Dappled Cities’ Dave Rennick talked to pedestrian about finding new Zounds, touring the Midwest and Lawrence Leung’s human-cursors.
Pedestrian: You guys have been together now for over ten years…what have you guys learnt from the last ten years?
Dappled Cities / Dave Rennick: We’ve learnt quite a lot actually. Since Grand Dance we’ve learnt the most. We’ve learnt to trust our instincts and to apply patience (laughs). Our job is to concentrate on the art of it, and we’ve learnt to take a step back from the other areas of the “business”. Because that’s when it starts getting a little bit hairy and depressing.
P: Since Grand Dance you have done extensive touring across America traveling from east coast to west coast with different bands in support. How was that experience?
D: When you’re in a band you have this romantic vision of going overseas and doing this fantastic tour and living in New York and so on…and the reality of it is that it’s not quite that romantic of course. But it was eye opening in the fact that you learn that there really are just so many more people out there than you originally took for granted. In America the sub-cultural realm is so thriving that it’s acceptable to live off your music. Whereas here bands can’t live off it until they hit like ‘Living End’ status.
P: You mentioned the ‘reality’ of it…can you talk us through what the reality is?
D: Well driving in a very small van, five of us living in a one bedroom apartment in New York, sharing a towel…getting angry with each other (laughs). That’s close to reality.
P: I heard you guys went on heaps of walks?
D: Yeah there were lots of walks (laughs).
P: Did you bring anything from that experience into Zounds and the making of it?
D: We started writing the first few songs for Zounds while we were in New York, during that quite intense period. I think New York itself being a big, angry, busy city acted as a bit of a muse for that quite early stage of songwriting. It kinda showed through in the ‘muscly’ nature of some of the tracks. But also just that whole experience of working as a musician did make us realise that we’re here to please ourselves and to create our art…for that reason we just trust our instincts in the whole writing process.
P: I’ve heard you’ve built up quite a keyboard collection of late?
D: Yeah, we’ve got heaps. Lots of little Casio’s.
P: Has that influenced the sound of the album?
D: Yeah absolutely. The addition of Ned Cooke as keyboard maestro, who’s turned into a bit of a sampling guru and just general sound guy, has definitely influenced the record.
P: So you have samples on the new album?
D: Lots of samples. Lots of live samples. In other words we would create a sample and then run it through speakers and re-record it while playing to it. Not like techno music (laughs).
P: I heard the recording process wasn’t necessarily the smoothest it could have been…?
D: No it wasn’t. There was a lot of pressure coming from both ourselves, from the label and from the producer Chris Coady. Again there’s a romantic image when you have the opportunity to choose any producer you want and you pick someone on their past credentials and what they’ve done. But that approach is very flawed, because in the end it’s just people versus people (laughs). It’s not like genius’ versus genius’. We discovered that the hard way finding out that Chris’ method of working is so different to ours. There were moments of pure frustration and i think that’s evident in the outcome of the record.
P: You recently had a listening party/launch where you had 10 artists do art installations in storage containers. Where did that idea come from?
D: I just wanted to do something different as well as forming some kind of collaboration with the arts community. It was nice to show everyone our new songs whilst accompanied by someone else’s impression of them. It was just a twist that we wanted to have.
P: Can you tell us a bit about the collaborations that you did have at the launch? Do you have any particular favorites?
D: In Melbourne a particular favorite was Lawrence Leung’s performance piece. He set up two performers that weren’t him to direct people by having them lie still for three hours while having giant cursors attached to their bodies (laughs). It was very stunning.
Sydney was just incredible in itself. The buzz that was circulating in Sydney was great.
P: Will you be carrying this through some of the tour?
D: Yeah we’re trying to. We always try to do something a bit stupid while on stage. But we usually don’t decide what we’re doing till a few days before which keeps it a little hap-hazard and endearing.
P: What are the plans for Zounds? Is it going to be more of the same as Grand Dance as in spending time overseas or anything exciting in the pipeline?
D: After we do the Aussie tour we’ll go to the states and do the same thing there. Just this week we got a U.K deal. [P:Congratulations] Yeah which is was a long time in the making but it’s great news, so we’ll go do the U.K.
P: Can you tell us who the label is?
D: It’s brand new and i don’t actually know who the label is, we were just told the other day. Oh and Japan as well! They seem quite happy to have us on board.
P: So i know you haven’t been to the U.K and Japan yet, but you’ve done quite an extensive bit of touring. Has there been any particular surreal moments along the way where you’ve had to pinch yourself and say, ‘i can’t believe this is happening’?
D: um…i don’t know. I guess all of it? (laughs)
P: From touring across the States, are there any odd places to play?
