Another feather in their caps… Birds of Tokyo’s new direction is anything but boring.
Camera IconAnother feather in their caps… Birds of Tokyo’s new direction is anything but boring. Credit: Supplied/Supplied

Birds of Tokyo on New Flight Path

Tyler BrownWestern Suburbs Weekly

“We jokingly describe it as Blade Runner meets Roman Gregorian-sort of like Baroque stuff,” guitarist Adam Spark said.

“It’s very much an exploration of everything cinematic and grandiose and dark: quite heavy.

“We’ve been referencing everything from Massive Attack to alt-J to The xx to Nine Inch Nails and Deftones and some metal and a bunch of hip-hop, really low end, dark kind of stuff and grime and things like that.

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“We’ve been down a path for a little while and we always want to keep moving and it just feels like the right time for us to take another step to the side and go down a different road for a little while.

“I think we’re feeling like it’s more about building a soundtrack to a big, intense concert experience rather than just a record with songs on it that go on the radio.”

Spark said the band’s latest single, I’d Go With You Anywhere, was probably the last of its kind so it made sense to give it a home on its greatest hits album Playlist… A Singles Collection, released late last year.

“That song was initially part of some sessions we did earlier this year for the Anchor EP but it wasn’t ready for then,” he said.

“So it just happened it made sense to whack it right up the front of this thing, to say it’s probably one of the last of it’s kind that we’re working on for a while because we’re working through a bunch of new material and none of it’s anything like that or any of the things around it.”

Spark said releasing Playlist was about finishing a chapter of Birds of Tokyo.

“In a not negative way at all, I definitely see it as a closing of part one of what we’re doing,” he said.

“If that was the first decade of Birds, then I want to spend another decade now exploring and going down a far, far more experiential and cinematic path.”

Playlist is an 18-track trip down memory lane.

It is ordered from newest song to oldest with Puzzle from the band’s recent Anchor EP included to bookend the collection.