TYLER Gibbs initially vowed that "I'm not watching this garbage" when his wife urged him to check out hit UK reality TV show, Made In Chelsea.
Lucky for him and his Slow Cinema bandmates, the TV show about the lives of 20-somethings living in posh west London soon had Gibbs hooked. As did the show's impressively cool soundtrack.
From there Gibbs decided to email Made In Chelsea's music director and pitch Slow Cinema's single Pocket Knife.
"I wanted to go against the grain and send out a few messages and try my luck," Gibbs says. "One stuck and the person I spoke to was super keen and said 'let's do this' and sent the contract across and it was all done.
"It was taking a shot and seeing what worked."
In November Pocket Knife's sparkly Strokes-style riff, bouncy indie rhythms and Gibbs' bluesy croon appeared on an episode of Made In Chelsea in the UK.
"You're supposed to get a 10-second play on the show and we didn't hear back from them and then I was watching the show with my wife and went to walk outside and it started playing," Gibbs says.
"I had a fit. It was amazing. Then it kept going and went for bit over a minute."
The reaction was instant. Slow Cinema attracted more listeners on Spotify from the UK than they had in Australia courtesy of Pocket Knife's appearance.
The success has the Newcastle rock band buoyed as they release their hotly-anticipated self-titled debut EP.
Since releasing their first track Howlin' in 2021, the five-piece of Gibbs (vocals), Tim Hill (guitar), Sam Lawson (guitar), Jarryd Carle (drums) and Mitchell Sonter (bass) have quickly become one of Newcastle's most thrilling live acts.
Their sound is a potent mix of retro and new. There's a dark undercurrent of drama lurking in Gibbs' intense delivery and lyrics about maddening lust, and he has the perfect foil in Hill's bluesy riffs and Lawson's psych-rock flashes of colour. Underneath it all, Carle and Sonter play with verve.
It's a stinking humid finale to summer on the evening that Weekender meets Slow Cinema at their weekly rehearsal at Tighes Hill's Sawtooth Studio. Darkening clouds hang overhead and offer a distant rumble.
It's a fitting atmosphere for a band whose songs speak of overheating (Faye's Fever Flow) and weather (Pouring Rain).
What you notice initially about Slow Cinema is these fellas are impeccably dressed, even on a 38-degree day. As Lawson quips, "There's a pretty strong no-shorts policy. Shorts are for sports."
Jokes aside, the skinny jeans, boots, vintage shirts and jackets presentation is clear evidence Slow Cinema take their music seriously.
"We didn't wanna look like a skate band and rock up with Vans and a band t-shirt," Hill says. "We like to take a bit of pride in how we look on stage and that does tend to put us apart from everyone else. It's not necessarily a band uniform, but it is."
Slow Cinema's formation began in May 2018 when Gibbs, Lawson and Hill watched Jet play at NEX. The trio started playing together in Lawson's garage and a spark emerged.
"There was no direction we were going for, it was just to see what we could make together," Hill says. "Then we figured out our first song Howlin' and Jarryd [Carle] came along very quickly after we figured that out."
Carle was "air-drumming" at the front of a Bloody Hell gig at the Stag & Hunter Hotel when his old primary school friend Gibbs asked him to join. Sonter joined soon after to complete the line-up.
Due to the pandemic Slow Cinema didn't perform their first gig until March 2021, but according to Hill, the chemistry was immediate.
"It was huge," he says. "You don't always get the electricity on stage with other guys. There's something with our personalities that fits on stage. We all click together as a group anyway, but when we get on stage it's generally something special."
A year ago the band stepped into The Grove Studios on the Central Coast to record their five-track EP with indie producer Jack Nigro (DMA's, Skegss, Dune Rats). Nigro has provided the necessary sheen to focus Slow Cinema's primal energy.
The band describe the EP as a "feeler" record. It's an introduction to Slow Cinema's possibilities.
There's the stomping psych-rock of Pouring Rain, indie-pop of Pocket Knife and Magic Potion, the desert-rock of 747 and the epic Blessings where Gibbs croons, "loving you is like treason," over soaring female harmonies and aching guitar.
"We went with the idea of giving each of them their own pocket," Gibbs says.
"They're all very different from one another and we're in a stage where we wanted to put something out that might appeal to certain people, so we could see what people really liked about us."
Slow Cinema's EP was released on Friday. They play at Maitland's Family Hotel on Saturday and the Lass O'Gowrie Hotel on March 15.
