Interview: DZ Deathrays
For DZ Deathrays, reminiscing about the year 2011 will be no easy feat. The two-piece hailing from the suburbs of Brisbane and your local house party have had a whirlwind past 12 months and 2012 is already shaping up to be just as hectic.
The relentless garage-thrash sounds of drummer Simon Ridley and singer/guitarist Shane Parsons landed them overseas playing shows in both the US and UK, including sets at SXSW, The Great Escape Festival and the Emerge NME Radar Tour. Not to mention playing live on BBC and XFM Radio.
Coming back home, it has been full-steam ahead as they continue to ride on their new wave of foreign praise and recognition. The two scored support slots with Cerebral Ballzy, Dananananaykroyd, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Fucked Up and of course, the Foo Fighters. But that’s not all. The boys recently jumped into a studio and have already begun putting the finishing touches on their debut album, as well as filming a brand new video clip.
I caught up with Shane a week or two before their shows with the Foo Fighters and got the low down on the boy’s itinerary for 2012 – which already includes dates with Crystal Castles and the St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival.
Firstly, congratulations on your support slot with the Foo Fighters.
Thank you.
How did you react to the news?
Just kind of, like, shock. We never expected this band to get kind of anywhere, so for us to play shows at a stadium with the Foo Fighters, it’s like, I don’t know. We don’t know what to really think about it. We weren’t jumping around the room going mental; we were just like “Woah! That’s kind of heavy.” But it’s awesome; it’s this amazing opportunity for us. We grew up listening to the Foo Fighters and we were learning guitar to their songs, so it’s a massive honour to be doing it.
How do you think you will prepare for such a gig? You will be playing in front of thousands of people – it will most likely be your biggest audience yet.
Yeah, well I think it will definitely be our biggest audience. I don’t know how we will prepare. We will probably just, I don’t know, when you’re on stage it’s kind of like, you only look at the crowd or at the back of the room maybe once during the whole set. We kind of just have this circle on stage that we just stay within and just focus on what each other’s doing and playing right. When your playing shows, you just kind of forget [the size of the crowd] because you’re just going for it. It’s already there and you don’t have to think about it. I think we will just try and stay relaxed and I’m guessing we will be pretty fucking excited about doing it.
The past year has been absolutely crazy for you guys – has it been too full on? Or have you been loving every second of it?
Yeah man it’s been awesome. No way has it been too full on. It’s all been at our hands. At the beginning of the tours we booked it all ourselves pretty much and we just want more and more and we don’t really want to stop. Back in 2009 we wanted to go overseas but we didn’t get the chance to until 2010, so since 2009 we’ve been trying to go overseas but now it’s just that whole process, which takes time and getting things in motion and getting the right contacts and you know, getting enough money to actually afford flights and visas and you know car hire and actually get over there. I think it’s just going to get faster and faster and there is going to be more stuff to do. Hopefully this is what we will be doing 24/7. Pretty much now it’s at that point where I can’t have a job anymore. This week I’ve been sitting on my arse like a bum, feeling real sick, so how I see it; I wouldn’t have been at work anyway.
And you’ve also been nominated for an Artrocker Award. You’re up against bands such as Ringo Deathstarr and some others. How do you react to award recognition such as that?
I don’t know. It’s always kind of surprising with all that kind of stuff. Artrocker have always supported us – since the very beginning. When we get that stuff come through, anything from those guys to, you know, we did a live session with the BBC and a live session with XFM – big radio stations. The BBC one, they asked us to come in and do a live session in the Maida Vale Studios in London, which are these classic studios where all these famous people have recorded before. You just don’t know what to think, you just do it and make the most of it. You say thanks to people, because you never know if you will ever do it again. It’s kind of like; everything is a surprise from now on. We never expected anything. The first time we went to New York last year, we didn’t expect anything. We pretty much went over there and played a few shows and hung out and came home. And like SXSW, we didn’t expect anything; we played some shows, came home and did a bit of travelling. Then we went to UK and did the same and we came out and it sort of snowballed from there, you know people who wanted to work with us and we just ended up saying yes and took it all on board and just tried to make the most of it and allow it to happen.
You’ve got a lifestyle that so many young bands would be completely jealous of. Are there times touring, especially overseas that gets a bit gruelling or full on?
It’s pretty relaxed; we are pretty chilled out guys. Simon and I, our first UK tour in May we had a friend with us, so it was really cool and then this one we brought our girlfriends along, so we had them there to help us out and hang out with. But I think the only thing was this time I drove the whole tour and we went through Europe, so there were a fair few kilometres racked up over there. Everyday we were driving and loading out and doing the same thing. But at the end of the month, I think we did 22 shows. We were pretty wrecked from driving because, you know, it’s not just driving through the day but its driving at night before the show, parking the car and driving home with the stuff from the show. So I think that was the only thing, other than that it’s awesome being on tour. You always meet nice people. I mean, in Europe you get looked after, it’s incredible. It blows
your mind. If ever you’re in a band and you get the chance to tour in Europe, everyone should do it, because you get there and there are sandwiches waiting for you (laughs). I’ve never had sandwiches, ever. You know, they help you load out and load in. UK isn’t as good as that, in that sense, but I guess that’s just European culture to have that kind of hospitality. So yeah, it’s so nice being over there. We spent about a week over in Europe, we were just like “Wow, this is amazing!” Because we had never been to Europe, we’ve never played a show in Europe, and getting this awesome treatment, we were so shocked.
