After having toured the world in the past few years, with Camila Cabello, Ed Sheeran, Lorde and more, New Zealand-born four-piece Drax Project recently released their sophomore album ‘Upside’ this November, which blends elements of pop, RnB and jazz-inspired sounds. Their creativity and attention to detail led them to become one of the biggest bands to ever come out of New Zealand and into the worldwide mainstream. We spoke to members Ben O’Leary and Sam Thomson about the potentially awkward first impressions they left on other bandmates, their superstitious pre-show ritual, their songwriting process, live show updates for 2024, and much more.
“We all first met at music school in Wellington, New Zealand, all studying different instruments,”, O’Leary starts to explain Drax Project’s formation, “The band started with Shaan [Singh], who’s a singer and plays saxophone, and Matt [Beachen], who’s the drummer. They went busking after class and at night, as a way to make some extra money. And everything kind of just spiralled from there. Sam was living with them at the time, so he went and played bass with them.”
“We met Ben at a couple of parties and through some friends who are musicians,”, Thomson continues, “The music scene in that city is really awesome and vibrant, but pretty small. If you’re there, then you pretty much know every musician. So we met Ben pretty quickly, and he then joined the band. We started writing original music, and that was pretty much it.”
When asked about other bandmates’ first impressions, Thomson admits that he actually first saw O’Leary when he was 16 years old. “There’s this other thing in my hometown, which is not Wellington, a different city in New Zealand called New Plymouth, and there was this guitar festival called G-TARanaki. They had some really big artists and they had this academy thing, which was for really good guitarists. Ben was playing and I remember just being like, ‘Well, that dude shreds real hard!’,”, he points at O’Leary with a smile, “It was funny as well because you were the person that they came up to and filmed on stage. And I felt really sorry for you. They were filming you real close! And I think you and your dad came along to a gig.” O’Leary nods and remembers, “Yeah, we saw your band play! This was like… maybe about five years before we ended up meeting each other.”
O’Leary confesses a fanboy-like moment he shared with the band’s lead singer Singh: “I remember I knew who Shaan was from after we moved to Wellington. I’ve seen him play and knew that he was a really good vocalist. I saw him in the supermarket once, at the self-checkout and was really awkward. I was like, ‘Hey, man, what are you up to?’ and he was like, ‘Oh, just doing the groceries bro’”. Thomson bursts out laughing as O’Leary facepalms. “Stupid!”, O’Leary chuckles, “All good first impressions but maybe not for Shaan!”
The band’s name – Drax – is a portmanteau of drums and saxophone. “I think Shaan’s mom came up with that,”, O’Leary reveals, “Because when Matt and Shaan were busking, people were filming them and putting them on YouTube. And they were like, ‘What can we call you guys?’ and they’re like, ‘We need a band name!’. I think they just brainstormed and then someone said, ‘What about Drax Project, drums and sax’ and they ran with it. They were not a proper band, they were just a busking duo.”
Even though they thought of changing their name “multiple times” after becoming a proper band, they felt like it was too late when Drax Project started to gain more and more recognition. “It got to the point where enough people started to listen to our music and come to the shows. In reality, we should have just done it. Now it’s stuck with us,”, Thomson explains.
Their favourite set of live shows they played so far was their tour in the UK and Europe with Camila Cabello in 2018. “That was the first time we really left the country as a band,”, O’Leary reminisces, “It was a big tour and first time in Europe and the UK for most of us, and definitely as musicians. It was the first for a lot of things and it was really, really cool!”.
Curious to find out about a potential pre-show ritual, O’Leary starts to laugh wholeheartedly while Thomson hesitantly tries to explain, “Have you seen…. okay, we’re revealing it now. Have you seen the movie…. shall I say what the movie is?”
O’Leary takes over, “We just… before every gig we call a friend, the same friend every time. His name is Mark, he was one of my best friends at school and he’s actually Sam’s partner’s older brother. We call him and we sing a song with him from a movie. It’s a ridiculous song. I don’t even know how we started doing it. We were trying to figure this out the other day. It’s been years. If he’s at the gig, we sing it with him, and then he runs away straightaway. But even when we were on the Camila tour, he was in New Zealand, and we were calling him, and it was four o’clock in the morning in New Zealand. He was waking up and singing this little song.” “He’s somewhat accepted it”, Thomson laughs. “I think his fiancee would say otherwise”.
Regarding the band’s songwriting, they acknowledge the fact every member’s taste differs and everyone has different inspirations, one common thread, however, is their admiration for Justin Timberlake.
