I feel fortunate that I’ve got the chance to speak to you as you blow up. You’re here at ATG playing what I believe is your second ever show.
Lewis: Yeah, first booking but second show. We did a warm-up show for family and friends local to us, which was really good.
So, I want to know how this story has played out from your perspective. A lot of people reading this are very aware of 2 Promoters 1 Pod and they’re very aware of Gav, a lot of them go to Damnation. There’s a lot of crossover with ATG as well. From our side of things what we heard was a podcast in which Gav threw out a name and said, “I’ve heard this name from someone else, I listened to the material, I think it’s incredible”. And then, we’re here at ArcTanGent. You’re three hours away from playing a pretty sizeable stage to probably a pretty sizeable crowd. How are you? How are you guys feeling at this point?
Alex: I mean, it’s incredible. We put it out with zero expectations. It got to the point where we’d written it, we’d recorded it. And we were just like, you know, we had no plans to do anything, and we were just like, let’s just put it out. Like, we’re sick of it, just being sat on a laptop. We just put it out and we expected absolutely nothing and within, what was it, two weeks, we’re getting talked about on the podcast, and then was it that evening? Yeah, yeah, that evening, we get an email from Mr Scarlett going, “Do you want to play ATG?”, which is mad.
I’m assuming from the band’s perspective it was a pretty easy ‘yes’ when you were given the offer.
I mean, yeah, how could you turn it down? We’ve been coming here since 2016 as just punters. So it’s a bit of a dream to be asked to do that literally two weeks after we put the record out. But it meant we had to scramble to get everything ready, because we’ve barely been in a room together for months beforehand. So we had to get together and practise. It’s been a manic couple of months to get ready for it. But yeah, obviously, you can’t say no to it.
And Sam, you’ve done a warm-up show prior to coming to play this. How did that go? How did it feel to step on stage as Dimscûa with this project being so nascent?
Sam: Yeah, so it was, it was pretty crazy, but to be honest, it was really easy as well, because, as we mentioned, it was mainly for family and friends, so we didn’t really advertise it much at all. It was more for us to get a feel of playing in front of a crowd, as Dimscua. So, yeah, it felt fine. But this one today is obviously a huge step up!
‘Dust Eater’ is an incredibly accomplished sounding record. How did it come together, and how have you got the sound that is so large and affecting?
Sam: So, we’ve all known each other since we were in school at about 13 or 14 years old. We’ve always played in bands together. We’ve always done music together and we’ve always had that chemistry. It was just with Dimscûa it was more of a passion project, and we just wanted to do something heavy, which is what we love doing, and it’s what we listen to. In terms of the record and how it sounds, it was actually recorded, mixed, and mastered by our other guitarist Adam, who’s arriving today. We did it all in his home studio, just in his office at home over the period of four years. But it would just be a case where we’d write half a song, and then we’d pick it up six months later when we had the time between life. So it took over four years for it to properly be finished, but realistically, if you stick us in a room, it’d probably equate to more like two weeks.
The record is made up of four tracks at around half an hour and the two final tracks are ‘Existence (Futility)’ and ‘On Being and Nothingness’. Was it a tough four years?
Lewis: We all went through various levels of grief and there were painful moments for a few of us. Adam, I mean, I won’t speak for him, but he had a tough year. I think just combining all of our journeys through the last four years, this record really just speaks for itself in that regard. You can clearly hear Alex’s pain and anguish in his vocals, and I’d like to think the rest of the instrumentation is pretty much the same. But maybe Alex can say a few words on that.
Alex: So it took four years to write. The first two tracks were done, I would say in the first two years. It averages about a year per track! But, I did all of the lyrics for the first two tracks. And that, for me, was a lot of catharsis for this really dark period I had in my late teens and early 20s. I always played drums before, and you don’t really get much in the way of poetic expression playing drums. So it was a really cathartic thing almost akin to therapy for me. And then Adam had all these things happening, all this loss. Particularly for the last track, he and I sat down to hammer out the lyrics for that. We were very insistent we didn’t lose the meaning behind the lyrics, but we had to make it work really well as a song, so we spent a whole day sorting that out to put this really raw, emotional vibe into the record, like we had with the first two tracks, which had come a bit easier than the last two, which were a bit more raw at the time. It’s been a deep journey, to say the least.