You guys, like you said, did SXSW, which is such an incredible music conference. How long were you in the US for and what was your experience there like?
When we went over we did a bit of holidaying for like a week, which was awesome. We went up to the Rockies and Vegas and then we went to LA. We did one show in LA, which was rubbish. It’s just really hard to book a show in LA. Then we went to New York and we did some really great shows there and played The Bowery Ballroom. That was a week. Then after that we went and played SXSW and then we played three shows there, which definitely was not enough shows but it’s all we could get together. It was awesome. We were there for four weeks in total. It was kind of a split between a holiday and a tour. It was really relaxed. We would play a couple of shows here and a couple of shows there and then have a couple of days off or even a week off. You know? It’s good when you do it but you end up spending so much money doing other stuff. So the next time we toured when we were in the UK, we didn’t want to have days off, we just wanted to tour, like continuously. Maybe there was like one or two days off here and that’s great to get a rest, but you don’t spend hardly as much money doing that and by the time you get to your third or fourth show you are already in a mode. You look forward to playing the shows every night because it becomes part of your ritual.
You’ve been putting together a few demos and you’ve said that your album will be coming out early next year, is that right?
Yeah.
How is that shaping up?
It’s shaping up pretty good. We wrote pretty much all the songs for the album over the last three years. A lot of them have been in the last year, I guess. There are some songs there from back when we first started that we’ve sort of rehashed and changed around a bit. But we go into the studio on Monday. Richard Pike from PVT is coming up to produce it alongside Neil Coombe [The Grates, John Steel Singers] who is engineering it. He did Gebbie Street and Red Solar off the last EP [Brutal Tapes]. We really love Neil and he just picked our sound straight away. He knows his shit. He records all the time so he knows what to do when. I guess from doing recordings by yourself and with friends when we were starting out, all those times when you’re just like “No, it’s not sounding
right,” you can change it [with Neil]. You aren’t there for an hour and a half sitting and waiting to change it and trying to figure out what’s wrong. It’s just so good to go into a studio and the person knows the place like the back of his hand and can point to anything and just go we can change this and this, so it’s a lot more comfortable. We got like two weeks in there, so that’s the longest we’ve ever had in a studio – by fourteen days (laughs). So we are going in there and hopefully we come out with something good, fingers crossed.
Will you be looking towards a more hi-fi sound compared to maybe the sound on your EP’s? Are you looking forward to having that polished recording or are you going to keep the garage element to it?
I think it’s going to be, I think, elements of it are going to be a lot more polished. But we were going to keep that dirty edge because I play distorted guitars and distorted bass and Simon uses huge cymbals, so I think it’s always going to have that dirty edge, no matter what. You can’t really hold back on that sort of stuff. But we want our recordings to step up. Like the first EP [Ruined My Life] was originally demos that we did, it got mixed and then we released them and we were kind of surprised they got radio play in Australia. The next recordings were Brutal Tapes and we could only afford to do two songs, so we did those two [Gebbie Street and Red Solar], which we really liked and then the other ones were live. I guess the next thing will be to step it up and it’s just the next level. But we don’t go into that commercial sound. We are always going to have that dirty sound. There’s going to be a lot of different types of songs on there, so it’s not all going to be thrash and grudge stuff. There’s going to be a moment there where we get the opportunity to actually make something sound right and clean and polished. It will sound awesome.
Will it be completely new songs or will you have tracks from the EP’s?
There is going to be songs off Brutal Tapes. I think we are going to re-record one or two of those – of the live tracks. Just because we think they are really good songs and we like playing them live still. We just want to see how they come out of the studio. I think Gebbie Street is also going to be on there as well. We will have about 13 to 14 tracks on there. We want to keep it sort of decent length because a lot of albums today are only ten tracks and by the time I start getting into them it’s nearly the end of the album.
You guys are also coming on the Laneway tour. Are you excited for that gig?
We are so stoked. I’ve been going to Laneway for the last couple of years – since its been coming to Brisbane and I love it. It’s a festival that stands on its own and they pick out the best of what you should listen to and for us to get onto that, it’s pretty amazing. We are really happy about it. I can’t wait to play the shows and meet a few of the bands. There are a lot of bands that are I’m really keen to catch up with and meet. It’s always good playing festivals and playing shows with others, you get to meet bands that you like and chat to them.
Can audiences expect to hear the new tracks during that time?
Oh definitely. It will mostly be all new stuff off the new album, and there will be a new single out too. Our first single off the album will be out, so we will see how it goes and hopefully it’s all good.
DZ Deathrays play the Brisbane leg of the St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival on January 28, 2012. Tickets are still available right here.