Seekae are a band on the up and up. There’s seemingly no stopping them. With the Sydney band’s release of their second album, +Dome (I asked John Hassell this before any recording, just to get it right, and it is pronounced ‘plus dome’), they have well and truly entered the new electronic elite of Australia. Previously occupied by The Avalanches and...erm, no-one, that space is now taken up by Seekae, Cut Copy, The Townhouses, and Collarbones, among others (more on those scamps later on). So Seekae are a band who are enjoying some pretty rarefied air right about now, and there’s no doubt it’s well earnt. +Dome does the obligatory ‘texture’ and ‘theme’ thing, but it also bangs – well, as much as ambient, bass-heavy glitch-hop can do.

I ask Hassell, a friendly young man with an accent halfway between English and Australian, who sings and plays synthesisers (don’t they all!?) and guitar, how the band has adjusted to the new expectations of them as a live band. Though still most often confined to club shows when I saw them support Samiyam in Adelaide, even then I got some sense that they were refining their craft. “Well, it’s all still electronic. At the moment, we’re basically constrained by how much room there is on stage. With Samiyam... we weren’t able to bring our drums, so we had to change everything around. But usually, we play the same kind of thing; although we’re working on having a club set worked out, as well as a live set.”

For the uninitiated, Seekae themselves compare +Dome to their 2008 debut, The Sound of Trees Falling on People, more or less like this: “It’s [+Dome] got a totally different aesthetic. We wanted it more organic; we wrote the songs differently... it was much more a of a group effort. It sounds far more together as an album, and we tried a lot harder to step into territory we didn’t with Trees. It’s far more ambitious than the first album.” These are interesting words (though not totally unexpected from someone promoting the album) considering the critical acclaim that Trees received nationwide from independent media sources and the blog world. +Dome is an impressive step up: the record just feels more immense in virtually every way. It occupies more space, hits harder, and is composed better (unlike a lot of responses from musicians, Hassell means it when he says you can hear that it’s a more collaborative effort).

“Is it true”, I ask, moving onto the real issue at hand, “that one of the songs on the album is named after a comment you guys got on your MySpace?” “Yeah”, Hassell answers, half-laughing, half-trying-to-remember-what-MySpace-is. “It was a guy from Mexico, and his grammar was terrible, but the thought was so sweet that we thought ‘yeah, we’ll name a song on the album after you.’” The song? ‘3’. No, wait, that’s a lie. ‘Rock’s Performance’ is presumably some reference to how much Seekae’s performance rock’s [sic].

Seekae enjoyed the benefit of some extra money while recording +Dome. Thanks to the benevolence of the NSW public service, they were able to access a program called Soundclash, which Hassell highly recommends for all aspiring musicians. It led us to a particularly interesting conversation about the hurdles facing artists – visual, musical, whatever – and the effects of financial pressure on their output. “That’s very true. With Soundclash, what helped, was we planned what we would do with the money before we were confirmed. So doing it that way can help to alleviate some of that stress. Otherwise, it can definitely get in the way, and can affect how you record and write. Perhaps you know there’s a certain style of music that has made you more money, so you begin to focus on that a little more. Money can become the root of all evils, so it’s important to plan those things.”

Finally, I ask Hassell about the electronic music that’s currently in vogue around Australian independent charts. How does he view the ‘scene’ created by Seekae, Collarbones, et al? “Marcus Whale [one half of Collarbones] was really doing all this stuff since Seekae got together. And he was doing more abstract stuff. I think with Collarbones, it’s far more poppy a project, which is why it’s gotten more attention. There’s certainly a similarity between us, and there are more bands beginning to make this music. I wouldn’t say we’re the only ones doing these things; we’re just the ones playing gigs rather than electronic nights or club nights. To be honest, I think that’s the only difference.”