a psychedelic rock number that's quite heavy in vibe. It's definitely not your standard drum'n'bass."

Trevethick says the group took a new approach when recording the album at his base in Kingscliff, Australia. "We wanted to capture that vibe of being in a stadium, to capture that same energy. We wanted it to be epic, unique and full of flavours.

"It was recorded and produced over the last year and a half. Nick and I were living in Kingscliff and it's an amazing place to make music.

"We've been touring a lot with Shapeshifter and Tiki Live. At the end of the tour it was a great place to come back to - no distractions except the tennis court and the bottle shop. It was a nice, peaceful environment to create music that came naturally to us.

"The idea for this album was to write the songs and then take them to the live environment before recording them, something we've never done before. We played all of them, except System, live to test song structures and road-test them. It was a litmus test; you soon know if a song sucks. We had a few tunes we thought would make the album but they didn't pass the live test so they didn't make it."

Music and politics don't mix, he says, and although the group feels quite passionately about conservation, that's about as political as it gets.

"Music is music, politics is politics, and once you use one to push the other your music just becomes [crap]. There's one song on the album called Warning, and that's about the planet and the peril it faces. That's about as political as it gets for us."

Shapeshifter has been together for more than a decade and, touring as much as it does, this is no mean feat.

"We haven't come up the easy way, we've done the hard yards ourselves, so we've got a bond, like a family."

* The System is a Vampire is out now.

- © Fairfax NZ News