Return From Exile, Danny Fox
9
Words by Sam Ford, illustration by Derek Ercolano
www.georgiakeeling.com
28
After being put through various music industry hoops, you’re now at the point of releasing your debut album. How would you describe the journey to getting the finished product? The journey has been really amazing. We have put every part of ourselves into this album and are just thrilled to finally share it with everyone.
The record very much has a whimsical charm to it despite the seemingly raw set up. Did the sound come quite naturally to you or was it something you had to think hard about? Our sound came pretty naturally. We all have similar influences but also some key differences in taste so when we all play together and work through things our sounds kind of emerge.
I guess living together in the New York apartment is a solid perk when it comes to harnessing creativity, how was the writing and recording process? We all lived together for one year. That was last year. For this album a lot of the writing took place in my parents’ basement in Long Island, where we practice. We spent about 2 months writing, rewriting, rehearsing, and demoing all the tracks to our album. This was the first instance that we really made time to put all the love and care into the WHOLE recording process, not just physically laying the tracks down. You also straddle a line between being reclined and dangerous, the grungier moments on the album help achieve this more urgent sound. Is this something you wanted?
I think we love being both “reclined” and “dangerous”. We definitely make sure to have
a dynamic sound. It helps keep both us and the listener from getting bored!!!
There’s been a mammoth amount of excitement behind you recently, how have you come to terms with this? Has it been daunting at all? It has been a pretty gradual progression since when we started this band so it doesn’t feel sudden, but that doesn’t make it any less daunting. Once you’re doing something you can’t look up too often or you will lose focus. I think that’s where we are at. There is still lots to be done. Do you think a hard working ethos has been integral to your early success and attention?
Yea! We all believe that hard work and practice are the most important things in any aspect of life. Psychedelic music has always been partnered with a certain aesthetic, you guys carry a strong visual consistency, is this an important accompaniment to the music? I guess our visuals just represent us which is connected to the music we are making because well...the music is us.
Having done the rounds with some prolific new bands at the moment, how does it feel
to be tackling your own headline tour this side of the pond? It feels exciting! A little nervous!
It’s evident that you draw on influences from many decades and musical movements, but have other artists you’ve been on the road with offered you any valuable lessons? Not direct advice, but being on tour with DIIV and NO JOY was really awesome and we learned a lot about being a band on that tour. Does the record translate easily into the live environment or has it taken a lot of work?
All of our songs start as just us 3 playing. So it’s actually the opposite. For ‘Human Ceremony’ we spent a lot of time building some songs up and evolving them into something more suitable for a studio album. Live, it is still just the 3 of us rocking out as hard as we possibly can. ‘Human Ceremony’ is out now on Fat Possum Records.