D: Hitting the Midwest of the States is an interesting experience. It’s a combination of really wonderful scenery and people and some really backward sights. At one point we visited a place called ‘Battle Mountain’ which is in the middle of the desert. It was totally The Hills Have Eyes kind of setting (laughs). We stopped there for lunch and it was quite scary.
P: We posted The Price film clip a couple of weeks ago. It’s really impressive. Can you tell us a bit about how all that came together?
D: We wanted to make sure we had a lot of flaring gold in the clip and i think that was the premise that we went to the director with (laughs). There was lots of gold and light. It was mathematics that designed the clip and they came back to us with the idea of covering us in fairy lights. We have a long standing relationship with fairy lights so it was not an issue. It was perfect.
P: Most bands seem to have one central figure at the front of the band…where as you guys for ten years have had yourself and Tim. You are both quite different in delivery. Can you tell us how that works, in the writing and recording process. Do you pick songs to sing on?
D: Yeah it’s just a really natural formation that we find ourselves in. Nothing has ever been an intentional decision in terms of how the band works because we’ve been friends for a long time. When it comes to Tim and I we just feed off each other to write songs and that’s why it seems to be that fifty per cent of the songs are written by me and fifty per cent are written by Tim, just because we bounce off each other.
But generally Tim or I will bring in a song that we’ve recorded ourselves at home and from there the band in a democratic process start to strip it apart and rearrange it until six demos later it’s album worthy.
P: I find a lot of the Dapples Cities lyrics quite obscure?
D: (laughs) We’ve always shrouded everything in several layers of metaphor and we tried to move away from that coming into Zounds a little bit. Tim and I made a conscious decision to start talking a little more about stuff with a bit more personable introspective phrases and so on. Hopefully a bit less high-brow. But maybe it’s just the nature of the beast.
P: The version of The Price that everyone is hearing is a radio edit. It’s actually a longer song…
D: Yeah it’s got another verse in there.
P: Is that a hard decision to make to have to cut the song down?
D: We’ll its actually not our decision. The labels say we need a radio edit. What can I say to that? (laughs) We’re like, “if you want a radio edit then that’s fine”. But as soon as we did it we realised that absolutely every band does it, so it’s not a problem.
P: I know that ten years ago you guys were fans of Nirvana, but recently on ‘Like a Version’ you did an Animal Collective cover. How have the influences for the band changed?
D: Yeah definitely. We regard ourselves as a contemporary band, so we’re not trying to revive any sort of style…we’re attempting to kind of push forward into the now. And that’s one thing we have in common with bands like Animal Collective and the Flaming Lips and so on. They’re all modern bands that have embraced new technologies and new sounds. But yeah when we were fifteen we all loved Nirvana…
P: And according to Triple J hottest 100 of all time everyone still does!
D: (laughs) Yeah everyone still does! Maybe we should be sounding like Nirvana?
P: Are there any other bands that you have been listening to…that you consider contemporaries?
D: Grizzly Bear we definitely like. Any band that has longevity as well we’re very impressed by, like Modest Mouse. We discovered they have this far reaching back catalog of excellent music. And you realise that’s the key to being in a band or being happy as a musician…to have the opportunity to keep writing music forever. It’s very inspiring.
P: And is that your goal essentially?
D: Yeah as long as we get to make another record after this one we’re happy and as long as we get to make another one after that one, no sweat. When A Smile came out we had these grand vision of being the next Vines or the next Jet, where you’re propelled to the top straight away, but as you get a little bit more mature you realise that not what it’s really about, it’s about being happy.
P: A lot of those bands fizzle out a lot quicker as well. Have bands like Animal Collective or The Flaming Lips ever got in touch with you guys or has there been any communication between the bands at all?
D: I don’t know. We have kind of been close to these bands through our producer. I think Animal Collective were in the studio at the same time as we were. Tim might’ve met them, i didn’t. We sort of like traverse around the same globe.
P: Do you find it hard in Australia to find other contemporaries bands? A lot of bands seem to reference other artists.
D: Yeah it’s not really the kind of mindset here in Australia. It comes back to what i was saying before, you can’t really thrive off it here. There are handful of bands though like Architecture in Helsinki. But still to really find it you have to go overseas.
P: Lastly can you tell us a little bit about your working relationship with Danger Bird, because that’s a label that has really made a name for itself over the past few years.
D: They’re a fantastic label. They pretty much let us do what ever we want really. They have a lot of faith in us, which is all that we could really ask for and they have the balls to back us in anything we do without much question.
P: Any words of advice for the kids…for the kids that wanna be just like Dappled Dave?
D: Just ah…plod along (laughs). That’s what we’ve done. You shouldn’t be afraid of ambition certainly…but plod along.
