Heavy Chest: Celebrating Pre Heat

Beautiful crooning melodies, smooth riffs and funky, electric basslines have been reverberating through venues across the motu over the last couple weeks, as Heavy Chest, formerly of Pōneke, now Melbourne/Naarm based, take on a tour of their home turf to celebrate the vinyl release of their first album, Pre Heat.

Rosa chatted with Andre, Josh and friend/promo king Ben (VMorg) over zoom to discuss the release while they sat in a cafe in Lyttleton having a cruisy morning before kicking off the South Island leg of their tour. 

Photo by Vanessa Cone

Rosa: Hey guys, how’s it going? Thanks for chatting! You guys have moved to Melbourne/Naarm pretty recently after being primarily based in Wellington for a while, what prompted the move?

J: I think for all of us Wellington had been home for quite a while. And Andre had since moved up to Auckland beforehand, so it just felt like an easy next step musically and an opportunity to join a new community. 

A: We were thinking about where we would move in New Zealand, then we thought it would be cool to move somewhere with a bigger scene and more happening. There’s a lot of young creatives in Melbourne. Which is just like New Zealand I guess, but on a little bit of a bigger scale, plus it's not too far from home as well. It works to have a base there and then be able to come home like we're doing now. That was part of it too - a shoe in both countries, split across the Tasman Sea.

R: You're really widening the scope and audience with a move like this. Now you’re back in Aotearoa for this tour! How's it been going? You guys have played Welly, Auckland and Hamilton so far, right?

Josh: Yeah, we did two shows in Welly, they were great. We kicked it off with an acoustic show with guests which was a lot of fun and something different. Then a San Fran show the weekend after that. Then went up to Auckland for the week and came back down for the Hamilton show. It was the first time we played there, at Last Place and it went well! Then slogged back in the night for a Flying Out session in Auckland the next morning then a show at Tuning Fork that night. We had a few days off this week until today which was nice.

R: Sounds like it’s been busy but going really well! You just got down to Lyttleton last night and are playing there tonight and the rest of the South Island leg this weekend - are you excited about playing these songs to a South Island audience?

Andre: Yeah! We haven't played in Lyttelton before, and we've only played Dunedin twice. When the album came out, there were a lot of listeners down there and we were playing with a lot of Dunedin bands at the time. So it's nice to bring Pre Heat physically and musically down south.

R: What made you guys decide to re-release Pre Heat around its 5th year anniversary?

J: A lot of that actually stemmed from our friend Ben who's just here.

(behind the laptop, out of shot)

R: Hey Ben! I was wondering if you were here. I saw the computer move.

B: Well I’ve been put on the spot here *laughs*. Last year was its actual fifth birthday and we didn't have time to get it pressed. This year I thought we should just do it and then I talked the boys into spending all that money. Andre said he looked into it a few years ago, but it was always just quite a large thing to tackle at the start. We had the confidence now to say ‘this will go well’ and it has! Then we decided to tag the tour on to it - knowing that we were moving to Melbourne but come back to New Zealand for a quick little winter tour. It just made sense because I think in the past the only merch they had done was like a set of hoodies and a couple of tees and some tapes. Creating something tangible for the fans to hold is always key.

A: Yeah. We plan to record new material and it feels like a good chapter to draw a line. We've got that body of work and a couple of other bonus tracks from Home Turf on the record. So now we have a physical copy we can build on that, build on this tour then record new music, which is what we have planned when we get back. 

B: Releasing the vinyl is kind of like the end of that chapter.

R: There's something really special about creating a physical object that holds the music as well. I feel like that must be quite nice to have that. 

A: Yeah, it's so cool! First time we played it on wax, we were all just at a friend's house in Australia having a couple of drinks celebrating.

R: What was it like working with Holiday Records? Has it been a smooth process?

J: Yeah, absolutely. I got a quick tour [of their space] the other day picking up some more vinyl. It was great to see it. It’s quite a small operation but everyone in the team is very friendly and very passionate about it. They seem to go above and beyond. They said they have one of the smallest footprints in the world for an operation this size.

B: They also nailed the deadline. We had this tour coming up and had three months to get the vinyl ready and they did!

Photo by Ben Morgan

R: How do you guys feel about touring an album that came out close to 6 years ago? Your first release, correct?

A: It's a pretty nostalgic record for me and Josh. To go back to what we were talking about before, it’s a chapter of the band. So it's nice to go back. It did feel funny because we thought maybe we should re-record some of the tracks and change them up. But each song is recorded so differently. It's its own experience. So we left it as the original recorded album.

J: We play a lot of those songs from Pre Heat in the live set slightly differently now as well. I've added a couple of new parts or sections just to keep things moving and introduce some of the new ideas that we're working with into the old songs. This tour we're playing some new material too. So it feels like a nice balance of celebrating an old release, but also showcasing what we've been working on.

R: Totally! I love that idea of acknowledging and celebrating where you’ve come from while preparing to move forward and create new music. Well I should probably let you guys go, thanks heaps for chatting! I'm excited for the show!

The tour continues tonight (Friday!!) in Ōtepoti at Dive with Tāmaki-based pop songstress Judah Kelley and local groovers L.Hotel then finishes up in Queenstown tomorrow with a free show at Yonder. This will not be one to miss! Tickets can be purchased here!

If you can’t make these shows (or even if you can), get ya mitts on the limited run of Pre Heat on vinyl. You can buy these here!

Check out Heavy Chest’s instagram here!

Beautiful photography by Vanessa Cone who can be found here!