Meet Sean Trelford, the youngster making ‘acid classical’ for outsiders
Tame Impala and Mahler are but two of the touchpoints for this fascinating new songwriter, who learns the rules of music just to break them
Speak to Sean Trelford about influences, and the teenager will handbrake turn from discussing Tame Impala and Mac DeMarco straight to waxing lyrical over the symphonies of Mahler and nihilist literature.
The music he makes has the influence of the classics splashed all over it, mixed with a desire to make songs that are catchy, melodic and colourful.
“You have to know the rules to break them,” he says of his classical upbringing and the learnings that he is now intent on twisting into new and modern shapes.
On his new single, ‘Naked’, and an upcoming EP, this cocktail of sounds and influences is immediately apparent, all presented by a distinctive and fascinating new voice.
Read our Play Next interview with Sean Trelford and listen to his music via our Play Next playlist on Spotify below.
You produce all your own music as well as write it – did that start initially out of necessity, or have you always wanted to do everything yourself?
It’s a mixture. Some of it was necessity, but also because of artists I love like Tame Impala, Mac DeMarco and even Paul McCartney in his solo project. When an artist can do all the instruments themselves, it makes a more refined product from that individual.
What was your musical upbringing, and how did that lead you to master so many instruments and disciplines?
I have a Chilean mum – thank you mum for being awesome! She put my brother and I on piano when we were four years old. It was meant to be an extra-curricular thing, and then my brother is now studying jazz at Trinity Laban and I did the grades. I was around eight when my dad showed me Jimi Hendrix. I was like, ‘Damn, this guy’s cool.’ When I was 12 I did all the grade eights for drums and bass.
I was really into the Electric Light Orchestra, and my appreciation for harmony came from my mum’s regimented ELO and The Beatles listening on car journeys. I really just wanted to express myself through those means. I was playing around with Logic with my brother, and we were doing random shit. I realised you can make cool sounding stuff. There’s a stigma around it, but you can just do it if you want to. Anyone can make good music or music that sounds nice to them.
Did formally learning music in that way help you when you wanted to make more experimental and rule-breaking music?
You have to know the rules to break them. Obviously there are countless examples of musicians who may not be the most technically advanced and still make use universally resonant songs that touch people’s hearts. But in the jazzy, psychedelic indie lane, I think the further you go in, you need to have you need to be able to control the palette or colours you’re working with to get a more refined product or achieve a more complex emotion that’s not just conjured up by probability or randomness. Thank you, parents, for making me do grades and shit.
With a comprehensive musical upbringing, how did you want to incorporate lyrics into that mix, and was that more of a learning process?
My mum made me read classic literature quite early. She got me on Camus and Kafka when I was 14. We were just sort of forced to read it. I was trying to read Hemingway when I was younger, but I hated it at the time. I probably just didn’t understand it. But now I’ve come back to it, it’s amazing. Oscar Wilde was something that has always resonated with me. The Happy Prince is the best piece of literature ever written I think, and it always makes me quite emotional. He’s clever guy and knows a bunch of words. Sometimes it can be quite smart talk, but in his short stories, especially, there’s a profound morality that a 14-year-old could understand. Obviously I’m not fucking Oscar Wilde, I’m just a random piece of shit, but I just really want to not make my lyrics pretentious or overly cryptic – just something that’s sweet. I want to make something beautiful for myself, and then hopefully people like it.
What ties the songs on your new EP together? Are they all talking about a similar time in your life?
This EP is very much about school years. I didn’t have the best time in school. I was seen as quite like a weird person. I was very outcast. I love this era of my life that I’m in now, because it’s all the musicians and all the weirdos regrouping. It’s suddenly like you’re not weird anymore. In secondary school and sixth form, people used to spread rumours about me and there’s lots of themes of that [on the EP], as well as a lot around the naivety and stupidity of teenage love, how stupidly intense it can get for no reason. I It’s very intense, it’s very youthful, it’s naïve, but I think the music is okay.
Can you take us through your sonic journey from when you started making music to now, and the release of the EP?
At the start, I was really into Grizzly Bear, Mac DeMarco, Tame Impala and Electric Light Orchestra. Then I went to a junior music school and my friend showed me Mahler’s 5th Symphony, and I was crying quite a lot when I heard it for the first time. It was such a profound experience, that music can provoke such emotion beyond words. That really inspired me and my music, because I wanted to implement classical music that pulls at your heartstrings.
I really want to go further down that lane. I want to make acid classical music, with indie mixed in. Like when George Martin was with the Beatles, but… probably quite a lot worse. But I’m gonna try my hardest! That classical, indie, jazz lane – that’s really where I want to go . Colour and harmony. I really want to just go for it!