Interview and photos by Dimitri Kalagas
Melbourne’s Dardanelles may not be one of the oldest or most experienced bands on the scene, but what they lack in longevity they make up for with an intelligence and consideration of their place within the musical continuum that is rare, particularly in a day and age where many young bands are looking to jump on the next hype bandwagon. Having just released their critically acclaimed debut album Mirror Mirror, and in midst of a headlining national tour, the Dardanelles have no interest in resting on their laurels, embarking instead on a search to develop their experience, and essentially take their music to the next level. Lifelounge sat down with vocalist Josh and guitarist Alex for a chat about scenes, technology and industry induced regurgitation.
DK: Getting offered a record deal and having your first album received so well is pretty amazing for a band that’s only been together for a year and a half. Why do you think that everything has moved so quickly for you?
AC: Well, you do see other bands where stuff has happened even quicker. I don’t think we’ve been an overly hyped band or anything, but from the time we started we’ve really put our full attention to the project. I think if you’ve got the right sort of motives and you work hard, then good things should happen. It’s not like all of a sudden we were really successful, but every so often a good thing happens and we keep progressing. I was saying to someone the other day that when you start, all you want to do is get a gig somewhere, and when you’ve got a gig, you want to get a better gig, and then once you’ve got that, you want to record something. Your goals keep changing, you never feel satisfied or want to rest on your laurels.
DK: When you actually released your first EP, it was a pretty different sound to how the album ended up, so what brought about that change in direction do you think?
JQ: I don’t know if it was really a savage break from our sound or anything. I mean three of the songs on the EP were the first we’d written, and they were then released as our first physical record. So that was obviously an incredible break, but it was also a strange situation where the first thing we’d produced as a band was on the radio, and that was people’s first taste of our sound. I think we’d always had a more ambitious idea of how we wanted to sound and certainly on the other two tracks from the EP I think we wanted to try and hint at where we were going. Our live sound had always been quite different to the EP, it always had a bit more atmosphere, more of a focus on sound and sound scapes. So I guess we developed live, but we still had this record out which was a bit different. It wasn’t like we sat down and were like ‘Hey, let’s really fuck up these fifteen year old guys who love “Origami Tree.” It’s actually where we wanted to go, incorporating electronic and atmospheric elements. We wanted to ignore genre walls and combine a huge amount of different music into something that sounded uniquely like us. I’m really happy with how the album turned out, but I’ve been made aware that it has been a bit of a shock to some people who just knew us from ‘Origami Tree’ for instance.
'It wasn’t like we sat down and were like "Hey, let’s really fuck up these fifteen year old guys who love “Origami Tree.”'
DK: I think it seemed like you were heading down a more electronic path, and the album actually turned out quite different.
JQ: Well yeah, for example we definitely have been warmly received by the new-rave scene, and that was a good thing for us as well. We had the opportunity to play as a band at club nights, so I guess it’s been quite good for us, but we’ve always been very sceptical of throwing our music in with a scene.
AC: There’s some really good bands that have done it really well, but for us it wouldn’t have been very honest, because we’re looking for a more long-term idea. Most bands in our situation would have done a second EP, just to solidify their ideas and sound, and that’s really what this album is to us. It’s not meant to be a big crossover album or have huge pop hits on it, it’s more like the next step in a progression.
DK: You mentioned that you’re happy with the album, is the resulting sound something that you envisaged from the start? Did it turn out exactly how you planned or was it developed more organically?
JQ: It was pretty organic, but we had a firm idea about how we wanted the album to work as a concept. Before we’d written the songs that were on the album we were really sure that we wanted it to be a genuine album, like a soundtrack that you could play as one track. An old fashioned musical journey I guess. We definitely wanted to avoid the iTunes singles syndrome. I mean, it’s probably good for sales, but I think we’ve all grown up loving albums that you can just listen to as one track, and listen to them again and again. Maybe you don’t get it on the first couple of listens, but on the fourth listen it’s clinched as one of your favourite albums. So we definitely decided we wanted to do that, and try and put together a group of tracks that we could cross-fade to a degree. Then we just had to write them! We had a lot of the ideas but they weren’t quite formed into songs, so it was a matter of mixing and matching things. Probably about three quarters of the album was pieced together in the studio.
DK: So where do you think that idea to produce a sort of progressively styled album came from for you guys?
JQ: Well I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve always loved soundtracks. I think that creating music that emotes really vivid visuals in people is next level musicianship. If it’s not just a collection of easy hooks and sing-a-longs and allows a person to create a little world for themselves within the songs, that’s really impressive. During the album’s recording I was listening to a lot of Vangelis, like the Bladerunner soundtrack. That sort of stuff is particularly mind blowing.
