Sydney band The Strides will be bringing their mix of reggae, Afrobeat, jazz and hip hop to Brisbane in support of local band Kingfisha’s debut album launch.
“We're really looking forward to it, we love Kingfisha's music, they're a great band and it's a privilege to be supporting them at their album launch,” Nick Garbett, who plays trumpet for The Strides, says.
They’ll be joined by Kooii, Bullhorn, Integer and Selector Watson as part of an impressive supporting line-up. “It's a great line-up of music, so it's going to be quality reggae music and groove music. I haven't personally seen Kooii play before but I've heard amazing things, they're a great band so I look forward to seeing them,” Garbett says.
The Strides began as five friends from Wollongong who started an instrumental group as an excuse to play reggae and Afrobeat. From humble beginnings it soon grew into something much bigger than that. “We introduced singers into the line-up, we were lucky to get Ras Roni and Little Jesus on board and that's when the band really started to develop our sound.”
The band features a lot of improvisation in their shows and love the unknown factor that comes with playing live. “I think we have a different sound to other bands, it's a mix of reggae and Afrobeat music — you don't hear that a lot. I think music involves a lot of improvisation … come and hear it,” he laughs.
“I think that everything in music is playing live. You get the most joy out of playing music [by] playing live and it’s always different, the crowd's always different, the music's always different depending on how everyone's feeling in the band. So it's the unknown, you don't know what's going to happen.”
With a couple of albums already to their name, The Strides are focused on penning new material for release later this year. “We toured the album [‘Reclamation’] in November last year, we did about 20 shows around Australia. We got great support and sort of developed audiences in places we hadn't played before. It's been really good and we're in the process of writing a new album at the moment.”
The Strides support Kingfisha the Hi-Fi Friday June 22.
