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Dopamine
 If I say Wales to you, you probably think large, docile sea mammals (although, that also means you can't spell). Maybe you think rugby, maybe you think coalmines, maybe you think Tom Jones, or maybe you think the small northern village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (at which point I'm pretty impressed, you seem to know a lot about Wales). What you might not think of is rock. The Welsh have a pretty impressive rock'n'roll heritage: Stereophonics, Mclusky, Super Furry Animals, and recently they've had another boom with the likes of Bullet For My Valentine, Lostprophets and Funeral For A Friend cracking the big time. One man who's hoping the trend continues is Neil Starr, frontman for up-and-coming Welsh rockers Dopamine.
"It's probably still getting better, I think," a sleepy Starr tells me of the Welsh music scene. "All these bands have come from the same 20 mile radius in south Wales. It's kind of inspirational as a band performing and starting from the beginning, when there's bands like Funeral For A Friend and Lostprophets, who you know as people because you've hung out with them in bars and stuff, and then they go on to do massive things. That pushes you to want to achieve the biggest you can yourself.
"The bass player for the Lostprophets is a really, really good friend of mine. [Now] he's a massive superstar, and he's done posters in Kerrang, and he's on MTV every second. But once it sunk in that, like, they'd made it, it was awesome. That really hit home for me, personally, that with hard work it can happen, and if you believe in your songs. It's happened to couple of different bands from Wales, why can't it happen to us?"
Why not indeed? Dopamine, who are currently unsigned in the UK and recently self-released their second album 'Experiments With Truth' (which has an Australian release coming up soon), have a slightly different complexion to the recent Welsh hardcore/screamo explosion, appropriating a sound more akin to someone like Foo Fighters. It's pretty promising stuff, all punchy distortion and catchy melody, and Australians will be able to get their first taste of said punch and catch when the band tour with Funeral For A Friend in September.
"We're nervous, but we're also a bit confident that hopefully, you know, things will go well," Starr says of playing to a new crowd. "It gives you something a little bit extra, because you know you've gotta play well, and it gives you a little bit more adrenaline than when you're playing to your own crowd. You've got nothing to worry about; you've just gotta run out there and play your best and just give it 200 percent for the entire 35 minutes, 40 minutes that you're playing. We've never really had a situation where we've been booed or whatever. It's always gone down well, in that sense it's been cool. Hopefully it will stay that way. I don't know how we would cope if people didn't like it!"
Generally, however, people seem to like it. Despite being unsigned, constant touring in the UK has seen the band develop a loyal following and impressive reputation - though it's not all fun and games. "The music scene in the UK is pretty rubbish. It's pretty single minded - if you're not American, then it's not great, you know... I think if we could choose where to be big, I'd rather be bigger away from home. If you stay in the UK you can just tour constantly, but if you're breaking out in other territories in the world, I don't know, for me it just seems like a bigger deal. Personally I'd rather become huge in Australia than huge in the UK, definitely."
Step one in that goal is playing to as many people as possible, and following the Funeral shows, Dopamine are heading back around the country on a headline tour, which Starr admits to being less confident about. "I'm worried that there won't be any people there!" he laughs. "As long as there's a few people there it'll be cool... We spent quite a bit of time in the last three or four weeks just MySpace messaging some Australian people to tell them we're coming over, and the general reaction online has been cool from Australian people, so we're hoping they'll like it."
Matt Vesely
Dopamine play with Funeral For A Friend at Fowler's Live on Thurs 13 Sept and their own all-ages show on Fri 28 Sept at Jive. 'Experiments With Truth' out 24 Sept through DSTAR.
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