Tom Vek

An intriguing character, the multi-instrumentalist musician Tom Vek has remained a subject of curiosity since his vanishing act in 2004. His reappearance in 2011 with Leizure Seizure received a rapturous welcome return, a pleasant surprise for the guy who admits he’s “perfectly capable of geeking out over technology.” Alexandra MacLeod caught up with Tom Vek just before his May performances in Australia, as he talked about Future Bureau’s, aesthetic quirks, and what the future holds for his “bombastic music.”

Are you looking forward to your shows in Australia this weekend?
I am yeah. Because it was Modular Showcase, the Australian label, I was asked to go, and said ‘of course’ because I’ve never been. But yeah, excited about it!

How do you prepare yourself for live shows?
Usually its just a process of panicking about, well sort of double checking technology because I have dreamed up ways of technically playing a lot of this new stuff, because most of time I can’t even remember what I used to make a noise on a song, so its quite hard to emulate it authentically in terms of using the original instrument, the original keyboard patch or whatever. I’ve developed this way where we use lots of samples, triggers and loops and things, but still in a live context. So yeah, usually I’ve just got that going through my head, and then remembering lyrics too. There are couple of quite wordy tracks on the new record and before gigs I’m thinking: ‘I wish I hadn’t, I wish I had two less verses’. I use a full band, and one member plays this new instrument we’ve cobbled together, that’s a mixture of an MPC, a keyboard, and a loop station so he has a lot to do, he looks like a manic keyboardist, basically, but it allows us to get all the original songs right. It’s got a few names, it’s either The Sample Station, or The Future Bureau, we haven’t decided.

What does music give you that you wouldn’t get out of any other creative pursuit?
I’ve always found a certain type of music can give me a very potent feeling, and I guess as soon as I was inspired by that I tried to do my own. I liked the escapism of it, much of my stuff is rooted in rock music essentially, but it’s intention is to have this kind of bombastic nature to it, heavy snare drums and loud choruses kicking in so it’s a bit of a head-banging moment, which is something I really like in my music.

What inspires you to make music the way you do?
I never studied music, and so when I was in a fortunate enough situation to start recording and trying out writing, I was discovering it for myself, and there was no theory behind it all. It was just being inspired by the music I was buying and it became an artistic pursuit. Grunge was the first stuff that really resonated with me, I got Siamese Dreams, The Smashing Pumpkins record and I remember that being one of the first albums, that was my favourite album, it was my thing, I had my album. I liked Jimmy Chamberlin drumming on that record. But it was cooler, everyone played guitar, so I played bass first, and then learnt to play drums, which of course makes you popular with new bands because everyone needs a drummer.

You were a graphic design student, is there a crossover between this meticulous creative outlook and your music?
They’ve always gone hand-in-hand, but it kind of thrills me in the opposite way music does, in terms of solving a problem and presenting something the best way possible. And so naturally I enjoy doing all the design that’s necessary for my own work. I have a lot of fun with covers, and I’ve just been doing T-shirts and things, you know, I have a concern for aesthetics, which does extend to my apparel. There are a lot of cross-pollinations going on, and there are projects that I’ve been approached to do because they want to tap into you as a musician, but with music it’s very hard to direct it. Saying that, I was involved in a project with Ray-ban recently, and was cagey about it at first because I never do anything I don’t like, but I liked what I produced and was just like ‘great, let’s go, give me my shades!’

The six year gap that everyone remains fascinated by; would ‘Leizure Seizure’ have suffered if you’d been pressured for a quicker turnaround?
It’s hard to know, sometimes pressure is good…often it’s bad. I’ve always been quite a brat when it comes to deadlines and things like that, I remember even at school it was the same, you know, everything was done at the last minute, so I think I probably would of done something and I would have been proud of it as well. I do think it’s a better record for it, I sometime think there could have been a record in between, it’s a tough one. I think ultimately I do kind of like deadlines, a deadline sort of arose on its own for the record.

The music industry has picked out the likes of Friendly Fires, Klaxons, and Jamie T, expressing that they have much to thank you for. What is it like receiving this kind of credit for your music?
Well, it’s very cool. But you know I was indebted to The Rapture, it had a huge game changing influence on a lot of us, and I suppose you’re always passing things on. The Klaxons and Friendly Fires are great examples of what all of us were trying to do.

You’ve just released a new single ‘You’ll Stay’, is an album going to follow?
Well no, I quite like the idea of putting stuff out there as soon as I do them. It’s been really enjoyable to put something out so soon after writing it, if I was to put it on an album who knows how long it would take. It’s really fun because were going to be playing it live too, it’s very refreshing. There seems to be this hunger for continuous content online, and as a creative person you every so often have a consistent output, but traditionally in the music industry you write all your songs, maybe a write a bit too many and pick the best ones. It’s more digestible, but maybe down the line it might be compiled to create an album, who knows.

By Alexandra Macleod