Watch our full interview with Max, Jesse and Jordan!
Up Late are not your typical boyband. The five-piece Wollongong band are carving their own path, creating genre bending sounds that mixes rock with hip-hop and encapsulates early 2000’s punk with pop melodies. The band formed late last year, waiting until May this year to launch themselves by competing in Triple J’s DIY Supergroup competition. Not long after, the group shot up the Unearthed charts with their debut single Friends.
Since then, Up Late have been working hard on music. The band recently released their latest track U Left Me On Read. The tongue-in-cheek song lyrically mirrors a millennial freak out where instead of receiving a response, your message has been left on seen. Through pairing grand and dramatic sonic sounds with relatable day-to-day lyrics, the band speak to simple ideas that listeners can relate to. The recording process took longer for the group, who wanted to mix 90’s boy band sounds with a modern pop/trap song.
The tracks soon to be released music video sees lead singer Max Pasalic emerging from a club thinking his partner was close behind, only to turn around and find her missing. The singer then goes into a panic attack induced paralysis which sees him floating across the Wollongong landscape, metaphorically capturing the feeling of anxiety within relationships.
With a lot more experimentation on the way, the group arrived at their current sound after years of playing in emo-punk bands as well as Pasalic’s work as a trap producer. Together, they navigated the terrain of fusing these differing sounds together. Each band member brings their own sounds and influences to the tracks, creating a borderless genre that is uniquely Up Late. These influences include emo, rock, pop, rap and heavy sonic sounds. Through fusing their emo-punk and trap backgrounds together, they are filling the gap within the Australian music industry where no other artist seems to be crossing these two genres.
Watch our interview with Max, Jesse and Jordan from Up Late above!
Images: Vasili Papathanasopoulos ©
Filming: Vasili Papathanasopoulos, Laurence Morassut and Jazmin Pezzano
Featured Songs: U Left Me On Read courtesy of Up Late