Transcript of an interview I recorded with MITCH BRACKMAN of DYSSIDIA- 20200416. Full article here. MAL-
Talking to Mitch from DYSSIDIA, Mitch, thanks for taking my call. MITCH- No worries. Thanks for having me. MAL- It's good to have you on. Give us a bit of a rundown on the history of the band when you started, how you started. MITCH- It's a bit of a mixed bag, let's say we started eight years ago with a slightly different lineup to what we have now. Corey Davis is the only original member of DYSSIDIA that's, you know, still playing with us. We met all at the Conservatorium of music here in Adelaide, studying our respective instruments. And you know, I guess it was our love of metal that kind of brought us together in order to make a metal band. So we've been going for about eight years now. And with that we have three EPs that have come out variously throughout the years, and we're pretty happy with what we've created, I guess in the last eight years. MAL- When did the first one come out? When did the first EP come out? Would you say.. MITCH- Testing my memory, but I'd say 2012 to 2013. And that was called 'Quiet Waters'. MAL- So that's pretty early on in the band's career, how daunting was it getting into the studio recording that? Where was it done? Was it done in someone's lounge room? MITCH- Well, you know, we actually, this was the first experience we had with Andrew Kyte?, who has actually done all three of our previous VPS production, like production wise and being an engineer for us. We went to see him, I think it would have been early 2012 to record 'Quiet Waters'. And that was pretty daunting because I don't think a lot of us had actually had very much time in the studio before. So it was kind of strange getting used to the environment how to navigate that, but you know, you get better. MAL- How did that early recording go for you? MITCH- We all had a lot of friends. So when we would put on shows a lot of people would come to see us and would make it make a bit of an impact. I guess we were kind of, we would try to work out what our genre was going to be at one point. We're all pretty sold on the Progressive Metal thing, but that just came to be over time, I reckon. MAL- Right couple of EPs followed that 'Children Of Aether And Earth' in 2015, and followed that up the next year with 'Of Delight And Despair'. You're getting to be old hands at this recording game. MITCH- Yeah, we've had a few instances in the studio now. MAL- Tell us about gigs around town. I've seen you a number of times supporting big name, overseas bands. What's that been like? MITCH- Pretty much a dream come true. We've worked with a couple of really awesome people in the Australian music industry, and through that we've gotten to support some of the world's greatest progressive bands. One of our favourite instances or one of my favourite gigs that we played was with OPETH who we basically all pooed our pants at the notion of playing with. It was a bit of a dream come true. MAL- Okay, so tell us when you decided to get this album down and why did you make the jump this time into an album? MITCH- I think after doing three EPs, it became apparent that we were ready to do an album. I think a lot of the reason as to why we released three EPs before an album is because we didn't want to shoot ourselves in the foot by bringing out you know, a fully recorded album that we'd put a lot of time and money into, to no fan base. So we thought that it would be a good idea to slowly build ourselves up, you know, do a few national tours here and there. And then by the time we got to the point where our music was, well we were comfortable with our music and how it was being played, we would create an album and then you know, put the most love and care we could kind of put into it, into it. MAL- How long did this whole process take? MITCH- Well, the last EP 'Of Delight And Despair' came out in 2016. So it's, it's been more or less four to three years with writing included. MAL- Now there's a video for 'Thrive'. MITCH- Well, so that's a lyric video and we actually got Becky, from 'Against The Grain' Studios, which is where we get most of our music recorded also, to do that for us, and we're pretty happy with that. We've also got another video out for this album called, 'The Gutted Stag', which we're really really happy with. We went with Jason Mildwaters, and we hired out a really nice, like theatre stage in a place in Adelaide and have the whole joint to ourselves. And we just had a rad day filming and doing a sort of playthrough style video because we thought that it would be cool to show people some of the little fun technical things we do in that song. MAL- Way better than lyric videos. Tell me about Progfest. How did that go? MITCH- We've been a part of quite a few Progfests actually. We were part of Progfest 2016, no actually 2018 I'm looking at the poster right now, and that was probably one of our favourite Aussie tours that we did because we went around the country with LEPROUS which are really great band, progressive band from Norway. Being a part of that is so much fun, especially if you get to do the Sydney