Happy New Year! 2016 promises to be an even better year for new music and we’re excited to start this year’s ON THE RISE off with Edmonton, Alberta brother-sister duo Tennyson.
Tennyson’s music is like walking through a mega cool neighborhood as doors to different kinds of parties open and shut to let guests in. You can hear footsteps, alarms, keys jangling, and people having fun all underneath Luke Pretty’s deep vocals and Tess Pretty’s drums. Their electronic and jazz fusion teases you, taking you on many a winding road of sound before abruptly changing directions. With a lot of their songs, you don’t know if those little ambient sounds are coming from Luke and Tess or you’re just in a particularly loud part of your apartment. On each rotation we caught a new sound, like the snoring in “7:00 AM” off their debut EP Like What. In the Yours Truly interview below, Luke describes the different parts of Tennyson’s music as separate characters with fleshed out personalities.
Tennyson was Luke’s stage name for his own project but he invited his younger sister Tess to take part, making this a family affair guided by their father who’s also a drummer. Luke and Tess have been performing since before they were 10 years old. Tess is still in high school and finds it difficult to juggle. “I’m in school every day and that’s the worst!” she told Yours Truly. She’s constantly having to quickly learn the new songs Luke writes in order to perform them. Like What was a difficult task for both of them, most songs taking 2-3 months to complete. When Luke is writing songs, he hits a point where he doesn’t know what the next section should be, getting kind of paralyzed by that fear and indecision. “The drum parts are made very slowly…the fact that Tess is capable of playing that in real time is miraculous.”
If you’re an especially anxious sort of person, Tennyson’s music might test you, especially that car door’s open sound sampled in “Lay-by.” Nevertheless, we see big things for Tennyson this year and hope an LP is on the way. Luke just posted a new two-minute song called “LOL Tomato Land” using a Latin beat and they’ve remixed a track with Skrillex and White Sea. Things are certainly going to heat up for the duo in 2016.
Download their EP for free below:
Follow Tennyson on Twitter and Instagram (their videos are bizarre).