Seas of Mirth’s latest album, ‘Kriller,’ dives into a blend of danceable grooves and psychedelic rhythms, creating an infectious energy that resonates through every track.

The band’s trademark humor and experimental sound are front and center, with quirky lyrics and unexpected musical twists keeping listeners engaged. While the deep-sea theme subtly underlies the album, ‘Kriller’ explores a broader spectrum, with nods to nightlife and vibrant dance floors. With tracks like ‘Dig Out the Moves’ and ‘When The Night Knight Comes,’ Seas of Mirth invites you into a world that’s both fun and uniquely captivating.

Seas of Mirth’s core ensemble features Al Judders on vocals and guitar alongside C Ball Paul on guitar and vocals, Sally Squidbusiness on keys, xylophone and percussion, The Barrel on bass Smitty Clamhands on drums. theremin, and percussion, and Additional band members include Glen Fingle on mandolin and vocals, Zorba on bouzouki, FX, and vocals and Mickey Bubbles on samples and percussion. Special contributions to the album come from Yay Maria, who provides vocals on track 7, Andy Lingard on violin for tracks 1, 5 and 9, Sarah Montague on vocal for track 9, Molly Taylor on sax for track 2 and Simon Alexander on trumpet for track 8. The combined talents of this eclectic group create a unique musical experience that’s both dynamic and engaging.

“Ultimately, we like to make music that we haven’t really heard before”

What would you say is the overall vision of the band?

To live up to the name! Ultimately, we like to make music that we haven’t really heard before, and I don’t think that’s too big an ask of any artist. A lot of our music is riff- or groove-based, but there isn’t an intended genre as such. We strive to keep it creative and left-field, and never without humor. I will give you an example straight up: in our new album, there’s a track called ‘Tiki Tak,’ which is a squirmy low bass over a tickly, rhythmical dance beat festooned with bleeps and bloops and multilingual yelps in no key whatsoever. This might sound like a load of gibberish, but it’s actually about four divers who are sent down on a task and run into problems, which get worse when they discover nobody speaks the same language. And I’m, like, 99.5% sure nobody’s written a song like that before… So yes, there is a bit of a shtick present with the underwater vibe, but that doesn’t have to be there if one is not particularly in the mood for it. The lyrics have that leaning, but they’re subtle enough for the music to work in its own right. Live, there is more of a visual, sensory element going on, and you’re likely to get surrounded by giant LED jellyfish… or maybe even a 4-metre-tall octopus if you’re lucky/unlucky (delete as appropriate). I like to think the band name is lived up to in these respects, but with depth, attention, and not too on-the-nose, hopefully. We don’t like being called a “novelty act.”

Some people think of us as a knees-up festival party band, but one that plays in odd time signatures and has trippy effects. Others consider us a psychedelic/progressive act that encourages dancing at our shows. Should these things mix? Our answer: “Why the hell not?”

Would love it if you could speak about your background and what led to the formation of Seas of Mirth?

Al: I moved in with Paul in the late noughties, back in our student days. We bonded quickly, and within days, we found ourselves in a band together. It’s safe to say it sounded nothing like it does now! A massively transient surrounding lineup has been with us since, comprising over 30 different members and nearly as many instruments. We’ve more or less stuck to the same lineup in the last four or five years. I’ve always been really into it, as I love working with Paul—we share a lot of musical interests, as well as a love for film and comedy. A joint skill (or a hobby) Paul and I have always had is finding humor in any music, and we like to reflect that in our own work. I’ll give you an example: the two of us are massive Radiohead fans, but even they are not exempt from our sense of humor. In our track ‘Bobbit,’ the outro vocals parody Thom Yorke’s tendency to repeat a line without changing the note. So, we made a lyric that goes, “let’s just sing everything in a monotone, let’s just sing everything in a goddamn monotone,” and looped it.

How much time and effort went into the creation of your latest album?

