domingo, 11 de janeiro de 2015

Tsunami with Dressmaker - An Interview


Barulho, caos, violência, destruição, todos esses adjetivos são pequenos para descrever o tamanho da catástrofe sonora que o quarteto londrino Dressmaker proporciona desde os primeiros segundos de audição do seu ep Glass.

Todos os mestres da distorção de VU a Swans, de J&MC a Skywave, de MBV a APTBS, as lições foram tomadas com extrema devoção pelos caras e o resultado é uma avalanche estridente de pancadaria destrutiva e perigosa, não a toa a NME os descreveu como a banda mais barulhenta e intensa da atualidade por lá.

Pelo que se pode ouvir pelos registros em estúdio é muito provável que o seja, e um dos amigos do TBTCI, Brenno Balbino do Sky Between Leaves atesta veementemente que o Dressmaker é exatamente isso e mais um pouco.

O Dressmaker faz a trilha sonora para o apocalipse perfeito, que assim seja feito o caos. Amém. 


***** Interview with Dressmaker *****


Q. When did Dressmaker start, tell us about the history…
2013 we met in London. It was noise at first sight.

Our first songs were called Stroke and Jack The Stripper. Luckily we haven’t released either of those but if we run out of ideas someday they may surface.

Q: Who are your influences?
Collectively we enjoy a vast and varied assortment of music and individually there are plenty of bands that one or two of us like while the others are convinced are shit. But the bands that have most impact on our songwriting are The Jesus And Mary Chain, Joy Division, A Place To Bury Strangers and Swans.

Q. Make a list of 5 albums of all time…
These aren’t the best albums of all time. These are just ones we’ve connected with.

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Jesus and Mary Chain - Psychocandy
John Coltrane - Blue Train
Candy Claws - Ceres & Calypso in the Deep Time
A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head

Q. How do you feel playing live?
Teetering on the cusp of exploding and imploding at every moment. Our live shows are chaotic. We used to worry about things coming unplugged but we’ve sorted out the technical side of things now so we can do whatever we want now. Our interaction with the audience is an important part of playing live for us. Their energy certainly can manipulate the intensity of our performance.

Q. How do you describe Dressmaker´s sound?
Like listening to nice popular music inside the engine of a Boeing 767 under the water while being chewed on by a mutant shark. We wish the press would describe us this way but typically they just say we are a much more chaotic and noisy Joy Division. Unimaginative journalism.

Q: Tell us about the process of recording the songs?
It begins with months of us jamming on a bass line and then David saying “no, this sounds too much like Bauhaus” or “No this sounds like we are trying to rip off Girl Band.” Last week we got a “no this sounds like pseudo island indie Vampire Weekend stuff.” Never thought we would get that; hope it doesn’t happen again. Eventually we hit on something we are all happy with and then the key is to stop Tom from getting excited and adding in too many notes on the bass.

Next we record drums. This time we recorded them with our friend Maisey in a studio that they are still putting together in Hackney. It’s called Blue Studio. At the moment it is technically just a rehearsal studio but they are beginning to do some recording and it will be open to the public for recording soon.

Then we typically record all the other instruments in our rehearsal room and in Charles’s home. We edit out anything that is unbearably awful but honestly we don’t do much editing. The mixing takes us an eternity because we try to reach a consensus about the levels. And we are not going for very traditional mixes. We are diving into that less obvious weird and wrong but good territory.

When we are all happy we take a few days away from it and Charles does the mastering. Ideally someone else would master but if we did that we would have a smaller budget for strobe lights.


Q. Which new bands do you recommended
The Cherry Wave: 4 piece fuzzy noisy shoegaze from Glasgow, Scotland. They have released one EP, a couple demos and have been included in a Lamppost Records compilation. Their most recent release, debut album ‘’Avalancher’’, was put out on Saint Marie Records and included in SoundsBetterWithReverb’s best shoegaze and dreampop albums of 2014. We’d love to play a gig with them at some point.

Sound of Ceres: This is duo of the songwriter the singer/percussionist of a dreampop group from Colorado called Candy Claws. They write beautifully layered music with chords that twist you to unexpected yet breathtaking places. Very talented and very sweet people. Everything Candy Claws did is worth listening to and it seems the Sound of Ceres is going to continue where Candy Claws Left off but veer in a slightly more minimal direction with more of a focus on classic songwriting. Their album isn’t out yet but look for it in 2015.

Girl Band: Dressmaker first heard about Girl Band because they were in the same edition of NME as us last spring. We were listening to the other bands and were surprised to find one that seemed to be louder and more intense than us. Their percussion is heavily techno influenced and their bassist bends between notes with a beer bottle. And the guitar sounds are chaotic and almost percussive yet tastefully restrained. We caught them at Shacklewell Arms last June and they were one of the best sounding and worst dressed bands we’ve seen in a long time. This band really knows how to build and manipulate tension.

Samuel Kerridge: This sounds electronic and a bit noisey. Sort of throbbing techno with a bit of a post punk vibe. Our guitarist David threw this on the list but he isn’t here at the moment to write anything about it.

Cassels: What to say about these guys? First of all they are everywhere. We see them at gigs all the time. Our friend refers to their guitarist/singer Jim as “magic boy” because he magically may pop up at any moment. He and his brother Loz make powerful noise grunge tunes with the intensity of garage rock. Intriguing vocals and an intense drummer. We’d definitely recommend seeing them live. So far we have played a couple gigs with them and it has always been very fun and chaotic. Dressmaker has covered Be My Baby a few too many times but one of our favourite times was at Power Lunches with Cassels spontaneously on backing vocals.

Q: Which bands would you love to make a cover version of?
Pet Shop Boys, The Supremes

Q: What´s the plan for the future....
We released The Future last year. Now we are more concerned with the present.

We have a new single which will be released as a split with Cassels if we're lucky.

We are also working on a video that we hope to finish by early February. This will be the first video that we've made that hasn't been filmed with a phone so we are looking forward to seeing what we can create.

Q: Any parting words?
Thank you for being interested. Hope you have a good New Years.
"one of the loudest, noisiest and most intense live bands around." - VICE
"fuzz that scratches so deep it would make the jesus & mary chain whimper" - NME
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Thanks

site - dressmakernoise.com
like - facebook.com/dressmakerlondon
follow - @dressmakerband
listen - soundcloud.com/dressmaker
watch - youtube.com/dressmakernoise