Empty Streets I Walk For You

Their third album Form only just came out this week, but Die! Die! Die! has already recorded the bulk of what could potentially be their next album. Andrew Wilson and Mikey Prain tell us about how they came to sign with Flying Nun and dealing with the competitive overseas market.

Despite the lengthy delay between 2007′s Promises, Promises and Form, Die! Die! Die! has not actually been on hiatus as has been reported. Over the past three years the band has been touring extensively and writing new material, however they are still concerned about traction they may have lost overseas. “If you’re not continually doing stuff you lose really quickly any momentum that you were getting,” Mikey says as I sit down with him and singer/guitarist Andrew Wilson at Alleluya Café. “In music terms, three years is a forever amount of time… And everyone’s on such a quick turn around over there, especially in the UK. They want a new band every six months.”

To compensate they plan to base themselves mostly in Australia from August, Andrew says. “We do quite well over there, the same kind of level as we are over here (NZ), so it makes sense to be able to keep playing at the same level.” America is the next stop in October, most likely to play at CMJ Festival, despite their open disdain for industry festivals. “I find they’re getting worse and worse,” says Mikey. “The first time we went to SXSW and CMJ it was kind of exciting… and then it kind of becomes really ugly, just a whole bunch of industry people and bands trying to get on top of each other. It’s like the world cup of music.” They say this culture coupled with economic pressure has seen bands streamlining into mediocrity. “Music has changed a lot in America,” Andrew says, “there used to be so many crazy bands over there, and now it seems like there’s a lot more music-music now”. But that’s not to say they’re not excited to go back.

“I’m really optimistic about America, ’cause I don’t really think we’re going to become the biggest band in the world, but I can see us continuing at the level which we were at, which would be fine. We used to get good crowds in New York and the main centres. And that’s fine, I don’t really ever want to tour the mid-West again,” he shudders. “Maybe if it were house shows.”

“We turned down all these other deals that people had found for us, ‘cause they weren’t really what we wanted.”

The insularity of the New Zealand music scene has kept them cozy but has also dogged them in their six years. Die! Die! Die! is a well-known subject of public discourse, and they tend to polarise people. So naturally they’ve relished the opportunity to keep on the road and not get bogged down with pettiness. “I think whenever you go away and you come back you feel a lot happier because you’re not surrounded by things,” Mikey says.

This lightness of being comes through in Form, a fully realised vision delivered with an airy maturity. There’s typical gritted teeth and tension, but now layers of opaque guitars mist over the normally skeletal structures. They don’t exactly sound carefree, but there’s an overwhelming sense of cohesion; they’ve hit the right balance of pretty and menacing.

“For this album it’s been really good to experiment with new stuff,” says Mikey, on working with engineer/producer Nick Roughan (The Skeptics). “He’s got a really cool musical sense… and he’s come from a place where he’s done a lot of really interesting stuff and he can give us a lot more interesting ideas on how you can do stuff. It has been really cool, it’s been a big thing for us. The last record Promises Promises, we left lots of stuff out. On half of it some of the drum tracks can only go through one speaker and we forgot all the backing vocals… So it was good to do (Form) as well as we could… We put more into it.”

The change is instantly noticeable, with samples more prevalent and even synths, which Mikey says “we never thought we would ever do”. And it couldn’t have been released on a more appropriate label than Flying Nun. Having always led the way with the music Mikey, Andrew and bassist Lachlan Anderson have always adored, they’re thrilled to have Flying Nun back and taking chances on artists you wouldn’t automatically think would be a fit.

“I think they’re gonna do really good things,” Andrew says. “They’re judging everything on music, which is really awesome. Look at that Grayson Gilmour album, it’s not really my cup of tea but it is world class… It’s not about hype or what’s trendy at the moment. The thing that everyone’s expecting them to do is to jump on that Flying Nun bandwagon that is going on in Brooklyn, and sign a billion bands that sound alike… and I think that’s the opposite of what they’re doing.”

People didn’t get Die! Die! Die!’s “emotional attachment to Flying Nun”, Andrew says. “We turned down all these other deals that people had found for us, ‘cause they weren’t really what we wanted, so that kind of made a lot of people throw their toys out of the pram. Then they were like, ‘you wanna go with this label who don’t really have anything set up?’. We were kind of taking quite a big chance on them.”

Flying Nun was always the label they wanted for New Zealand. Mikey says on major labels, “We’ve never wanted to be signed up to one of those things and become part of the institution that they are. I don’t want someone telling us what our band’s gonna be and what our band’s gonna do, ’cause I think that would be the end of us.” Roger Shepard wanted to help them, Andrew says. “He was going, ‘If you guys sign to one of these major labels it’s gonna be the end of your band’.” Mikey agrees: “Basically it becomes more about money than music. All you become is a band on a piece of paper for them, and they’ve got lots of pieces of paper!” he laughs.

They’ve already recorded the bulk of what could be the next album at an old second-hand bookstore and at a studio in Mt Albert, Auckland, with Nick Roughan. Andrew says, “We might release an ep or an album; we recorded like 8 songs, and then two really long kraut rock jams, but they sound too much like Neu! So we don’t wanna release them now. Unless Neu! becomes really hip, then we’ll release them,” he says, tongue in cheek.

Die! Die! Die! is currently on tour throughout New Zealand, check the EMJ sidebar for dates.