A vast, vast amount! It started as soon as the last one was released, so as early as 2019, when tiny little shoots of ideas were starting to manifest in our brains. The writing of ‘Kriller’ went up a notch or five during lockdown, as ‘Sub Marine Dreams’ had not yet had the chance to be toured, so we were still in the zone with all things ‘Mirth. My job outside of the band is playing music for people with learning difficulties, autism, or dementia. As much as I enjoy doing this, a nice aspect of lockdown was the space and time to play around on guitar just for my own pleasure for a change. ‘Dig Out The Moves’ was created out of that, and now I can’t imagine a world where that tune doesn’t exist. It’s an uplifting, feel-good dancefloor bopper, which at the time felt like something the world really needed. Fun fact: its working title was ‘Disco In Furlough’. During this period, Paul and I would be exchanging WhatsApp voice clips of guitar noodlings, odd choices of song titles, and these formulated into full-blown tunes when we were able to get together in a sweaty, clammy room with the rhythm section and emphatically funk it out.

<a href="https://seasofmirth.bandcamp.com/album/kriller">Kriller by Seas Of Mirth</a>

Can you share some further words about the recording process?

Paul: You know, this was one of the most enjoyable records we’ve made because we really just threw the kitchen sink at it—everything went, and the more ridiculous, the better. We recorded part of the album at the Total Refreshment Centre in London, which still makes me laugh because the producer, Kristian (aka Capitol K), had just come back from working at Peter Gabriel’s Air Studios with The Comet is Coming. When we turned up at his studio and unloaded our cheap pedals from a series of carrier bags, it must have felt like a bit of a climb down. But the sessions were fun; there’s a nice looseness from recording rhythm sections live, and you can really feel that in ‘Fangtooth’ and ‘Dig Out the Moves.’ When we recorded vocals and overdubs at JT Soar in Nottingham, we really let the silliness loose—Tom’s harmonies in ‘Dig Out the Moves’ and ‘Amphibious Remedy’ really make me giggle, and there’s a wonderful bit where Emilios literally made an old SP404 sampler overheat by pressing the buttons so quickly.

“We cooled on a lot of the folkier instrumentation this time around”

How would you compare it with ‘Sub Marine Dreams’?

Al: We cooled on a lot of the folkier instrumentation this time around. For starters, there is no accordion, and it’s rare to hear the mandolin and bouzouki at the same time. As barmy as it sounds coming from us and our, er, maximalist nature, we thought we’d strip things back a bit! This is partly due to the evolution of the sound, and partly because some members (i.e., players of these instruments) weren’t as available due to family and geographical reasons since the release of ‘Sub Marine Dreams’ (2019). Some labels have jumped on board this time, like Sentient Rash based in Stroud/Bristol, and Post Music (Liverpool), to help spread the word, as well as our mini label, Eelshock, which we hope to do more with one day.

The deep-sea theme is actually not laid on as thick with ‘Kriller’. You mainly get that in the artwork, which was designed from scratch by our bassist, Todd. Yeah, there is a focus on nightlife and dance floors in ‘Kriller’. I mean, it’s already a pun on the Michael Jackson album, and the broken mirrorball on the artwork signifies this element. There are tunes like ‘Dig Out The Moves,’ where we’re getting everyone out there to give it their all on the floor (there’s a video for this on YouTube with the signature dance move, which you can learn in your own time), then ‘When The Night Knight Comes,’ which is a tale and also a message to watch out for predatory sleazemongers on your nights out, and then there’s ‘Neon Paradise,’ with the subtext being to check in on your mates who are struggling, and always invite them no matter what.

