Track By Track: Tokyo Tea Room - 'Dream Room EP'
Tokyo Tea Room have just released their ‘Dream Room’ EP via A Certain Kind Record. The release is four tracks filled with synths and rhythm section grooves fueled by dreamy psych-pop and shoegaze. Something to easily lose yourself into.
‘Dream Room’ was recorded in our studio in Canterbury over a few summer months in 2019. It’s a good window into our world, and what’s to come.”
The band took a moment to talk to us about the EP - track by track.
Things Are Changing
‘Things Are Changing’ was the first track we were really interested to see what people would think because it’s different to our first record in so many ways. Synths are 90% of this track and we were mainly a guitar band so it was a whole other world. I bought my first synth and used it to make this track without really digging any deeper than the presets, now I’ve pretty much ditched my guitar altogether and I live for it. The song went through several different demo versions and will continue to evolve as we get deeper into synths and move onto recording an album.
Lyrically the message of this track is quite transparent, it’s directly about myself changing as person. But It’s one of those songs where the words seemed to write themselves, all the songs are personal but hopefully relatable to most people.
Designer
‘Designer’ was written around Christmas 2017. In terms of writing, Christmas is a strange time for me, there’s something about that period that gets the juices flowing. The world seems to slow down, and the long winter nights help with the chemistry between myself and music. I remember falling in love with an organ sound from an old Yamaha keyboard I bought, it’s showed up in a lot of demos since.
Lyrically the song is about longing for another, I like to think the track has a bit of a sassy vibe, the way that the singing melody is presented kinda evokes that feeling.
Forever Out Of Time
‘Forever Out Of Time’ has a bit of a wonky sound to it, in a good way. My love at the moment is finding music that combines old messed up sounding guitars/keyboards with modern production, there’s something about that kind of thing that I seem to pick up on. This was our first release because it felt like a good balance of what we are and what’s to come. It’s also the production that laid the path for the rest of the EP.
Always Tomorrow
‘Always Tomorrow’ is a bit of a dark horse, it was Intentionally written to be an album track but made its way onto the EP as single, thankfully people seem to be liking it I think. It’s one of those tracks that has a bit of a strange vibe to it, it's the first time we’ve used phaser on vocals and has opened our minds to experimenting with psych vocal effects. It’s a fun one because it’s not too heavily reliant on the vocals to carry the song, its more about enjoying the textures and melody during the chorus.
Tokyo Tea Room are Daniel Elliot (Synths/Vocals), Ben Marshall (Bass), Beth Plumb (Vocals/Keys), Sam Teather (Drums), Ryan Debling (Guitar) and Graham Nunn (Guitar).
The ‘Dream Room’ EP is out via A Certain Kind Records today, 29th November.