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Mexican food and WAMFest: we chat with sun-kissed rockers Tohst

Tohst are one of those bands whose music makes you feel like you’re melting away in the blistering hot sun, or as if you’ve stepped into a sauna when you’ve barely opened the door to your porch.

We had a chat to the sun-dazed, WA rockers about their ever-changing recording process and the importance of Mexican takeout. Read on to get a little sneak peek of what’s next for the band.

tohst @georgianed_
Photo: @georgianed_

Fresh off the release of their new single Mexico, we chat to Tohst about Mexican food, how they’re keeping things fresh, and their upcoming show at WAMFest.

Mexico is the newest single from the band, released back at the start of September. One of the first things you notice about this song is its expansive sound; the kind of track that plays in the closing scene of a movie when a character has realised their ultimate life purpose.

Reflecting on this description, Tohst explain:

“Well, yeah we did things a bit differently when we started writing this time around. A few of us got Mexican for dinner that night which is where the title originally came from. We never ended up changing it so we just incorporated ‘Mexico’ into the lyrics and worked around that.”

In keeping with trying something different with the songwriting process, several band members swapped roles and ended up writing parts for each other.

“Tom our bass player came up with the main chords on synth, Declan who plays synth came up with the bass line and then we took all of that to Dylan’s house where we chopped it up. Dyl wrote this huge spacey guitar lead over the bridge at the end which really suited the sort of black and white/past and present theme that runs through the whole song.”

It’s been about a year since Tohst released their self-titled EP, so what have they gotten up to since then?

After releasing those first few songs we’ve just been writing new material and we’ve also been lucky enough to play with a lot of sick local bands like our mates in Flowermouth who put us on our first ever show. After that we’ve been steadily picking up gigs around Perth and now WAMFest on November 3rd which we’re getting super pumped about.”

Could Mexico be a taste of greater things to come? The band are always trying to one up [them]selves with each new song… Mexico is definitely building on what we’ve done before and heading in a way we want to go in but it’s still just the tip of the iceberg lettuce really.”

When asked about a teaser of what to expect next, Tohst tell us:

“At the moment we’ve been busy writing all new material for an EP which we’d like to have out sometime next year hopefully. Other than that we’re just looking for any gigs we can get our grubby little hands on really.”

 

Mexico is out now. Catch Tohst at WAMFest 2018, taking place November 2-3 in Perth.