Zelliack

Last year, I was more than impressed when I heard the Noir Tone EP from the alternative/soul duo Zelliack. I randomly stumbled upon this work of art while on bandcamp sometime last fall. It’s finally come time for the Indie Buzz to do an interview with Elliot Coleman, one half of Zelliack. The duo itself is a side project from two members of electronic metalcore band Sky Eats Airplane.

IB: Between the two of you, which one of you does the writing for the songs?

EC: Well, when it comes to the music and all the instrumentation, that’s all Zack. I play guitar and bass, but no where as near as well as Zack. He’s a little genius in a lot of ways and he’s able to compose all of those songs. He’s a good friend of mine so I can be honest with him if he was to write something I didn’t like, but he’s never written anything that I didn’t like, especially in that style. I might help with arrangements, but I just take care of them.

IB: Can you name artists that inspired Zelliack to get started on the project?

EC: Well (Zack) is a huge Steely Dan fan. Instrumentation wise we’re into 70s soul stuff. Our interests range from Sly and the Family Stone to Bjork.

IB: If I were to describe Zelliack’s sound, it would be like if Fall Out Boy was to grow up on a ton of soul music, that’d be you guys.

EC: I guess I could see that, I would say the weakest part of Zelliack would be vocals. We were in a couple bands, and some we weren’teven playing together. He does all his instrumentation at home. But at the time I didn’t have money for pre-programming or anything. I would write out what i thought it was supposed to sound like. I do think it sounds good, but it could have sounded great. Like an actual soul singer instead of a metal singer trying to do soul.

IB: How did you guys meet?

EC: Well I auditioned for his band as a bass player. We had a lot of interests so we hit it off great. It started off as an internet friendship.

IB: Dream Collaboration, who would it be with?

EC: Well I can’t speak for (Zack) because there’s a lot of people he’d wanna work with. But I’d love to work with Bjork.

IB: You informed me that Zelliack is a little bit on the backburner for now. I personally want to see you guys doing a full length LP, if you look back on it, you guys were like number 1 on bandcamp for a while.

EC: It was consistently in the top 10 for a while. We considered it all over the board. We were writing a full length for a while, I’m not gonna push him to write stuff he doesn’t wanna write, so whenever he feels he got the sound for what it’s gonna sound like is when we’ll do it. It’s still something we’d love to do. When or if is up in the air right now.

IB: How does it feel when you look up and see 28,000 views?

EC: It’s cool! I’ve always been appreciative of people being fans of my music, but I also appreciate the fact that they’re not all from our previous fan base. Zack has always been in original bands, and I always join bands. It’s always a win win.

IB: It’s amazing how you guys do the whole band on the computer. Guitars, bass, drums, keys, and vocals. You guys sound like a legit band, but there’s only two of you.

EC: That EP is really just Demos, we never set a specific time for that. It was just like “Hey, let’s make a new song!” Bandcamp was just a way to get it out there, by charging a dollar, we were just going to reinvest it into the album, which is even still what we plan to do.