We get to know Taka Perry on your Friday morning; he’s a young artist headed for big things, if his new single ‘Fishy’ is anything to go by.
But what’s his style? Whose music does he love? What was the first album he bought? And where can you catch him live? All these questions (and more) are answered as we Get To Know Taka Perry.
1. Name : Taka Perry.
2. Where are you based? Mainly Sydney, a little bit Canberra.
3. How did you get your start in music? I’ve been interested in music production since I was 12, but my career really started when I got picked up by Specific Music and Kobalt while I was attending an APRA songwriting camp in high school, and they brought me into the music industry in Sydney.
4. Give us five words to best describe you as an artist. Experimental electronic with Asian influences.
5. Tell us a little bit about your sound and how it developed. I listen to a really wide range of music, and I think my sound is naturally the sum of all the stuff I listen to. I love progressive metal and I’m heavily influenced by the odd grooves that bands like Tool, TesseracT, and Periphery employ in their music. That’s definitely something I’ve taken and put into an electronic music context.
6. Who have been your musical influences? My influences are pretty disparate. One of my favourite acts is called Godspeed You! Black Emperor (which I saw live in Tokyo earlier this year), and their songs are all 20-minute long pieces of art that blur the lines between music and soundscapes. I respect artists that challenge the status quo and push their own sound and style.
More recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of Japanese music from acts like Wednesday Campanella, Daoko, and [Alexandros]. Japanese music is quite different from the kind of stuff we have in the Aussie scene, and those differences have definitely permeated into my own style.
7. What are your favourite songs of all time? That’s a really hard question, but if I had to choose three songs that have stuck with me, it’d be ‘Anesthetize’ by Porcupine Tree, ‘Postcard From 1952’ by Explosions In The Sky, and ‘Chupacabra’ by Wednesday Campanella.
8. What was the first album you bought? ‘Enema Of The State’ by Blink 182. I think everyone went through the inevitable pop punk phase.
9. Give us a little fun fact about yourself that people might not know. I’m half Japanese and fluent in Japanese!
10. What would your chosen career be if music wasn’t an option? I’d probably be doing something in the field of linguistics, given that I’m fluent in two languages and have a good grasp of both cultures.
11. What’s the best advice you’ve been given in your career? Don’t be an asshole, haha. The music industry is so small you never know what people are saying about you.
https://soundcloud.com/taka-perry/fishy
12. Tell us about your latest release. I wrote ‘Fishy’ with Jimmy Davis the day we met each other, back in February. The song went through quite a few iterations between then and now, but we wanted to write a song that embraced a more simplistic and sparse approach to production, which I think is reflected in the ebb-and-flow of the song.
13. What do your future plans involve? I want to travel overseas, especially southeast Asia and USA, and work with artists over there. I’m also working towards an EP, and pushing forward with more live shows in 2017.
14. Where can our audience catch you live? I’m playing my single launch at Lobrow Gallery with Jimmy in my hometown Canberra on November 19.
WEBSITE : http://takaperry.com
FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/takaperry/
TWITTER : https://twitter.com/takaperry
INSTAGRAM : https://www.instagram.com/takaperry/
SOUNDCLOUD : https://soundcloud.com/taka-perry
Australia's first stop for pop!