{"id":9521,"date":"2014-10-02T15:29:01","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T15:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=9521"},"modified":"2014-10-02T15:29:01","modified_gmt":"2014-10-02T15:29:01","slug":"tunic-a-fucking-cruise-missile-to-stardom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2014\/10\/02\/tunic-a-fucking-cruise-missile-to-stardom\/","title":{"rendered":"Tunic :: A fucking cruise missile to stardom"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"tunicpic\"<\/a>
Tunic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

by Sheldon Birnie<\/strong><\/p>\n

Loud, abrasive outsider music has always had a home in Winnipeg. From the 80s punk rock explosion, to 90s noise rock, the out-there electronic experiments of Venetian Snares and beyond, a twisted frequency lies at the dark Heart of the Continent. One of the current crop of young, hungry bands picking at the carcasses of their fore bearers is Tunic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to make my own band for a long time,\u201d David Schellenberg recently told Stylus<\/i> over pitchers of beer at Cousin\u2019s. \u201cI\u2019ve always been the bass player in everyone\u2019s band.\u201d<\/p>\n

After spending years tending to bass duties in Les Jupes, Departures, and the Playing Cards, Schellenberg started writing songs on guitar a couple years back. Then he started jamming with drummer Sam Neal after a late night at the Lo Pub.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew Sam from high school,\u201d Dave recalls. \u201cI showed him my songs and Sam was like, \u2018Those are cool, but I play drums like this.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSam plays drums like a brick in a dryer,\u201d Rory Ellis, who plays bass, clarifies for the folks at home.<\/p>\n

So Schellenberg was like, \u201cI guess I gotta write heavier songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no sense of how to play along to that,\u201d Sam admits with a laugh. \u201cIt definitely ended up morphing into what it is now.\u201d<\/p>\n

That \u201cit\u201d is an intense, propulsive exploration of isolation fuelled angst, with the volume cranked high. Schellenberg admits it is a somewhat different musical realm than the one he was once most comfortable in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was born and raised on indie rock,\u201d he says, \u201cand got into punk rock later in life. Sam had played in a bunch of punk bands, so we kind of met in the middle. When we first started hanging out, about two years ago, we talked about N\u00fc Sensae, White Lung, and Condominium a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found common ground in modern punk music,\u201d says Sam.<\/p>\n

\u201cI agree,\u201d Rory says, adding that his role in the band is often a reaction to the elements Sam and David bring to the table. \u201cI write parts that give context to what [they\u2019re] doing so that it resembles something that makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

This past winter, Tunic went into the studio at UMFM and recorded \u201ca bunch\u201d of tracks with Graeme Wolfe from fellow new noise barons Conduct.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d been a band for a while, felt pretty tight,\u201d says Schellenberg. \u201cBut there was really only the one out of like nine that we really liked our performance on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boys in Tunic weren\u2019t the only people who liked the track. Nick Liang, from Conduct, was planning on starting a record label, Dial Tone Records, and offered to put the track out on a split 7\u201d with his band. The connection makes sense, of course, when you consider the long history between the members of both bands. A relationship that only deepened after the two undertook an extensive US tour this past summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a lot of fun,\u201d Sam says, \u201cbut it was a bit of a financial failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat tour isn\u2019t?\u201d asks Schellenberg. No doubt, undertaking a completely DIY tour, without a record, is a gamble. But Tunic admit that it was more of testing of the waters, and an excuse for an adventure with some good buddies, than anything else.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was great,\u201d Rory says, \u201cmeeting other people who like punk rock and art punk, progressive punk. Interesting, loud music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWinnipeg is a pretty isolated town,\u201d says Schellenberg, touching on a recurring theme in any narrative about our local cultural development. \u201cSo it was nice to go out and some of those shows had way more people than our hometown shows. It\u2019s cool to make friends and get into a new community that we didn\u2019t really even know about.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the new split 7\u201d, Tunic are setting their sights high, with plans to tour, and record a full length over the winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom now on it\u2019s like a rocket ship,\u201d Rory boasts, as the pitchers of draft beer drain. \u201cA fucking cruise missile to stardom!\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss the Tunic\/Conduct split 7\u201d release show Oct 3 at Natural Cycle. It\u2019s gonna get messy!<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sheldon Birnie Loud, abrasive outsider music has always had a home in Winnipeg. From the 80s punk rock explosion, to 90s noise rock, the out-there electronic experiments of Venetian Snares and beyond, a twisted frequency lies at the dark Heart of the Continent. One of the current crop of young, hungry bands picking at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[563,673],"class_list":["post-9521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-local","tag-noise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10795,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9521\/revisions\/10795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}