INTERVIEW: Genre bending cabaret Sleeping Village tells all.

INTERVIEW: Genre bending cabaret Sleeping Village tells all.


 

stumbling, bored and looking for entertainment at this years welcome to nowhere (R.I.P), i found myself at the back of a small crowd gathered, transfixed at the small, "camp stage", near the portaloos. i couldn't see the band behind the throng of people, but every five seconds, i heard new and interesting sounds wafting from the PA. a dreamy slide guitar, dense heavy metal riffing, multiple violins, something referred to as a "mask mic"??? i thought i was hearing an absentminded sound guy flipping through his music library, or perhaps two bands soundchecking over each other? maybe some shortwave radio interference was being beamed in via a faulty cable and these rabid fans were drawn to its free form musique concrète abstractions. wrong on all counts, i was, because the band i heard and subsequently got blown away by was Sleeping Village. as soon as they started their set i knew i just had to interview them, to share them with my readers. if you're smart, you'll like them, and if you're stupid, you'll like them even more. for our first ever A Million Pleading Faces artist interview, here is... Sleeping Village.

 

to start things off, can you tell our readers who you are?
 

Kia ora! My name is Oscar Alty and I write and play music with 6 of my best friends in a band
called Sleeping Village. We are based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and play a mix of genres, but
can be vaguely described as “experimental rock”
 

Being such a large band, how did you find so many like-minded musicians to play with? 

I started this project back in 2020, and after writing a collection of songs that featured a
whole range of instruments (and) I needed to find people who could actually play those
instruments in a live setting. I really got lucky as I just asked around some of my best friends
and managed to pull together an insanely talented group of musicians to play my music, and
slowly over time we’ve grown even closer as friends and everyone has continued to add
their own flare to the Sleeping Village sound.
 

When I heard you live at welcome to nowhere, I heard strains of Slayer, They Might Be Giants, Frank Zappa, Marty Robbins, King Crimson and countless others. What would you consider your main musical influences, and how do you manage to maintain a consistent “sound” while blending so many genres?
 

To name a few of the artists that influenced Sleeping Village; Ween, Swans, Mr Bungle and
Bjork are definitely some of the big ones. The multi genre sound that we have really just
stems from the fact that we all enjoy a variety of music. Sometimes I'll be inspired to write a
thrash metal riff and other days I'll have been listening to Julee Cruise and want to play
around with some dream pop sounds. Some of the songs are quite serious, and some are
super fun and almost feel like a gag, I think that resonates with people to an extent, we all
change moods and deal with a smorgasbord of life and emotions so it’s interesting to have
all of those thrown at you in a 45 minute set.
 

who came up with your black metal inspired logo, and what does the name “sleeping village” mean?
 

I designed the logo one night in 2022. I had just been writing one of our softer/heartfelt
songs and thought about how funny it would be to have a completely unreadable death/black
metal logo when we only actually play like 2 metal songs. “Sleeping Village” is the title of one
of my favourite tracks from Black Sabbath's first album. Black Sabbath have been one of my
favourite bands since I was 7 or 8, the influence they had on music as a whole is undeniable,
and honestly I just liked the name Sleeping Village.
 

would you say your music is aimed more towards freaks, or geeks?
 

Probably freaks? Geeks are more than welcome though. I feel like there’s quite a big
crossover there.
 

finally, could you tell our readers where they can find your music, and when they can see you live? 

You can catch Sleeping Village playing FOR FREE on March 6 in Wellington (Sanfran, Eyegum Wednesday). We will be taking a small break from gigs after that to finish our next album, but we’ll be back. All of our released music is available in the usual places like Spotify, Bandcamp etc. and we have a few music videos on Youtube.

 

there we have it, my enlighting email conversation with Sleeping Village. i implore you to listen to their music, go to their shows, and commit ritual blood sacrifices in their name. they've earned it.

 


 

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