TEKE::TEKE Share New Single 'Hoppe'

On Friday, the acclaimed and chameleonic Montreal-based TEKE::TEKE will share their second full length album Hagata via the legendary Kill Rock Stars. From the tender-hearted “Jinzou Maria” to the rumbling and raucous “Yurei Zanmai”, the songs of Hagata bear an eerie yet somehow familiar sensation.

Japanese pop tones, Serge Gainsbourg grandeur, folk whispers, and Brazilian surf rock all mix into a psychedelic stew. Blending past and present, from Canada to Japan, multiple lives lived at once, each track carries a sense of change, impact, of having been marked in an intimate way. And yet the force behind that marking is always just out of grasp, a wisp, a ghost, an energy, a spirit that compels you to keep reaching.

On Hagata, TEKE::TEKE move beyond the idea of walking across multiple paths, instead existing so fully in the space between that the usual constraints of creativity no longer apply. 

Ahead of the LP’s release, the band shared a music video for the album track “Hoppe,” first premiered via Post-Trash. Guitarist Sei Nakauchi Pelletier explains, “I always thought of ‘Hoppe’ as having a bit of a 90’s vibe, maybe the Fugazi in me (but with Maya’s delirious tale about an old man who’s cheeks fall off after eating a rice cake… ha, ha) so we tried to simply capture the raw and punk energy of the song and keep the camera moving, with a fish-eye type lens.” 

Shot and edited by the band, the video displays the group’s signature visual blend of live action and animation as previously explored in the videos for singles “Garakuta” and “Gotoku Lemon.”

The track itself explores the more aggressive post-punk edges of TEKE::TEKE’s sound with cutting guitars and horn arrangements while lyrically, vocalist Maya Kuroki spins one of her signature kafkaesque fables. Featuring men emerging from mysterious foods, it concludes with the stark admonishment: “There's no such thing as "Forever", that’s the way it is / A broken illusion eats up the earth completely.”

Though as enigmatic as ever, the band encases this message within a raucous romp complete with stabbing staccato rhythm and a wild, surfy guitar solo. Indeed, Hagata sees the band more eclectic than ever, while still preserving their ferocious and playful spirit.

Looking up at the sky one afternoon, Maya Kuroki spotted a cloud that looked like it had a bite taken out of it. One word immediately sprung to mind for the vocalist of TEKE::TEKE. “‘Hagata’ is a very deep word, something present but also something leftover from someone or something no longer there. It's like waking up from a dream, or being connected to the other side of something.”

TEKE::TEKE are intimately familiar with that duality, of splitting reality between past and present, complex melodies and hushed interludes, intense action and lingering response.

After building their sound on Shirushi through careful assembly of countless splinters of Japanese folk, psychedelia, Brazilian surf rock, and other far-flung touchstones, the seven-piece indulged in and learned from stretching out in free-floating experimentation both on the road and with Hagata’s producer Daniel Schlett (The War On Drugs, DIIV, CHAI, Nick Hakim), and his assistant, Daniel Fox, recorded in a scenic studio in Mountain Dale, New York, the album having been mastered at Sterling Sound.

TEKE::TEKE Live Dates:

June 24 - Ottawa, ON @ Ottawa Jazz Festival
July 7 -   Montreal, QC @ Montreal International Jazz Festival
July 9 -   Sudbury, ON @ Northern Lights Festival Boréal
July 14 - Quebec City, QC @ Festival Été Quebec
Aug 11 - Regina, SK @ Regina Folk Festival
Aug 19 - Salmon Arm, BC @ Salmon Arm Roots & Blues Fest
Sept 2 -  Manchester, UK @ Manchester Psych Fest
Sept 3 -  Dorset, UK @ End of the Road Fest
Sep 5 -   Southampton, UK @ Heartbreakers
Sep 6 -   Cardiff, UK @ Clwb Ifor Bach
Sep 7 -   Bristol, UK @ Crofters Rights
Sep 8 -   London, UK @ Moth Club
Sep 9 -   Brighton, UK @ Psych de Soleil

Photo Credit: TEKE::TEKE