Eagle Eye Jones

Where are you currently based?

All five of us live in a close knit community surrounding Manly Beach. It’s where we played our first show and had a big influence on our early sound.

How did you first start playing music?

5 years ago, Toby and Luke met at a Black Sabbath concert and connected over a love of Jeff Buckley and the Grateful Dead. Jason and Dylan joined shortly afterwards and the band grew from there. A couple years later Jamin joined the band and we continued to evolve into the band we are today. We all came from a variety of musical backgrounds, some of us self-taught, others had been in bands for years, and some of us had studied music. It’s a fun hot-pot that always feels fresh and new from all the different ways we express musical ideas.

What’s been happening recently?

We’ve been working, nose to the grindstone, all year on our debut album. It’s a tremendously rewarding feeling to be so proud of something created behind the curtain of despair that has been the past two years.

Your single ‘Wardrobe Of Masks’ is out now, what influenced the sound and songwriting?

Wardrobe of Masks is one of our most upbeat songs off the record, but the song itself is quite reflective and is somewhat about losing yourself in someone else’s story, and losing a sense of identity. That idea was a big part of what informed the way we approached certain parts of the song.

How did you go about writing the single?

It was written during a particularly tough 2020 lockdown late at night. Luke was toying around with the lydian mode and listening to alot of Jeff Buckley having just dealt with a bad bout of heartbreak and dissociation.

How did the concept for the music video come about?

The concept came from one half of the super duo Kane Lehanneur and Tyler Bell of (The Sauce), who have been longtime friends and collaborators and who have been involved since the inception of our band, we wouldn’t be here today without them. Kane’s concept for the video began with imagining ghostly figures surrounding an individual who was struggling to understand themselves or the world around them.

Where and when did you film and who did you work with?

Kane Lehanneur is the mastermind behind the clip, he presented us with the idea and we trust him so much with his creative vision and couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. We had a super fun time shooting it over a full weekend. It was all shot in an old WWII bunker in Kuringai National Park as well as an abandoned house.

You have a debut album on the way, please tell us about it’s influences and songwriting process:

Almost all of our songs come out of our shared life experiences, and we try to take these concepts and stories and imagine how they would sound and what that sound would feel like. This hopefully helps us not be hedged into one genre too heavily and have a flexible mood between songs. It also makes approaching songs feel really fresh, knowing we are working to a story or experience rather than a particular musical structure.

Where and when did you record/produce/master and who did you work with?

Jacopo Garzonio produced the album and is as much a part of the beating heart of EEJ as any member of the band. Stefan Du Randt was the mixing engineer and Steve Smart handled mastering. We are incredibly fond of the whole team at Studios 301 and are grateful to work with them.

How did you approach the recording process?

After we had all the songs written we spent another 9 months in pre-production before heading into record at Studios 301. We recorded for 12 days straight, and really allowed ourselves to be completely immersed in every obsession and detail that tends to come with recording music. We definitely lost our minds more than a little bit but we were immensely proud of the result and grateful for all the crew at 301 who helped us achieve that vision.

Please tell us about working with producer/engineer ‘Jack Garzonio’:

Well all the time we spend in our sleep dreaming goes straight to his brain, and when we wake, he makes them come true. He’s a genius, a passionate artist and a true friend, we love him very much. His relationship to music is something extremely precious, extremely pure and extremely rare. He helped craft the songs through multiple weekends of pre-production locked in a cabin in the Blue Mountains and this record is as much his as it is ours.

Who are you listening to at the moment?

Portico Quartet, Dominic Breen, Parcels, Surprise Chef, Hiatus Kaiyote, Grace Cummings, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Arlo Parks.

What do you like to do away from music?

Making pictures, surfing, getting into nature, frisbee, travel (hopefully a little more now we are in the clear with lockdown).

What’s planned for the remainder of 2021 going into 2022?

Our debut album will be releasing in the first half of 2022, we have some big plans in the works, including a unique cinematic experience as well as a bunch of touring, possibly overseas. Then I suppose we’ll record the next record!

In the meantime we are gigging as much as possible now everything is back to normal and trying to make the best art we possibly can.

Favourite food and place to hangout?

Our favourite place to hangout is probably on the road. We love exploring this beautiful country and stretching our legs away from our hometown. Favourite food? Oh too many to name, we love a lot of Eastern cuisine, ramen, curries, stir-fries… and anything with enough spice to blow your head off.