We're a Melbourne-based instrumental band. Our bio
 

Best ways to support us:

  1. Bandcamp: Purchase, follow or leave a review
  2. Join our mailing list for release updates
  3. Tell three music-loving friends about us
  4. Buy and wear a Format Wars t-shirt
  5. Share this site on your socials
  6.  
  1. Follow us on  Spotify or Apple Music





28 Jan 2023

Optiviewer videos


New videos! We made this visualisation of the title track of our forthcoming Optiviewer EP...



...and here’s us discussing how we wrote and arranged the track.



Enjoy!
8 Dec 2023

Format Wars ‘Cloud Decks’ t-shirt


Don't have a Bandcamp account? We've launched some new merch, featuring the artwork from our track ‘Cloud Decks’.

Consume!


26 Nov 2023
And we’re back


👋 Hi. We’re really excited to launch this website. 

Let’s start with a bit of an update: 

Format Wars as a three-piece band has been writing music together since 1997, taking several long breaks while one or more of us lived overseas from 2003-2014.

We spent the pandemic from 2020-2022 in Melbourne under long, multiple lockdowns, learning how to write music in new ways. We had to pivot our songwriting process from in-person jamming to something like ‘musical tennis’: pitching and iterating individual parts and constructing the tracks that became this EP.



Over the past three years, we have upgraded our recording gear, with new amps, microphones, bass guitars and synthesisers, and slowly developed our production skills in our home studio through huge amounts of trial and error. 

We invested in new analog gear to process our recordings, including hardware compressors/EQs and reel-to-reel tape decks to achieve our sonic goals. We’ve also learned how to mix and master our own music, giving us complete independence  from composition, arrangement, recording, mixing, mastering to releasing.


We decided to cut the first five complete tracks as the Optiviewer EP, which is due out on February 9th 2023, with the title track launching on January 5th. We’ll be promoting the release ourselves and releasing it digitally, with more updates to follow. 

Optiviewer EP
  1. Optiviewer - 3:53
  2. Cloud Decks - 2:35
  3. Continuous Partial Attention - 4:14
  4. Platform Love - 4:12
  5. Connectome - 4:48

In 2024, we have 14 total tracks that we are planning to condense down into a 10 or 11-track debut LP. We’d love to be able to finance a short-run vinyl release, so that you can own a physical copy of our art.

We have plenty more updates planned, so please join our mailing list to stay tuned and help us spread the word.

© 2023 Format Wars