“Especially the ‘Justified’ album era more so than his more recent things. Probably because Pharrell did that with him,”, Thomson clarifies and O’Leary agrees, “Pharrell and Timbaland. I would say that in terms of what inspires our music, like Sam said, we all listen to different things. So when we’re writing, it’s kind of just a big ol’ melting pot of everyone’s different influences that we try to craft into something that people can relate to”. They also have a group playlist, “So that we can all listen and kind of catch a vibe on things that each of us like,”, Thomson states.
However, writing lyrics as a quartet can sometimes be tricky. “We write really collectively,”, O’Leary explains and continues, “Everyone’s really involved in every aspect of the song. And it generally starts with someone bringing an idea, and then we kind of go from there. But because there’s all of us four involved, fully, by the end of the song, it’s kind of never really 100% specific, it’s not just one person’s experience”. “One thing though, it’s almost always an exaggerated version of reality. And sometimes the experience might be a fairly general thing, but each of us might relate to it differently. And we all kind of have input into it,”, Thomson adds.
Depending on the song, their whole songwriting/production process can be as quick as half a day or as long as five years. “I feel like we have realised now that we need to try and get done as much as possible when we catch that first idea. Because once that’s gone, it’s really difficult to come back to and revisit it and for it to flow and be good,”, Thomson reveals and O’Leary nods, “Yeah, it’s hard to put yourself back in the headspace, so now we try to get as much of the song done as possible on the day that we started. Then we come back to it, change the production and rerecord it.”
For their new album ‘Upside’, they didn’t have a specific concept. “But through finishing it, we kind of realised that all these songs have kind of a bit of rebirth, a positive outlook on things and getting back out into the world,”, O’Leary interprets.
“I’d say for some of the songs we had this plan of, ‘we want to have a track that’s like this on the record’. ‘Oh My’, for instance, is a good example. We really wanted to have a song that could be a big, energetic sax banger for when we play live. But in general, I think that a lot of the later things were influenced by what we liked from the earliest stuff. So that’s how the cohesion happened and to be honest, I didn’t even think it was super integrated,”, Thomson continues. “I guess, intentionally or not, we all went through similar life experiences”. Favourite-wise, ‘Supernova’, takes the crown, as “it is something they haven’t done before” and “a bit of a development” on the band’s sound, as well as ‘Good Life’ – “Just because it’s got a bass thing that I get to do, and it’s really fun.” – while, for O’Leary, ‘Oh My’ and ‘Mr Thunder’ come out on top.
Additionally, the two friends confess that the band has got loads of songs sitting on the hard drive that they want to put out one day – which is also why they have never really been able to write a record from scratch. “We wrote an EP, and then a few of those songs ended up being on our first album. And then we wrote some other tracks and they were originally going to be on a bigger thing. So there’s never been a time where we sat down and specifically started an album. I’m really excited to do that. And then maybe if there is a place for older things, that will happen. Rather than being like, ‘Oh, we’ve got these songs, we need to create something around those’,”, Thomson admits.
Over the past 10 years of releasing music, Drax Project’s sound has also become more refined. “I think we’ve gotten better over the years at figuring out what it is that we even like and want to write and how to package it,”, O’Leary explains. “I’d say it’s also influenced by the experience that we’ve had as a band and what we’ve done. And the situations that we’ve been in definitely affect how we write, how we view each other and our music.”
Thomson chimes in: “I also think we’ve all gotten better at production but specifically Ben and Matt. We got to the level now where it’s not something we need to necessarily have somebody else involved to create a record, we can do the whole thing ourselves.”
“We can now collaborate with people because we want to collaborate, not because we can’t get the ideas out of our heads and into the recorded form,”, O’Leary adds, also taking the moment to highlight that he wants to collaborate with all-time fave Timberlake. “That’d be top tier!”
For 2024, Drax Project has big plans and even bigger resolutions – even though O’Leary and Thomson both don’t quite understand, nor care about the ‘New Year, New Me’ concept. “We got a lot a lot going on. More writing; we actually just went away last week, on a little writing trip, the four of us, to start writing the next thing, which was really cool,”, O’Leary shares with excitement, “New music next year. Lots and lots of shows. We’ve got a New Zealand summer tour, then an Australian tour that we haven’t announced yet but that’s happening! We’re gonna go to Japan. And we’re coming to the UK in July”.
“We’re doing this thing at the moment where we’re just telling people to tell us where they want us to come play. So hopefully there’ll be a bunch more stops added,”, Thomson exclaims. “That’s our collective New Year’s resolution!”
Drax Project’s sophomore album ‘Upside‘ is out now. Tickets for their London gig on July 19 2024 are available here.
Written by Vicky Madzak // photography by Giulia Giannini McGauran
GEM Magazine 