Dardanelles - Interview

Why did you guys decide to get together and form a band?
When we first met each other 18 months ago we were pretty disillusioned with other things in our lives, University wasn’t quite what we expected it to be. We saw like-minded people in each other and decided to do something together.

I’m intrigued about the name (The Dardanelles is a small strip of water that separates Europe from Asia), are you aware of its History or did it just sound good?
A lot of bands choose their name on a whim, and it can be a millstone. We though it was an interesting name and an interesting place. It’s had a lot of conflict in the past, apparently dating back to Ancient Troy. It’s also the site of the battle of Gallipoli, a defining element of Australian culture (and an infamous military failure in WWI). There’s also an Irish and American Dardanelles, which may be a problem in the future, but hopefully not.

There’s a lot of what I describe as ‘soundscapes’ on the new album (Mirrors), big slabs of layered harmonies and sound, do you think about the music over the lyrics?
Well, I’m the guitarist, but speaking for the band, we think about the music first. Josh has lots of lyrics that he’s always working on, but we start with the music, that may change in the future, but was the case for this album. There’s a lot of ideas experimenting with space, with guitars in the top end and lots of claustrophobic feelings with the loops and bass, we’re attempting to create a lot of interesting dynamics, ‘Soundcapes’ if you like.

I’ve seen the band name frequently over the past few months and wasn’t expecting you to sound like you do, you’ve had this buzz or fashionable label associated with the band for some time, and the album isn’t necessarily full of commercial potential or radio friendly units. Was this a decision you’ll hope you get away with or are people accepting it anyway?
We were (sort of) pressured into releasing earlier material in the shape of an EP, it wasn’t really what we wanted to do, it didn’t represent us, so now with the album we get a chance to do what we wanted to do in the first place. I don’t know where this ‘fashionable’ label came from, many bands get it. We wrote this album for us, there was no intention to craft commercial crossovers, it was the next step in developing our sound and in a few months time maybe we’ll develop into something more palatable for a wider audience. Especially at this early stage in our career we’re not bothered about commercial potential, especially as we don’t even know what we’re doing yet. We’ve found that a lot of the people who really liked our ‘pop’ single have been put off by the album, which isn’t what we intended to do, but it shows how different the material is.

There are a variety of interesting influences present on the album, grooves, beats, bass lines, keyboards and sounds. Does everyone bring their own input to the sound or do you all share a passion for experimentation and eclectic musical tastes.
Josh and I write most of the music, we both like all sorts of music and have different slants on what we like, Josh is into more electronic music and I’m into more guitar based music, shoegaze, stuff like that. What we write is where our likes and tastes intercept, we’re not trying to be experimental for the sake of it, and we just wanted what we play live to translate to the record. We tend to use sounds and loops as a starting point, as a launch pad for songs, I find it hard just to plug a guitar into an amp and write a song, I like to play with effects and sounds and start from there. When we supported 1990s recently, Jackie, the singer had a completely opposite ethos, he said,

‘I like to play guitar with my hands, you like to play it with your feet.√Æ I like having all those options and sonic opportunities at my disposal.

The tracks on the album are seamless, running into each other and you do the same live. Was it an intentional decision to do that? One long experience with different fluctuations as opposed to songs?
That was our intention, even before we wrote the songs; it was going to be like a DJ set, which isn’t quite how it turned out. The idea was to not allow the audience a choice of whether to clap or not, I like watching music that is a trip through the set as opposed to one radio song after another. Instead of working on new material for the album tour we’re now working on new ways of presenting the album, with new small musical links and blends.

Published in Arcady, Indieoma.com