GUEST MUSICIAN VINCE WAIDE OF SEARCH FOR YETI introduces their debut album Dark So Soon

Search For Yeti came together about five years ago, consisting of myself, Sean Barker, and Luke Marlow. It’s always one of the hardest things to describe a band sound, but we’ve tended to lean toward 'atmospheric indie rock' as a descriptor (or ‘sometimes noisy, sometimes not’).

Myself and Luke were the main songwriters in a previous Wellington band called What Noisy Cats (named after a snippet of R.E.M lyric), who released an EP and a posthumous album that not many people heard, but it did get consistently good reviews (including by Gary Steel and Simon Sweetman).

When the band ended, in large part due to our drummer relocating to France, Luke went on to form a harder edged trio with Sean on drums. Ironically Sean then also relocated to France at the end of that band! 

Luke and I remained in contact, and over time came back into each other’s musical orbit. We initially decided to not come in with any pre-written songs, but instead to simply jam first and see if we had our own sound, which it was pretty clear from the outset that we had.

Whereas previously Luke had played guitar and I played bass, this time I brought in a set of Moog Taurus bass synth foot pedals, enabling me to play bass parts with my feet while also playing around with other instruments, mainly electric guitar.

This instantly created a more atmospheric sound and a greater range of options. We started to look for drummers at the same time that Sean fortuitously returned to Wellington. I know it’s a widely used cliché, but from the first moment we jammed together it was pretty evident that there was something special happening (I have a recording of our first jam and it’s pretty great!). 

We’ve never been a band though where everyone agrees at first, and the strong opinions and differing influences have tended to mean that only the best of song ideas survived.

We all write, and we all have a lot of influences, but having Luke as the lead vocalist meant that there was a cohesion to our sound, while allowing Sean and I to contribute harmonies and counter-vocals.

Live we play as a trio but we sound bigger, as Luke has an amazing ‘pedalboard of doom’, Sean also has an SPD sample pad in addition to acoustic drums, and I’m often playing the Moog Taurus bass synth and electric guitar together.

Rather than rushing into recording an album we continued to refine our sound by playing live with a wide range of acts (although COVID didn’t help that) and slowly demoing our full album (and offcuts).

With recording we’re able to add even more colours, playing around with a range of acoustic and electric textures.

We started recording the album proper in 2023 with producer Toby Lloyd of Tiny Triumph Recordings, releasing three singles and videos along the way that ranged from moody and cinematic to pure power-pop.

In 2024 we ran a really successful crowd-funding campaign that meant the album could get a vinyl release (and actually we even hit our stretch goal that meant we could do gatefold and coloured vinyl!).

We also managed to do a Radio New Zealand live to air session on Jesse Mulligan’s show before finally releasing the album Dark So Soon in November, followed by a really great album release show at Meow where we played the full album out live (and a couple of encores).

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The goal this year is to try and tour the album nationally, with plans at this stage for Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Napier, Palmerston North, Nelson and Christchurch.

We’re super proud of this album. It hasn’t always been an easy journey, but I think we’ve created something that’s very much ‘us’ and I think works incredibly well as an album. 

We’re realistic about the NZ music scene and our place in it, but we hope as many people as possible get to hear this album – we think it deserves it.

And we very much hope you like it.

Ngā mihi nui

Vince

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