A thought I often have is that the sub-oceanic thematic direction easily lends itself to the unknown and exploratory element of the music. So it made sense to stay there to some extent. Also, I do like working to a brief! There is a lot in common between the two LPs, though—both are our first releases on vinyl, and both were part-crowdfunded, probably because we decided to release them on vinyl!! Same producer (Capitol K). They share a decent wedge of funky, dancey, and psychedelic parts too. Not to say they are funk records or psychedelia records, or that they belong to any specific genre. We’ve come to the reckoning that genres can sometimes be prisons for certain artists! Some of our favorite music is fairly non-genreable, regardless of how accessible it is, from Bowie to Cardiacs to stuff on the Leaf label, for example. In the years when we used to play shanty folk punk, there came a point around 2016-17 when we eventually got really bored of it because we felt held down musically. There were already outbursts of musical progression in ‘Hark, The Headland Approacheth,’ but by then we had become aware of the many tropes of that style that we were doing, but seeing so much of other people also doing—which is fine, but we didn’t want to settle on that and blend in. This is why ‘Kriller’ has way more parallels with ‘Sub Marine Dreams’ than it does with our first two albums because they are from the “shackles are off” era. So yeah, different gravy, in our opinion, if you don’t mind me ballooning from the original answer.

What’s next for you? Are you planning some gigs?

Al: Yep! We’re back on the road in the UK in March after a well-deserved rest/hibernation following the 14-date ‘Kriller’ tour in autumn last year. It starts in Derby (or “Derbados,” as the locals call it), where it all began! Then we’re hitting the wonderful cities of York, Bath, Kendal, and Brighton, as well as a London show. All our gigs are listed on our website. Right now, we are booked up until the summer, but we are trying to get more festivals booked. We did Glastonbury, Boomtown, Bearded Theory, Nozstock, and Lindisfarne last year, so maybe we shouldn’t expect so many big slots this time around! We would love to return to Europe too—it’s been over five years now, but Brexit has made it extremely difficult (oh no, I said the B word!). Brexit is something that we have been staunchly against since the start, largely for these reasons.

We’re not planning any more releases for a while now, as we need to get ‘Kriller’ into as many ears as possible, and as an independent DIY band, this is an outrageously laborious task. It’s becoming a massive time sponge with social media algorithms becoming increasingly harder to crack. I’d say, if you enjoy our music (and so many people do), please tell some friends—especially ones with adventurous ears—about us, as the internet just doesn’t cut the mustard at getting the word around. I guess that when you cross styles and genres as much as we do, it’s sometimes easier to fall into the cracks between them than to stand out from the crowd, thanks to said algorithms. People like things neatly labeled—Spotify playlist curators are a classic example of this, and unfortunately for us, that’s the vast majority of musical discovery and therefore consumption. So another big part of this year is working hard, tooling up, and finding those listeners. That’s another reason why we’re continuing the legwork and touring into this year. We translate well on record, but the best experience of Mirth is watching us live in the flesh. It can be hard to convince some people out there that we’re actually alright. However, we know from the atmosphere at our shows and some of the feedback and press we get that people love it and have a very, very good time, so it’s all worth a shot. “We need tracks as refreshingly ridiculous as this,” was one quote from PROG Magazine referring to our song ‘Deep Deep Heat’. Basically, if you want to be successful, don’t make music like us! And if you do, make sure you are of the thick-skinned variety.

Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?

Al: Yes, some interesting records came out in 2023 that we got into like a fabric-softened onesie on a winter’s night in.

Shunya – ‘I Have Aspirations For Dragonflies’
Legs on Wheels – ‘Legroom’
a.P.a.T.t – ‘We’
All forward-thinking, creative, wonky pop—and strangely, all from the North West of England.

Paul: I absolutely agree with the above, and Ask My Bull’s new EP ‘F-Them’ is also very good, in terms of new releases by some of our contemporaries. I’ve been on a real electronic tip recently, so I’d heartily recommend Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan’s ‘The Nation’s Most Central Location’—which sounds like Vangelis scoring the North of England. I also really loved STRKT’s ‘The Rat Road’ from last year and James Blake’s ‘Playing Robots Into Heaven’—both beautifully produced and surprisingly fun. Like everyone else, I’m also currently listening to The Smile’s ‘Wall of Eyes’ on repeat.