‘Elder Bairn’ was most people’s introduction to the band as it opens the record. Those forums are full of nerds, and I’m one of those, and so as soon as something’s thrown out by a trusted source, I think people jump on it, and I felt that the first track on the record really hooked people in, because it seems like such an instant demonstration of the power and heft of the sound. And so, when it came to tracking the album, how easy or difficult was it to decide on your running order?
Alex: The tracks on the record are in the order they were written, and it kind of just worked. I think we had maybe two or three conversations about the order, and it was just like, no, it just works in the order we wrote it in.
Lewis: Yeah, I think it kind of represents the journey that we’re on. We felt that if we messed around with it too much, it wouldn’t be the past four years; it would just be a bit of a mismatch. I think the sound, you know, we made a conscious decision to stick with it and make everything flow as well as we could.
I’m cognizant of the fact I don’t want to keep you too long because you are playing today! There will be so many people who are connected with ArcTanGent who can only have the dream of stepping out on stage and performing to a crowd here. So, how do you feel pre-show? Is there anything in particular that you want it to be as an experience?
Sam: Well, it’s just going to be incredible either way. Like we said, we’ve been coming to this festival every year since 2016. And in the back of our minds when we did put this out it was just for us, but we did have a dream of one day playing ATG and one day playing Damnation. But it was literally a pipe dream back then. That day that the podcast came out our worlds just turned upside down. It was crazy. We got the offer that night. We just couldn’t say no. It’s going to be incredible either way, truly. Hopefully it’s not once in a lifetime. Hopefully we can do it again, but it’s amazing. I just wanted to say we cannot thank Gavin enough. We can’t thank James enough for taking a massive punt on booking us. We cannot thank those guys enough.
If we can look beyond the set today, what’s next for the band? Where now that the record’s out and now that you have got a bit of a groundswell of interest? I see people walking around in your merch already! What are the plans post-festival for you?
Lewis: Well, it won’t be another four years before you hear any more music! This has certainly kicked things into a gear we weren’t expecting. This was our big event in the calendar, so we’ll get this done and we’ll likely get back to the writing table with an effort to push something as soon as possible.
You were talking about writing lyrics for this record, I wonder, is that something that you can timetable, or is it more like, they’ll be ready when they’re ready?
Alex: Oh god, no! I mean, I like to think I’m a good lyricist, but I’m slow as hell! So, the one year per song thing kind of worked to my advantage, because I could come to the table with the finished song, and it was pretty damn good, I’d like to think. I’ve basically just got notes in my phone and if anything comes to mind, it just goes in there. And, hopefully, that’ll become something. I did make a joke about the idea that I’m gonna have to go to a really dark place for a period of time to get something as dark as what we’ve already done!. So, I think it’ll come when it comes, but we’ve seen each other more in the last eight weeks than we have in the last five years, because this was something we did for fun and now it’s a serious thing, so hopefully that all helps speed things along as well.
Are there shows booked for you that you can talk about?
Sam: Yeah, I think we’ve got a couple festivals booked and a couple of one-off shows here and there. We’ve got pretty much one show booked in for each month till the end of the year, some really cool ones. Some really cool little festivals that we’re excited to do. And then next year is pretty open, which I think we’re just focusing on trying to follow up Dust Eater somehow. But if an offer comes through, then we’ll definitely be excited.
So, we’re definitely not on a sort of Tool-style album release cycle of four to five years per record?
Sam: No, we do not want to do that! Like I say, since everything’s kicked off, it’s really kicked our asses into gear. We’ve gotta be serious now and churn out another album.
Lewis: Yeah, I think for the lot of us, the most fun part of the process and all this is actually writing, as dark as it is, we love writing music at our core. So, if there’s a reason to do it, and there absolutely is a reason to do it, then we’ll try and make it work as quickly as possible.
Maybe it’s a bit of a cliched thing to say about the kind of music you make, but there’s beauty in it. We’re talking a lot about the darkness and particularly the personal darkness, on accounts of members of the band, and then writing the lyrics and that process. But there’s beauty in there as well, and that feels like a living, breathing part of the record Dust Eater.
Sam: Yeah, I think maybe that comes down to our influences. We listen to such a wide range of music as well. So, like, obviously, we’re rooted in post-metal, but we love post-rock as well, which has that beauty and a lot of the more ethereal stuff and melodic stuff as well. Like, we listen to everything.
Lewis: Yeah, we’ve just drawn on all sources for it, really. And we would like to do that going forward. You take what you like and make something unique with it.