TeamSquad are breathing life back into ‘old school’ sounds, with a quirky twist that’s sure to get you on the dancefloor.
The trio of local musos – Ruth Power (keys/vocals), Odhran Devlin (bass/backing vocals) and Kane Power (drums/sampler/backing vocals) – are about to release their third EP at The Yard on Saturday, March 22.
Thanks to funding by NZ On Air, the self-described prog-soul/post-disco band has upped the production value on the ‘Apocalipsync’ EP.
“With the NZ on Air Development Fund, we were matched with a producer, and you get together and you write some songs, so we did that with our good friend, Lora Thompson,” Kane says.
“We ended up at The Porch Studio in Rotokauri, recording with Regan McKinnon. We came up with some really good songs for the project, which we knew we had to release. So we took them to Evan Pope (Kora, Threat.Meet.Protocol) for mixing, and then to Andrei Eremin (Hiatus Kaiyote, Tash Sultana) for mastering. That became our EP.”
They released their first song ‘Violet’ in January and more recently released ‘Apocalipsync’, which is the title track from the EP.
“We’re really proud of it. We worked really hard on it, and it’s definitely a purposeful shift in direction from us into more groove-oriented music,” he says.
Influenced by the sounds of Chaka Khan, Prince and Stevie Wonder, for TeamSquad making music is all about having fun and getting people dancing.
“We’re not out there trying to climb the charts with our music and if it’s not fun, we don’t do it. We love playing shows where lots of people are dancing and also having fun, and feeding us back that energy.”
And, so far, the audiences are loving it.
“It’s been going off live, totally night and day to the shows that we were playing before. We’ve been testing the new songs at the shows and they’re just going down a total treat. We’ve got dancefloors moving, and that’s the sort of instant feedback you want,” Kane says.
Husband and wife team Kane and Ruth were both career musicians in London from 2009 to 2016 and came back to New Zealand burnt out by the touring grind.
“We did a lot of shows, which was exhausting and fun and amazing. And we released a lot of cool music but we came back burnt to a crisp. I’m super glad that now the pressure is off, it has become fun again.”
Kane met Odhran while playing together in local jazz band Sticky Chicken. He was originally a stand-in when Kane and Ruth were down a bass player but he’s now an integral member of TeamSquad. Odhran is a familiar figure on the local music scene, having played in many bands including the legendary Mighty, Mighty.
“We were invited to play the Sanctuary Sounds festival in the Hawkes Bay and so I asked Odhran to fill in. We had a really good time, and we ended up doing a recorded live session together at the Old School, and after that point he was part of TeamSquad.”
Their website bio gives a good indication of what to expect from a TeamSquad live gig with words like ‘80s’ Sci-fi hallucinations, abandoned disco dance-floors, face-melting synths, funk bass hooks and dystopian dance-beats’.
But as the trio say ‘no one ever danced to a description’, you really just got to listen to it.
Head to The Yard on Saturday, March 22 for the Apocalipsync EP release party – ticket sales at www.undertheradar.co.nz.
by Janine Jackson
