The Vampires Celebrate 20 Years

Australian saxophonist, composer, and producer Jeremy Rose is a key figure in the country’s contemporary jazz landscape, known for his wide-ranging musical output and impressive range of ensembles - one of which is celebrating turning 20 years old. A founding member of The Vampires, the genre-blurring group is hailed for its cinematic textures, depth of improvisation, and global influences. Rose is also responsible for the creation and running of independent record label Earshift Music, which has become an important platform for forward-thinking jazz music in Australia.

It was a pleasure to have Jeremy join us to share his thoughts and insights on The Vampires’ work over the past twenty years, the identity behind Earshift Music, and how collaboration continues to shape his approach to composition and bandleading…

When you formed The Vampires, did you imagine you’d still be making music together twenty years later?

I don’t think anyone thinks that far ahead. When we started, we were just a group of friends trying to make music that reflected what we were into at the time - Ornette, Charlie Parker, Nyabinghi drumming and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafarian, and Susana Baca. I don’t think any of us were thinking twenty years ahead. But thinking back, there was something about the chemistry of the group that felt special. There was a shared sense of curiosity, but also enough difference between us to keep the music interesting. I think if any of us weren’t into it we wouldn’t continue.

How did the band come together in the first place?

We were studying at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. We were all part of the same community of young musicians – playing in one another’s projects, hanging out, sharing music. Trumpeter Nick and I became house mates for two years around 2009-10, living in a street called Chellowdene (which became the name of our second album), in the surf town of Stanwell Park, an hour south from Sydney.

The original idea was to create music that could sit somewhere between composed music and a more open, groove-based approach. We loved jazz, but were also listening to a lot of music outside of the jazz tradition – reggae, dub, African music, rock, minimalism – and we wanted to bring those influences into an improvising band.

Over two decades, how has the relationship between the band members evolved both personally and musically?

Well a lot can happen in twenty years! There’s a huge amount of trust. We’ve all grown up together in many ways - as musicians, as people, through different life stages, different artistic phases, some of us have had families, pursuing other projects, touring, recording, dealing with the ups and downs of the music industry. The music has developed organically through our own interests. I’m continually trying out new things, be it synthesisers, various sounds (I had some whistling on the last album that got axed), as well as bringing in guest collaborators, which have all brought something different to the group.

In a performance setting, I’d say there’s an increased intuition - almost telepathy - between us; as you can imagine, after playing so much together. I always had that with Nick (our trumpeter), we have a very sympathetic way of playing together that’s unique to ourselves. Personally, I think the band has deepened because we’ve had to learn how to keep showing up for the music and for each other. Long-running bands are like families in many ways - you don’t always agree on everything, but if the foundation is strong, the differences actually become part of the richness.

Has your approach to composition changed over the years?

Well, you know as composers we might only have a few central pieces that we keep rewriting throughout our lives. I think that rings true. With the Vampires, there are certain obsessions we keep returning to. Particular hooks or structures. But each time we return to them, we’re different people, so the music changes. I think that’s what give a band a unique sound, through finding what their compositional language is, and continually refining it. 

Was there a particular album or moment that felt like a turning point for the band?

I can think of two moments from recent memory. The first was the collaboration with Lionel Loueke (The Vampires Meet Lionel Loueke) was a major levelling up for the band. Our tour with him in Australia in 2016 was a transformative experience. His solos were like mini Odysseys that could take the music on a trip around the world and back, and his comping would propel us all to greater heights than we thought possible. The second was working with Chris Abrahams, particularly in a live context. His ability to build slowly tension through the use of increasing texture at the keyboard was inspiring, and has influenced my playing in a number of ways. The band now explores longer forms during our performances, which I think was inspired by Chris.

What’s the secret to keeping a band creatively alive for this long?

I think the secret is you need to be flexible in your creativity and trust the group process. The band won’t stay the same forever. People change, people develop, and you need to realise that and let it change.

A long-running band needs continuity, but it also needs renewal - particularly in jazz (or at least what I hold dear, and that is progressive jazz). For us that comes through new compositions, new collaborations, travelling individually, different recording processes, and allowing each member to bring their own evolution back into the group.

You also need a shared purpose beyond just getting gigs: for us I think there are things that only this band can do, that’s what keeps motivating me to return to this project.

Has there ever been a moment where the band nearly went in a completely different direction?

I don’t know if there was one dramatic fork in the road, but there have definitely been moments where the band could have leaned much further into one aspect of it’s sound.

