So, maybe parents are a little harder to hate when they support and encourage a budding musical career, make space in their garage for you, buy you gear, and give feedback on their favourite songs, but Christ, isn’t that when you stick it right back to them by making terrible, unlistenable rubbish?
VICE: So what’s your worst childhood memory? Tom: Well my younger brother was really competitive. That used to bug me.
Surely if you were making all this angsty music in your garage, you were trying to piss someone off? Your folks maybe? Not really.
They must have hated the racket you were making though? Well my Dad’s office was actually on the other side of the wall, so every now and again he’d bang and say, “that was a good one.” I don’t think it was really his cup of tea, but he didn’t hate it at all.
How did you find your way from that teenage racket to your
current electro-pop sound? I’d been mucking around making instrumental keyboard stuff, kind of electro but with a punky side. Some of it got to a friend of a friend [DJ and Tummy Touch records boss Tim ‘Love’ Lee] and he put out a 7 inch of the song “There’s Only One Thing Left Now” under the name Souvenir. And the next step was to make an album.
So it’s all going great then? You have never had a negative
reaction to your music ever? I’d been making music for myself for such a long time that I never expected anyone to like it. The fact that they do, I dunno, it’s a good feeling. STEABS DELEON
Tom Vek’s album, We have Sound, is out now through Tummy Touch.