and Melbourne portions of Progfest. It's just mostly because you're hanging out with your best friends that have the same interests in different states getting drunk and listening to great music. MAL- In a perfect world, you'd probably be out touring right now to promote this new album, which we'll get to in a minute. But we're all stuck at home. So what's the plan for now? MITCH- I wish we're all out and enjoying and celebrating this new release with you know, friends and fam around the country but unfortunately have to stay in so we think we're gonna well not think we are going to pump a little bit more money into some content for everybody. So Maybe another video for the album, some playthroughs. Maybe we'll get creative. Who knows? MAL- Okay, tell us a bit more about this album. Firstly, where did you come up with the name for the album? MITCH- 'Costly signals', I guess was mostly a thought process on my behalf. But I went to the guys, and I explained myself to them. And I thought, yeah, that's a cool idea. I'll put it as kind of plainly as I can, because I understand the concept myself, but it's hard for me to actually explain it. 'Costly signals' is like, let's say, if a tiger or a lion is stalking a gazelle, if the gazelle notices it'll do this thing where it jumps back and forth saying, you know, hey, don't come over here. I'm way quicker and I can outrun you. So it's kind of like it's signalling, but those signals could be quite costly because the lion could end up catching up with the the deer and eating him so I guess it's it's it's a costly signal this album to the music industry. We're kind of putting ourselves out there a little bit without knowing what the return may be. MAL- So we've worked out where the name came from. So tell us a bit more about the recording of it. MITCH- Um, yeah, so we we saw Andy this time around to go and record our instruments. So we've done a lot of pre production at Corey's home studio. When we got the blueprints of the whole album organised we took that to Andy. We recorded our takes with Andy and then we sent it off to V. Santura to mix and master. V. Santura is an awesome German audio engineer, and he's done a lot of great bands. Some such as OBSCURA is probably one of the best ones that I could mention. And we were just really stoked with the mix that we had heard from OBSCURA and we thought, Man, if we can get this guy we're gonna get this guy. We did. MAL- Tell us about the album cover. MITCH- The album art is done by an artist in America called, actually maybe possibly Canada called Adam Burke. And we fell in love with his artwork ever since we saw one of our friends bands, use his artwork for their album cover a band called FREEDOM OF FEAR. And we just thought, Hey, we should definitely get our album cover done by this guy because we wanted the same sort of, I guess, morbid symbolism. And so yeah, we contacted him and we got him to do us a piece up. MAL- Right, how can people get hold of this album, Mitch. MITCH- So you can jump into our Bandcamp site, so just search for the DYSSIDIA Bandcamp, and you can buy vinyls, which is our first ever sort of run of vinyls of this album, which we're really excited about and we haven't actually got very many of those guys printed up so grab them while you can. You can get bundles, bundle packs with CDs t shirts, CDs and vinyls So go and check it out and grab some stuff to MAL- DYSSIDIA Bandcamp. All right, so now that we're stuck at home, what are we doing Mitch? MITCH- Well, we've started writing already for the next album, we don't want it to be a three year wait in between. So we've got a few things bubbling underneath the surface, which is pretty fun. And we're gonna get those pre-production recordings going very, very soon. MAL- How are you doing the recording? Are you having to do with isolated or getting together as a band but more than two metres apart? What's going on? MITCH- Well, I guess at the moment, we're just mostly doing writing and sending ideas back and forth. But hopefully, when we get you know, our stuff more sorted out, we will be able to go over to Corey's home studio and give it give it a bit of a spin. But until then, we're stuck at home. MAL- Now, I believe you're teaching from home. Mitch, what about that? And what about the rest of the guys? MITCH- Most of us if not all of us are teaching from home at the moment. So we're all teaching our respective instruments. So if you search us up online, you should be able to find the right links to go and grab a home lesson. We're all really enjoying doing them at the moment. So hit us up. MAL- And we can get in touch with you through Facebook I'm guessing MITCH- Yeah Facebook, I guess a general web search will show results for us. MAL- D-Y double S-I-D-I-A, DYSSIDIA. MITCH- People have said DYS-IDEA, you know, every everything under the sun, it's awful. MAL- Hey, no worries just been talking to Mitch from DYSSIDIA. New album 'Costly Signals' out. Search online 'DYSSIDIA Bandcamp'. Mitch, thanks for talking to me today. MITCH- Hey dude, thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorMetalhead who hates bad parking. |