Die! Die! Die!- We Built Our Own Oppressors: MP3

Click to buy Die! Die! Die!’s latest album Form

Die! Die! Die!- Myspace

Posted by Sarah Gooding under Auckland, Dunedin, New Zealand
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Double Happiness

Released on Monday, November 23, MUZAI Records presented two bands on one split CD. First is Auckland hardcore punk outfit God Bows To Math, with four tracks of spitting aggression and spiralling feedback. Then it’s TFF, the Dunedin teenagers who craft long, noisy jams using high pitched guitar screeches and crooked saxophone playing. I had a chat with both bands about putting the split together and about their future plans to tour the country together.

Rory MacMurdo, drummer in TFF, remembers quite vividly how the two bands first met. God Bows To Math were touring the South Island and Rory says “God Bows To Math sent us a myspace message asking us to play a gig and we kind of read it then completely forgot about it. Then the week that we actually had the gig we started seeing posters advertising it, so we ended up meeting this band kind of by accident and playing a show with them.” Martin Phillips and Tom Morrison (GBTM) put the lack of organisation down to their bass player Jeremy Amos, who used to live in Dunedin.

Meeting in Dunedin, the two bands had an instant reaction and agreement towards each other’s musical influences. Rory remembers, “we just started talking about music and had an instant agreement on bands and stuff like that. We just really liked each other’s styles.” They then played together again in Christchurch, and it remains the only show TFF have ever played outside of Dunedin. It was during the trip from Dunedin to Christchurch that Rory first remembers the split being discussed, “like bands do” he laughs, “kind of bullshitting.”

Martin says releasing a split seemed like a good way for both bands to reach a wider audience. “A lot of people in the South Island don’t know much about the Auckland scene and a lot of people from Auckland don’t know much about the Dunedin stuff, so it was a nice way of joining the two together.”

Initially the idea for the split seemed like it was just talk and that little action would ever take place to complete it, but when MUZAI Records became more of a serious record label the idea was motioned as a definite serious proposition. “It was kind of a bullshit thing for like a year and then it became serious about four or five months ago,” explains Rory.

“We recorded all the music live and quite fast, like first takes, and then Lisandru recorded the vocals later” – Rory, TFF

Both bands started recording songs for the split several months ago, but both ran into some unfortunate problems. God Bows To Math’s four songs come from two different recording sessions, the first session was recorded by Sam Shepherd (BMX Rapists) but Martin says “we did kind of a rushed job and we changed a couple of the songs.” The band then recorded with Tyler Burke, including their cover of TFF’s ‘Tornado Paul’.

Rory tells a much more amusing and painful story of TFF’s recording experience. TFF needed three separate recording sessions to get their material finished for the split, due to members and recording technicians falling ill. “Only one of our members, Lisandru, knows how to record properly. So we were going to record at school and it was going to be all good, and then on the day, me, Harley and Miki got to Logan Park High and started setting up shit and Lisandru never came… So we ended up recording without him because he just wasn’t showing up, we had no idea where he was and we were like, fuck, we have to hand these songs in in a week so let’s record. So we recorded without Lisandru and he ended up having kidney stones.”

Thankfully God Bows To Math wanted to discard half the songs from their first recording session, so it gave TFF time to re-record their songs. Unfortunately bad luck struck again, this time it was the band’s recording engineer Nick Graham that ended up in hospital with lock jaw. “So two times there was hospital issues and then finally a week later we recorded it with Nick again.”

“We recorded all the music live and quite fast, like first takes, and then Lisandru recorded the vocals later. So we did it at my house and at Nick’s house but it took a really fucking long time.”

“I was thinking it would be pretty cool if they could fly up here and we could drive them back and play shows in Wellington, Whanganui, Christchurch etc.” – Tom, GBTM

Both bands mutually decided to record a cover of one of the others songs. God Bows To Math chose to cover TFF’s ‘Tornado Paul’ and TFF choose God Bows To Math’s song ‘Hepatitis’. Martin and Tom joke, “that’s the only song we could figure out.” Martin’s request for some guitar tabs was declined by Lisandru, so he had to figure one of the songs for himself. The resulting cover of ‘Tornado Paul’ is very different to the original. Tom says “TFF play very fast and there’s a lot of noise so it can be hard to figure out what they’re playing anyway.”

“That’s the best way to cover someone’s song, don’t learn the lyrics, just learn a little bit and then the rest of it is up to you.”

TFF originally recorded a cover of ‘How To Beat Your Dad At Chess’, but decided to go with ‘Hepatitis’, a faster, noisier song for the split. Martin describes TFF’s cover of ‘How To Beat Your Dad At Chess’ as “a twelve minute stoner extravaganza” and Rory says “we just jammed on the riff for like twelve minutes.”

God Bows To Math is playing two release shows for the split, but unfortunately they are without their southern partners. TFF simply can’t afford to head north to play the shows, but plans are in the works to do a nation wide tour together next year. Tom shares his thoughts, saying “I was thinking it would be pretty cool if they could fly up here and we could drive them back and play shows in Wellington, Whanganui, Christchurch etc. That would be pretty cool and a way of helping them out, but they would have to be all-ages shows.”

God Bows To Math/TFF Split Release Show
Friday, November 27 at The Basement, Auckland
with guests, Sharpie Crows, Nevernudes, Freudoids and Nice Birds

 TFF- Beer Keg: MP3

God Bows To Math- Only Dead Fingers Talk In Braille: MP3

 TFF- Myspace

 God Bows To Math- Myspace

Buy the split CD from MUZAI Records’ online store

Posted by Nick Fulton under Auckland, Dunedin, New Zealand
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