Friday 13 May was an exciting day for Melbourne’s Reside. Having just jumped off the bus from touring the east coast with Columbus, the electronic groove-driven, alternative musicians dropped their latest genre-rollercoaster single, ‘Palace’.
The first new music since 2020’s ‘Fallen’, ‘Palace’ has already received a buzzing reception.
“I’m so excited for it to be out in the world. I feel like it’s been a long-time coming. We’ve been playing this song for about a year now.” says vocalist Liam Guinane. “It’s been a really great response so far.”
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Guinane, along with longstanding Reside bandmates Ariel Johnson, Will Eggleton, Salé Brown and Dylan Houston, have been moulding a cross-genre musical sculpture since 2017 taking influence from the likes of Bring Me The Horizon. Dismissing pigeonholing on their epic 2019 EP The Light That You Saw, which spawned anthemic ‘Replace Me’, ‘Palace’ extends their envelope-pushing mission including contrasting influence from Jeff Buckley for vocals and Childish Gambino in the layering.
Having just rediscovered the twelve-month-old inceptual voice memo of the track and using the Columbus crowd as the test pilots, ‘Palace’ has undergone a considerable evolution to deliver its unbound form.
“It’s changed, I’d say, fairly significantly, though I would say the core ideas still remain. The grooves and the verses are still there, but the overall production was the biggest thing that has evolved over the past twelve months. We’ve been testing it live and seeing how we can pull that off in a live setting and I think a lot of the more textural things like the vocal effects have been a really big addition to bring that song over the line and really create the atmosphere I was going for,” he explains.
Heightening that ‘Palace’ vocal work, Reside recruited the animalistic vocal growls of Bloom vocalist, Jono Hawkey.
“Jono was my choice to get on the track because we go way back with Bloom – they were one of the first bands to bring us up to Sydney when we were starting out, but also he and I, I feel, share a very similar vocal scream tone.
“I wanted to have someone who was similar to me but you could tell it was different to bring out that sense of a person that is having an internal conflict. That’s one of the main themes of the song and I wanted to have someone almost have this outer body experience and want to shake themselves awake. So Jono was almost playing a character that was connected to me and the song. But also he is an absolute monster! He sounds sort of otherworldly and that’s exactly what I wanted.
“I asked him to ‘make some noises I’ve never heard you make before’. There’s these real guttural things happening and it’s really filthy,” Guinane laughs.
Horror movie level worry, nauseous unease and false senses of hope encase this song both musically, lyrically and visually in their faceless music video; a reflection of the pandemic-produced social anxiety experienced by Guinane.
“We’ve all collectively gotten this cabin fever but all been put into our homes and been given the opportunity to mould and shape our homes with LED lights and sunsets and all these things that instagram pushes onto us – we’ve made these Palaces and safe spaces that have protected us from the outside world. It was about my escape from the world and the paranoia I was feeling about the outside world and what it would be like when we get out of it. We tailored to the two sides of that musically to make you feel like all is well and then bang, here’s us pulling the Matrix cord at the head.”
What better way to deal with social anxiety than having a release party!
Now that we’re integrating again, the Melbournians will be launching this epic single at Stay Gold on Friday 10 June (tickets here). Whilst not the first live play of the mammoth track as it has appeared in their setlists for the last twelve months, there will be some new tracks from their upcoming album making their debut.
“Palace” feat. Jono Hawkey is available now and streaming on all platforms. Listen via Spotify here.
This article was made in partnership with Reside.