Interview: Ten Eighty Trees

Newcastle’s much-lauded alt-rock trio, Ten Eighty Trees, drop their latest single, and a song for the “socially anxious”, Incubator. Sonically, big beats, snarling riffs and impassioned vocals burst from the speaker as the song’s frequent dynamic shifts, vocal hooks and pulsating metal energy reel you in and leave you wanting more.

We catch up with the band to find out more…

How would you describe your sound and how has it evolved over time?
Brazenly loud, intoxicatingly infectious and emotionally charged. These are the qualities deep-rooted in the Ten Eighty sound, running through all our music from first single Something Feral to our latest The Incubator. We’re constantly grafting away, honing and improving upon this formula. I think Trees fans and beyond are in for a treat with our upcoming releases as we get closer to our final TenEightyForm. 

Your songs explore the human condition. What aspects of that, in particular, inspire you?
Emotionality, desire, internal conflict, and mortality are all commonplace in our music. Writing is a form of therapy for us and putting the thoughts, feelings and experiences connected to these themes into our music helps us make sense of the chaos and confusion of modern life. I’m really good at thinking myself into a black hole about really trivial things a lot of the time so that’s probably why these kinds of topics get explored so heavily in our tunes. 

How do you typically go about crafting a song?
A Ten Eighty typical song begins with a riff or a hook I just can’t stop thinking about. Nothing too elaborate or fancy, just a little idea that might have legs. These little seeds form the foundations from which the rest of the song can grow. I often like to demo everything up into a DAW (Logic broke so currently using Garageband) and get the vocals and guitar parts exactly how I want them before sending a demo on to the other Trees to lay down their parts. So we pretty much have a full recording of the track before we’ve even played it in a room together. It sounds a little perfectionist doing it this way but I’m a big believer in ‘the first idea being the best idea’ so not a lot changes from the demo to the stage. Writing in this reverse-engineered way has recently seen us enjoy one of our most productive periods as a band with the fruits of this purple patch soon coming to fruition. 

Tell us more about the band’s new single, The Incubator. What’s it about?
This is quite possibly the heaviest Trees track to date, drawing on Hardcore and Thrash Metal for influences sonically. But behind the heavy metal riffage and the roaring catharsis of the vocals, The Incubator at its core is an anthem for the socially anxious. The track portrays a protagonist unprepared & overwhelmed by the outside world, yearning for the metaphorical safe space of ‘The Incubator’ to feel a sense of peace. The vivacity of the music is in stark contrast to the calm that is so coveted in the lyrics. My social battery doesn’t hold a lot of juice so I tend to crave quite a lot of solitude and alone time. I think the lyrics draw on those desires quite a lot. 

Is there anything else on the horizon for Ten Eighty Trees?
We’re celebrating the release of The Incubator with a run of dates throughout October into November, including North East headline shows at Bobiks, Newcastle (1st October) and Base Camp, Middlesbrough (21st October). This won’t be the last new music you’re hearing from us in 2022 as well. The year might be coming to a close, but we’re just getting started.