Slum Sociable returns to Sugar Mountain

It’s been a whirlwind couple of years for local band Slum Sociable since it first played Sugar Mountain festival in 2014.

Hailing from Melbourne’s bayside suburbs, the band’s rise since gracing Sugar Mountain’s first festival at its new home at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in Southbank has been profound.

Back then, Sugar Mountain represented the band’s first major gig. Come January 21, 2017, Slum Sociable will be recognised as one of the major local draw cards on the line up off the back of it’s first EP TQ, which was typified by its signature opening track All Night.

The band, spearheaded by duo Ed Quinn (guitar/keys) and Miller Upchurch (vocals/percussion) and supported by Ryan Beasley (drums) and Dylan Savage (bass), is now embarking on a national tour for its new single Name Call.

And in the words of Ed, it’s currently “putting the hundreds and thousands” aka, finishing touches, on its debut album, which is due for release in 2017.

Ed described the band’s rising success as somewhat of a shock given that it originally started as nothing more than a university project between mates.  

“It started off as a project for uni that we weren’t initially going to release and some stuff happened and we put it out,” he said. “Labels started calling and we were pretty shocked with that and we released our first single last year.”

“It’s been surprising and almost overwhelming I guess and now we’re recording our debut album, which is kind of crazy considering two years ago we weren’t even going to release any music at all.”

Drawing on an eclectic range of creative and musical influences, the band has developed a unique sound that has won plenty of fans.

Driven by Miller’s penetrating voice and Ed’s production qualities channeled through his talents on guitars and keys, the Slum sound is one even Ed himself finds difficult to define.

“It’s very hard to describe your own music because you want to try and be as unique as possible. You don’t want to lock yourself in but I guess within the studio it’s an anything-goes-type approach,” he said.

“If there’s a sample that starts the song off, we’ll play some live instrumental and then Miller will come in and wail over the top of it with his incredible voice.”

“I reckon he probably makes a lot of my production look a lot better than it is but it’s an asset to have someone with a powerful voice like that.”

Having recently embarked on tours of New York and Europe, the band launched its Name Call tour in Adelaide this month, which was followed by shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

However, having provided it with its first major live platform, Ed said the band couldn’t wait to return to the stage at Sugar Mountain.

“We’re back at Sugar Mountain in January, which is awesome because that’s easily one of our favourite festivals,” he said.

“We didn’t really think our music would have this type of effect on people and even now people are coming up to us and saying how much they like it so it’s been really cool.”

To enjoy Slum Sociable and the huge array of musical and artistic talent on January 21 at VCA head to sugarmountainfestival.com/tickets