I’m often the one that is trying new things in the group. More recently I’ve been incorporating electronics. This initiated through the use of guitar pedals, but I’ve since built all these into my Ableton workflow and have opened a whole world of possibilities. At first I simply tried to mimic some of the synths that Chris Abrahams used on Nightjar, but now I’m experimenting with non-metrical looped drones and pads, and expanding the spatial sounds of my saxophone through harmonisers, verbs and delays. 

I think the strength of the band has been that we’ve absorbed those influences without becoming trapped by any one of them. It's always had this elastic identity: we’ve purposely tried to avoid categorisation, but always bring our diverse influences into a ‘Vampires’ way of making music.

How has the Australian jazz scene changed since you first started out?

When we started, the Australian jazz scene felt smaller and perhaps more separated into particular camps - straight-ahed, contemporary, experimental, world music, and so on. There were amazing artists working across all of those areas, but it felt harder to cross between them.

Now I think the scene is much more fluid. Younger musicians are far less concerned with genre boundaries. There’s also a stronger awareness of identity, community, cultural background and the politics of how music is made and shared. I’d say that there’s more gender representation too, which is fantastic.  

There’s also a burgeoning new generation of artists creating their own scenes and communities. One phenomenon to arise in the past few years has been the jazz warehouse scene, including Kamellia and the Jazz Doof series. These often see warehouses with 200-300 people under 30 partying to jazz music. It’s incredible to see and I can’t wait to see what broader effect these parties have on the culture around jazz in years to come.

At the same time, it’s still a challenging environment. Touring is expensive, venues are under pressure, and streaming has completely changed the economics of recorded music. But creatively, I think Australian jazz and improvised music is incredibly strong.

You also founded the record label Earshift Music back in 2009. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Earshift started out of necessity, really: I had three projects all releasing music at once, and the local artist run label Jazzgroove Records had just gone under due to its distributor filing for bankruptcy. But it was the start of a way to create a home for creative music that wasn’t properly being represented in Australia. At first it was my own projects, and by artists around me, but gradually grew into something much broader.

The label now represents a wide range of artists working across jazz, improvisation, contemporary music and experimental forms. The philosophy has always been artist-centred: to help musicians build a story around their music, document their work properly and connect with audiences here and overseas.

We’ve now released over 120 albums, which is really quite hard to believe, and the label has grown into something that is much bigger than myself. But it’s also been driven by the same values as The Vampires: a belief that artists can make work of international significance without needing to compromise their identity.

What’s been some of the highlights of the band’s history?

There have been quite a few. Recording and touring with Lionel Loueke was a huge highlight - I still think back to our performance opening the Melbourne Jazz Festival. He brought such generosity and openness to the band, something I still often think about.

Winning the ARIA Award (Australian Grammy) for Nightjar was obviously a major moment, especially because it came after so many years of work. 

International touring has also been a big part of the story - playing in Europe and the UK, connecting with different audiences, and seeing how the music translates outside Australia.

What advice would you give younger musicians who might be starting out?

Find the people you want to grow with. That’s probably the biggest thing. I often say in the music industry it’s not who you know, but who you growth with that can often lead to the biggest opportunities.

A lot of young musicians understandably focus on individual opportunities - gigs, grants, recordings, social media, career stuff. All of that matters. But a long-term musical life is built through relationships: the people you play with, the people you trust, the people who challenge you and help you become more yourself.

I’d also say: don’t be too quick to define your sound. Let it emerge through doing the work. Make records, play gigs, write music. Someone once said to me it’s no the first 10 albums that define you but the ones you make following that. The most interesting artistic identities usually take time.

Is there something musically you still feel The Vampires haven’t explored yet?

For sure, and that’s why we’re still at it. I think there’s more space for us to explore longer-form music, deeper textural development, and perhaps a more cinematic or immersive side of the band. We’ve always had strong grooves and melodies, but there’s another area that sits between composition, improvisation and immersion that I feel we could go further into. I’ve been exploring long form improvised works in my other projects and would love to go further into it with the Vampires. I’m also interested in how the band might interact more with electronics without losing the core identity of the quartet. I’d like to explore using electronic drums as a texture at some point, too. The challenge is always how to evolve without diluting what makes the band distinct. I guess the exciting thing is that, even after twenty years, the language is there, but there’s so many perspectives and new ways to frame it and move through.

A selected discography from The Vampires