dappled cities says...

Almost three years since Granddance Sydney band, Dappled Cities are on the cusp of releasing their third album Zounds and are all set to embark on a national tour. Kluster’s Lillian Zrim chats to Ned Cooke from DC about the making of the upcoming album, living in America and craving to get in front of us Aussies again.

Lillian Zrim: Your latest album Zounds is due to be released this Saturday. It’s already been described as having an epic sound. Where did you get the inspiration?

Ned Cooke: Well, it was a very long process so inspiration came from all different sorts of places. We started writing it when we were over in America. We were all sort of living together in one little room.  So it started out as being a reaction to just being away from home and all stuck together: we were living pretty rough. Some of the more intense tracks came from that period. When we got home we were inspired by being home and having our own space again; our more chilled out tracks came after that.

LZ: And your musical influences?

NC: All sorts of stuff really, just whatever came along. David Axelrod - I think we were pretty inspired by him. We listened to quite a lot of that while we were on tour. So, on a track like ‘Wooden Ships’ there’s a bit of a 60s kind of groove-out thing. It just turned into a bit of a boiling pot; we just listened to so much music.

LZ: I understand that the album was recorded in Sydney and in New York with Chris Coady (TV On The Radio). What was the whole recording experience like?

NC: It was pretty crazy, we had really good days when we were all really productive and excited and then there were other days, when we were all clashing and stuff. So it was an intense process. But overall, the end result turned out great, so you forget the process once it all gets finished. At the time though, it was pretty full on.

'The Price' - Dappled Cities

LZ: Did the recording experience there differ to the one you had in Sydney?
NC: It did - although I didn’t actually go. We did all the instrumental tracking here and some of the vocals and then we ran out of time in the studio. So Tim and Dave went over to finish the last few vocal tracks and start the mixing process. I think it was quite different; but doing vocals is always a pretty different experience because it’s usually just the singer, engineer and producer all sitting together. So even when we were doing vocals here, we were asked to leave the studio completely to keep it more relaxed and personal.

LZ: How long was Zounds in the making?

NC: We started writing it in 2007. So the whole album took about two years to make including writing and all the demos and rehearsing. The actual recording was about a month and a bit; but the mixing took a long time, it took about 4 months. It was a pretty monster project.

LZ: I read that the album was “guided into existence” by Justin Meldal-Johnsen, who has also worked with the likes of Beck and Nine Inch Nails. What was it like working with him?

NC: Musically he’s a great influence and a really good guy to talk to. He’s just got so much experience and a real feel for what are trying to do. He’s a rock of sanity in many ways. He was great – a dream to work with.

LZ: I’m speculating the title for the album is play on the word 'sounds'. Tell me, what is 'zounds', and how did the title came about?

NC: Well, Zounds - it’s got a few different reasons for being there. It’s actually a really old fashioned kind of curse - like a curse word. But we kind of like it because even though it’s an old fashioned word it sounds futuristic and weird. It’s got a reference to “sounds” as well. So it’s kind of multi-tiered.

LZ: So I was kind of right…

NC: Yes! But the actual word is a swear word - obviously not a very rude one: one that your granny wouldn’t mind. We had a list of titles that was a couple hundred long but that was the one that survived and made the cut. We had so many options we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. It’s really stuck and it’s grown on people as well.

LZ: There’s been some really good buzz around the album, particular from a recent “listening installation” you held at a somewhat unlikely venue; Kennards Self Storage, to be precise. Can you tell us a bit about that?

NC: The idea was to launch the album. We put a call out to visual artists to submit their artworks and selected 12 of them to set up an installation in each of their own storage facility units. Each artwork was inspired by a song from the album - hence the 12 - so the song of the artwork was playing in the room and people walked in and experienced it. Then we played a little short set at the end down there. It was really awesome.

LZ: Did you guys hold anymore of these listening parties anywhere else?

NC: We did one in Melbourne a couple days after that, which was again similarly pretty interesting. It was good because we didn’t know what the artworks were going to be beforewe saw them. That was good because we were all just as excited as everyone else, kind of wandering around and looking at everything. It was a little adventure.

LZ: Each city had its own artists?

NC: Yeah we took one or two down to Melbourne from Sydney but everyone pretty much did their own thing.

LZ: Are you taking it anywhere else?

NC: There’s a chance we’ll be doing one in Los Angeles as well - we are going over because the album is coming out there in September - so we’ll probably do the same thing in LA to celebrate the release. There’s also talk of doing an exhibition of them all - we just need to find the right time to do it. So hopefully they’ll all be back together again soon.

LZ: It’s a really interesting way of launching an album.

NC: Yeah it was really cool; it was quite unusual. I think everyone really enjoyed it which was good.

LZ: The release of ‘The Price’, as a single taken from your latest album, has had much success on the Australian Alternative airplay charts where it hit number one. How did that take you?

NC: We weren’t really expecting it. Being a band like us we really didn’t expect any kind of chart success really, I mean it’s great when it happens but we definitely didn’t set out to chart or anything so it took us all by surprise. We’ve never had anything like that before so it was a real bonus.

LZ: Hopefully a precursor to how the album’s going to go.

NC: We hope. It definitely gives us a good feeling about it. We don’t really think about that stuff too much, but when it happens, it’s really great.

LZ: You’ve been recording, or worked through the process rather, for the last couple years. The Wall of Zounds tour kicks off in Frankston on August 13 and travels around Australia. What are you most looking forward to on this coming tour?

NC: Just getting out there again. We haven’t done a proper tour for a couple years in Australia. You feel it when you haven’t gone for a while: you start to get antsy. This album’s just taken so long I think it will be the purge of all our excitement: we’ll play our little hearts out. Just getting out there and playing in front of people again in places we haven’t gone to for a while will be a real buzz I think.

LZ: I know you are only just about to release the album - which should be enough -but I'll ask anyway: what can we expect to see next from Dappled Cities in the next few years? Any ideas yet or are you still reeling from the whole process?

NC: I think we are kind of reeling but in a way it will probably lead to us starting to write again really soon. That’s what happened to us last time - the moment you get out, start touring and tour for six months to a year, you really start to feel the burn of needing to write some new stuff. We’ll probably do a couple big long tours and then we’ll be ready to write again; but hopefully it won’t be another three years till the next album. I think we’ll probably want to get on top of it pretty quickly. It was unintentional, we wanted to put it out sooner, but we also wanted to get it right so we kept sacrificing the release to get it just how we wanted, so I think it’s better in the end. Hopefully we won’t take quite as long.

dappled cities fly, zounds