TesseracT: Into The Strangeland
For many, five years between releases can be considered a substantial amount of time, particularly when the release of Sonder was so well received. During this period British progressive innovators TESSERACT weren’t just watching Netflix and ordering Uber Eats, they were busily beavering away on their most ambitious release to date. One element of this sizeable project was a VR experience released prior to the album. Something which frontman Daniel Tompkins was somewhat anxious about.
“I am nervous to be honest! It’s been a huge undertaking that I kind of dropped everything for, for a whole year to try and build and bring together. It’s only three of us, like a DIY kinda project and we’ve had to learn how to build everything from the ground upwards. It’s not a Triple A game but it’s still a big statement as, as far as I’m aware there aren’t any bands who have done something like this including VR.”
TESSERACT made their triumphant return with the epic 11 minute title track War Of Being which was accompanied by a masterful video depicting a battle of introspective discovery through the landscape of The Strangeland. The setting for the encompassing concept. “Because we’ve been away for so long I was really keen on releasing a big mammoth of a song,” explains Tompkins. “That song is partly a love letter to all the fans for helping us get so far and sticking with us for so long. I’ve been very interested in seeing what the response from people has been as it’s an important time for us as a band. We became really invested in this release to the point where it became such a big thing for us and the fact it received such praise and like quarter of a million plays in 24 hours was quite overwhelming. We’ve actually gained a lot of new fans because of the approach we took and it would’ve been so easy to pander to the industry approach of releasing a popular sounding song as the first single.”
Guitarist and man of many talents, Acle Kahney has been firmly at the helm of the creative process throughout the existence of TESSERACT, handling the engineering side of things is no easy task but one he gladly undertakes. “It’s probably the part of the process I enjoy the most. There are obviously peaks and troughs throughout the process, like writer’s block and production issues but it’s definitely the fun part when you can see and hear a song coming together. We’ve worked on this album for a long time and it’s all came together nicely. We’ve worked on it together as a whole band and actually got in a room and wrote and recorded where usually it’s just been me doing demos and stuff. The actual creation this time was a lot more collaborative. I found it very inspiring and actually wrote The Grey in about a day and that’s pretty unheard of for me!”
“We took some song clips into the studio and actually wrote in the studio this time too, one of those songs became Legion,” adds Tompkins. “I sat down with a vocal producer called Kat Marsh who runs Choir Noir and it’s the first time I’ve ever worked with anyone in the studio. It was also nice to be able to take a step back and focus on the performance and be in a nice environment like a studio as I’m very used to being very DIY and being stuck in the same four walls. It can be quite uninspiring. She actually helped me to refine some of the ideas I had and some of the parts where it sounds like I’m harmonising, it’s actually her voice as she has a similar tone to myself. I feel like they are the best vocals I’ve ever produced and doing live streaming and rehearsing regularly on Twitch really helped me raise my game.”
Art comes in a whole host of different forms and mediums, particularly in this digital age we now inhabit and whether people choose to embrace it or not, AI is becoming a big player in this field. TESSERACT explored all avenues to create the most suitable artwork to represent this body of work. “We never intended to utilise AI to create the artwork, we were using it as a prompt tool to gain visual inspiration to coincide with the story,” discusses Tompkins.
“We reached out to a lot of graphics artists but unfortunately they were either busy, their prices were quite steep or they just didn’t get back in touch. During the time we spent looking for someone, Amos became really efficient in exploiting this new technology that he managed to generate some amazing looking images. I know some people won’t embrace the use of that technology purely from an ethical standpoint but for us, it was justified. For the War Of Being video, we worked with multiple teams of incredibly talented humans to create the video so we’ve got the best of both worlds.”
War Of Being is out now via Kscope.
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