You’re probably wondering what a Snakadaktal is. One day, not that long ago, some students at the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner school were passing time in math class by sketching made up creatures, fusing two different animals together to make a hybrid. They did this with a snake and a pterodactyl and the Snakadaktal was born. Then one of them thought that would make a good band name. The rest is history, or will be soon enough.
Snakadaktal are the sort of band you could talk about forever, the one where you sit your friends down and force them to listen. Of course, with Snakadaktal, you don’t have to; the world is already paying attention. After two years of jamming, writing and recording in various lounge rooms and basements, Snakadaktal emerged blinking into the spotlight and took Australia, as the saying goes, by storm.
They won the triple j Unearthed High competition off the back of their very first single, ‘Chimera’, a dreamy, surreal track built of a home-spun art school aesthetic and accompanying Neverland-themed clip, which racked up 140,000 views on YouTube and kick started a whirlwind that picked them up and put them down very far away from Kansas.
triple j flew them to Sydney to record their second single, ‘Air’, a little masterpiece of musicality and dreamy boy/girl vocals. ‘Air’ became the first track played on the new triple j Unearthed radio station, and saw a total of 150,000 individual views on YouTube.
The debut Snakadaktal EP, entirely self produced, was released on November 25 through I OH YOU records, debuting at #26 on the ARIA digital charts, and helping them sell out a club tour of the East Coast in December 2011 and won 10,0000 Facebook friends along the way. These are the kind of facts that make promoter types into giddy school kids, but the teenaged musicians of Snakadaktal are remarkably down to earth. They’re just five friends who like playing together and are young enough that their mums still shake them awake to tell them they’re on the radio.
Their music is real in the way that only those who play with their hearts on their sleeves can write. It’s those about the things we first learn about in adolescence, love, loss, friendship the things we never stop learning about. It’s about thoughts, daydreams and nightmares. It’s about finding your groove and building on it, about adventures with bass and keyboards. It’s about fun, about whimsy, about taking life on in all its terrifying glory, without taking yourself too seriously. Which is not to say it’s not awesome.
The Snakadaktal EP is a perfect synthesis of the best lo-fi pop produced in the last decade. Their music is built out of raw talent and memories they are too young to have, a distillation of all your favourite records, with a little something else.
It’s all strange arrangements, chilled out guitar floating on urgent drums with catchy melodies and thoughtful lyrics they’re at times reminiscent of pop vocalists in the tradition of smart laid back songsters Air or Kings of Convenience, with nods to more upbeat acts like MGMT and Florence and the Machine.
But of course, they’re none of these bands, they’re Snakadaktal, they sound like themselves. They can rock the sexy-cool girl/boy vocals of The XX, or channel the playful darkness of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but the thing that makes you shiver and smile while you listen to it, that’s Snakadaktal.
