The Australian trio, Crooked Colours has made enormous waves in the electronic and alternative music scene. The group encompasses an exciting new era of incorporating instrumental performance and synth sound style into dance music. In their latest album release, “Tomorrows” Crooked Colours dubs a lively list of indie-electric production within their thirteen-track list.

Phil Slabber, Leon Debaughn, and Liam Merrett-Park, formulate a trifecta of instrumental, acoustic, and synth-pop—demoing guitar, keys, drums, and vocals into an electronic live-band. Producer, guitarist and vocalist, Phil Slabber pulls from a series of picturesque soundscapes, chiming instrumental wave with alternative vocals. Leon Debaughn, producer, and keyboardist fixes a balanced environment on the keys, and Liam Merrett-Park sets their festive-colorful drumbeat.

“Tomorrows” is the third studio album in the groups release series and the debut album for their upcoming tour. Following a similar theme to their previous released album, Vera [2017] and Langata [2019], “Tomorrows” paints a colorful, kaleidoscope-like environment and brings the audience to a feel-good state—composed with the dreamy perspective from indie influence and electric styles from dance-house, down tempo, and trance perspectives.

Crooked Colours will be on tour this October, opening for Louis the Child at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on October 13th and playing at the Ogden Theater in Denver Colorado, October 14th. Envisioning their upcoming tour, Crooked Colours discusses “Tomorrows” and their anticipated image of its live performance.

What is your creative writing process and techniques to your sound design?

Almost every Crooked Colours track starts as an instrumental. It could be an 8-bar drum loop, or it could be a chord progression that gets the ideas flowing. Songs tend to change so much from their initial idea that we always try to keep that first idea in the songs. We feel that it keeps the rawness to the song. 

 

Can you describe the experimental elements specific to your production process? 

For us it’s not one specific thing. We tend to throw random sounds into the tracks to see if it works. In ‘Holiday’ we used a field recording from one of our international flights of the flight attendant doing the voice over. It’s in the breakdown and for us it instantly provokes that emotion of going on a holiday. 

 

The electronic music genre continues to curate new possibilities and potential. Are there any electronic-specific sounds or design styles you are currently interested in that you hope to incorporate into your future releases? 

We dipped our toes into the rap world with ‘Light Year’, so we definitely want to do more of that because the production side of things is a lot of fun. 

What is your overall vision for this tour— are there any changes to your artistic focus or sound style that you are looking to incorporate in your performances? 

Playing new music! When we were writing the new album, we always had it in the back of our heads, how it would sound live. So, to have all this new music to play, for us it’s the most exciting part. 

 

What do you look forward to in your upcoming tour and showcase of “Tomorrows”?

We always like to bring big energy to the shows. It doesn’t matter how big the crowd is or where we are playing, we always try to make it as fun as possible. If the crowd is loving it, we are loving it.

 

Find tickets to Crooked Colours upcoming tour dates and listen to “Tomorrows” here,

https://www.crookedcoloursmusic.com