DK: That’s quite an epic style of music.
JQ: Yeah, I always find it really impressive when people write really epic music, like a lot of classical music, but create it using modern tools. It’s incredibly fascinating. I guess in a way we’ve done that with the album, because there is a lot of electronica and a lot use of a sampler, but instead of going down the path of using that to create banging drum loops and distorted synth bass lines and stuff, we use it in other areas. Particularly with the human voice, where we’ve manipulated it in a sampler and created enormous choral backing tracks that we were basically playing in on a keyboard.
DK: As well as being quite epic, your music has a real dark, ethereal edge to it. Where do you think that darkness come from?
AC: Yeah there’s no denying that. I think that’s just the music that was within us at the time for various reasons. We all like really poppy music too, but I don’t think it would have felt right for us to write that kind of stuff at that time. I think music is quite cathartic for everyone in the band, so that’s bound to come out in the song writing. I also think that a lot of music that people would describe as dark is actually quite uplifting or sort of resilient in a way. So I think it’s right to describe our music as dark, but I wouldn’t add depressing to that.
'For a while we reckoned Josh was allergic to industry chat. That was
pretty much all our manager could talk about, and every time it
happened he’d go off and spew up. It was totally weird.'
DK: So what do you think of the state of Australian music right now?
JQ: I think Australia’s become a real international tastemaker. And that’s not just in the indie electro circuit where there’s obviously been a lot of pioneering bands. We do have bands like Cut Copy and the Midnight Juggernauts, but you’ve also got bands like The Drones that keep travelling around Europe, there’s just an amazing amount of attention on Australia. I think the blog-a-sphere has definitely been something that’s accelerated the path of Australian musicians overseas. And hopefully it’ll ease our path overseas as well, because it’s like a free international radio station combined with a level of journalism.
AC: It’s provided a bypass around the old school Australian music industry. If you look back to the eighties the only way round that was to go overseas with no money, and just tough it out. But now you can be at home and get a worldwide following with just some songs on the internet, which is quite reassuring.
DK: Yeah, the technology is quite empowering.
AC: Yeah, I think that people have access to more music, so they’re going to listen to more stuff and it’s going to be for the overall betterment of the music scene. I think because we’re so geographically isolated in Australia it’s helped expose us to a lot more music, and also in turn, exposed people overseas to the music we’ve been producing.
DK: Well there’s two stances with that. One is that it’s good to have access to so much different stuff to be influenced by, and that in turn will feed creativity. But the other stance is that it’s homogenising music around the world. What do you guys think about that?
JQ: Yeah, it is a double edged sword, but I think a good thing is that it’s making kids incredibly savvy. You have to be able to discriminate between the huge number of tracks that are available for free. I think in the end it just means that the bands with a strong sense of identity and musical vision are going to survive that incredibly fast cycle of taste and fashion.
AC: I guess it’s the same as what we were talking about with scenes. For instance, there’s so many Justice or Crystal Castles sound-a-likes on the blogs and it all sounds the same. But with anything in music, and all the bullshit that surrounds it, at the end of the day the one thing that comes through is good music. And you can’t beat that.
DK: So you’ve got your tour coming up, how do you guy’s cope with all that, is it pretty hectic?
JQ: Oh we’ve got a lot better actually. The entourage was always the biggest problem for me on tour. Having this entourage of people talking shop around you.
AC: For a while we reckoned Josh was allergic to industry chat. That was pretty much all our manager could talk about, and every time it happened he’d go off and spew up. It was totally weird.
JQ: It happened with astonishing regularity. Any occasion where I was exposed to more than an hour of industry chat, I would spend the rest of the day vomiting. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but after it happened three times I knew it was definite. That was the weekend before we started the album, so that might explain some of the darkness.
The Dardanelles are currently in the midst of their national album tour (proudly presented by us) so make sure you get down to one of their shows in your town. Check the dates below.
THUR 25 OCT – CAMBRIDGE HOTEL, NEWCASTLE
FRI 26 OCT – STEP INN, BRISBANE
SAT 27 OCT – SPECTRUM, SYDNEY
THUR 1 NOV – KAROVA LOUNGE, BALLARAT
FRI 2 NOV – ROXANNE PARLOUR, MELBOURNE
SAT 3 NOV – JIVE, ADELAIDE
THUR 8 NOV – GOLDEN VINE, BENDIGO
FRI 9 NOV – REPUBLIC BAR, HOBART
SAT 10 NOV – JAMES HOTEL, LAUNCESTON
FRI 16 NOV – MONA VALE HOTEL, MONA VALE
SAT 17 NOV – TRACKSIDE, CANBERRA
SAT 18 NOV – BEACH RD HOTEL, BONDI
SAT 24 NOV – TBA, WA
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