Leave It Right Here has lovely vintage rhodes lines in the epicentre, a funky synth bass line and a beat which has a classic drum machine feeling. Add to this Survibers’ intriguing songwriting and expressive vocals and you have an immersive, indie electronic experience. Read our discussion with the collective below!
Describe your sound in 3 words
Space time harmonies.
Tell us a few things about Leave It Right Here. What is the main idea behind it?
Katrina: The first couple of lines “Fall In, Line Up, Take Your Soul Out and Leave It Right Here With Me” is like this cold and tempting but soothing voice in your head saying it’s OK, just get on with it and do whatever you have to do to be successful, even if it feels wrong. I think that living through the human condition I’ve felt like that at some point, even if it was for a split second. So I suppose the song, to me, is about the struggle of conforming in this modern world which is powered by image and status, what society may expect of you and the conflict of keeping to your principals.
It is musically influenced by Donald Fagen & Steely Dan with a bit of the Crusaders and Bob James but with a more modern feel.
You are UK based. What do you love/hate about the UK?
Franny: I hope I can say I hate that Britain has left the EU. Brexit has been such a colossal waste of man power and the time could really have been used to make better things happen than a divisive political stunt.
Katrina and I spend quite a lot of time in Slovenia and you miss certain things like good bacon and fish n chips! We’ve got some good friends as well that we couldn’t find anywhere else.
What is the biggest challenge being a music trio?
Aniff: Maintaining that harmonious balance that allows one another to all contribute and also helping to keep one’s spirits up as this music industry can be brutal. And finally, ensuring that we each try to do equal amounts of work so we don’t lapse into allowing someone to do more of the lifting.
You are ex Berklee students. Is songwriting a talent or a skill?
Franny: It’s both. Some people are born to love and play music – they have a natural talent – Stevie Wonder springs to mind e.g. he has a born ability to write, sing and play just about anything to a superb level. Other songwriters are wordsmiths and have talent in that and develop talents on instruments. But then there are some folk who don’t have any aptitude for music at all and think they can learn it like a skill – but I don’t think you can learn songwriting without any talent to start with. You can’t lie in music – so you’ve got to have something to say.
Crafting a good song is a balance between an initial idea (usually musical for us, not lyrical) that sparks us, a lyrical framework, and then probably some music theory which applies to both lyrics and the music. We kind of treat that like a self edit. For example your talent can’t always finish the song alone and you have to fall back on things you’ve learned and absorbed over many years – lyric structure, compositional devices, key changes, metric modulation. We do think about these things.
Favorite album of the past year?
Franny: We’ll all have differing answers for that but mine is – Street Dreams Lyle Mays
What is the story behind your name?
Aniff: Survibers is derived from trying to protect those moments in the creation of music that excites us hence the “vibe survives”. In addition it does have political connotations which are too deep and too dark to go into at this moment in time.
Thank you!
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