|
|
 |
The Dissociatives.
 Sometimes
a phone conference can be a beautiful thing, and on this bright
and sunny morning I had one to remember. From Adelaide, there
was me; from somewhere on the east coast of this fine country,
there was pianist-cum-dance producer Paul Mac; and from somewhere
in London was guitarist-vocalist Daniel Johns. The pair form
the new supergroup The Dissociatives - the three of us together
formed a very strange conversation indeed.
The first voice I could hear on the line was the faint mobile phone twang of Johns, whose life was summed up thus: "I've just been doing this record with Paul. Paul came over to London, and we wrote and the majority of the record in twelve days in Windsor, and had a really amazing time doing it, and then completed it back at my house in Newcastle. Basically we were getting together, getting all the riffs together and jamming together and writing more songs, and getting a band together so we can play everything live..."
Suddenly came the loud baritone onslaught of Mac, from a landline phone, who overshadowed Johns by about fifty decibels. With the two of them together, I thought to mention that from the looks of the singles, this project seems a damn site more happy pop then their quite depressive first project, the 'I Can't Believe It's Not Rock' EP of a few years back.
"Yeah, we were just mucking around and trying out the concept of boy-from-rock-band-meets-guy-with-computer, and thinking 'let's see what happens now'. It was even more a sort of experiment, but it just opens the door. It's funny, because we had a moment when we were listening back to the stuff when we were working on this album and we were at Daniel's place, and we played the original EP, and it's so miles away yet also so not. All the seeds were sown in that original project, I think we discovered each other's personality, what clicks and what works and what we like doing. We fully worked on that and then that became the Dissociatives.
"We were really going for that Serotonin-stripped depression record," ponders Mac. A slight buzz prefaces Johns' inclusion in the conversation. "I think the Dissociatives is more pop but I think when you hear the album we've definitely tuned ourselves into the most pop of our pop sensibilities."
"That's true, I think," Mac agrees, interrupting, "It's hard to say without hearing the album but when you hear it... when I was working with Itchy and Scratchy, Andy, who was Itchy, came up with the concept that you can do whatever the fuck you want, you know, creatively, melodically, rhythmically whatever, but if you put it in a pop structure then it makes sense to people. And I think that when you listen to the album it can actually twist out into different directions but if it's verse-chorus-intro-middle eight-outro, you can kind of get away with it. I think what we were doing anyway was stretching what is a song, but I think it is right, it is more pop and we need more of it in the world."
Johns describes the album itself as "kind of like each song is a different mixed bag of lollies. There's the bag of assorted chocolate treats, and then there's the bag of gummi bears, and then there's like the jelly beans... It's a sound that's real and timeless that still sounds new."
The next stage in their band is touring. Mac gives me the details: "We're looking at June, that's the vague plan, I think. And just a five-piece live band. We stripped it back; there are no backing tracks, which is kinda new for me. We're just a straight up rock band, who can actually play their notes pretty well but still have fun at the same time.."
And other than that, what of their much-respected individual musical careers? Of Johns' other band, all he offers is, "There's no plan at the moment, Silverchair's just in a temporary holding pattern above Heathrow, we don't know when it's going to land and we're currently looking into other aircraft."
"I continue to write my heartbroken melancholy dance songs, and Daniel continues to write his whimsical symphonies," Mac goes on to explain. "They'll combine together at some point to make the next Dissociatives hit CD."
Ben Revi
 |
'The Dissociatives' and Somewhere Down The Barrel are out now through Eleven/EMI. See Prize Frenzy™ for details.
|
|
|
The latest issue
available now!
|
