Unfinished Symphony

Dan James, the blonde-haired frontman for local lads Drawn From Bees, can't stress how cool an idea this is. He's calling in from the “band bunker” where the guys are working on their set for the upcoming 4Senses show, the annual event designed to transform music from something merely heard to a complete sensorial experience in which anyone – with hearing or without – can lose themselves. On the evening the foursome will work concurrently with the Sloe collective, a group of visual artists, and Auslan interpreters. There'll also be subwoofer seats to quite literally get the songs under people's skin.

Drawn From Bees will be coming to the party by bringing their own – an eight-piece line-up that will help them fully realise their artistic vision. By the sounds of things the evening is a natural fit for their current modus operandi.

“[The band] is becoming less and less of a four-piece band and becoming more of a project thing where we're starting to pull a lot of extra players in,” James admits. “We did a show at the Powerhouse a little while ago with a fourteen-piece orchestra and since we've done that we don't ever want to go back to being a four-piece band, basically. It's opened up a massive can of worms.”

With these extra players, the band have the chance to delve deeper into their canon than ever before.

“In three years we've amassed sixty or more songs and of that catalogue a good fifty per cent of it we've never been able to play,” James informs, the tone in his voice bubbling with excitement. “When we're in the studio we have no boundaries and we don't even think [about] what we're going to do live. The problem with that is that there are songs and we just sit there and go, 'Man, we'd love to be able to play that live,' and we couldn't, until now.”

Drawn From Bees are eager to connect with the hearing-impaired community, and because of the additional vibration and feel involved James remarks that the overall experience will be equally as foreign to them, in the best possible way.

“It's a whole different thing for us. Conceptually, I think this is amazing and I'm really happy to be a part of it – it's really cool. There's a lot more physical movement going on with the sound [so] I'm curious to see how that affects our performance.

“It's going to be quite fascinating to see how we react to the audience as well because I don't know how they are going to react? Because this is not normal for us. We usually walk into a room and expect a specific reaction which is entirely tied to hearing. [Things are] definitely going to be a lot more animated.”

Following this evening, the band's focus for the rest of the year is reflective of their current ambitious direction, and with access to a fantastic orchestral space they are rethinking the concept of what an album is and how it works. And while you might not see them on the live circuit as regularly – the quartet looking to calm down on the touring side of things – they are writing plenty and looking to shift focus from traditional records and releases towards something more visual.

“For us, I think we're in a bit of a conceptual phase,” James admits. “We're looking at this massive palette of an orchestra, which is very much affecting how we're writing because a whole bunch of boundaries have just been stripped away.”

Drawn From Bees will be playing the following dates:

Saturday 9 February - The Bridge Club, Brisbane QLD
Friday 22 February - The Zoo, Fortitude Valley QLD