Interview with Donovan Miller, Die On Planes

Last week Die On Planes release The Deep Future landed on my lap and it immediately struck a chord with this frightened old man; what was it about? Was it art? Was it music? I caught up with drummer Donovan Miller in an attempt to get some answers.

So Mr Donovan, when did it all begin for you guys? “It started in about 2006 or 2007; I can’t remember exactly when, but we were at university and we started out just doing sound experimentation together – we weren’t particularly playing rock music or anything like that. We were just sort of jamming with guitars and amps...” Donovan goes on to explain the band moved up from New South Wales to their current location of Brisbane, Queensland. At this point in their history, he adds that “We changed the format a bit with drums and bass and guitar, like a typical rock band or something. There wasn’t much planning around it – just some mucking around and making some sounds into a proper band eventually.”

So is it art. Is it music? Enlighten me and remove my confusion and fear. “I think it’s definitely more of an art project – it’s not a band specifically – though we do often play with the three members which is me, Dave (Holmes) and Steve (Rose) but it isn’t set to just us three. Sometimes there’ll be more people or maybe just two off us, even one of us, and we kind of create music or whatever else happens as a collective, so it’s not necessarily a band, so to speak; it’s more about basic artistic creation together, I guess.”

He mentions that everything the band does is improvised; both your live performances AND the recordings? “Yeah, all of it – that’s the only ‘rule’ – we don’t actually write anything at all. It’s always in the moment and there’s no planning involved.” So with The Deep Future, did you all just plug in and let loose, recording whatever came out of the sessions? “That’s like a bunch of different things from a long period of time. That’s essentially how everything was recorded that’s on there; we kind of filtered through a whole bunch of material that we’d recorded over time, with the things that made the cut, making it through, so none of it was written; it was all improvised at the time. We’ll play a piece and if we’re happy with it then that’s a song.”

Does the band attempt to reproduce recorded songs when playing live? “No, we don’t.  I think, very rarely, we might all remember something or something similar to what we’ve recorded before. That might happen if we thought that it was really good but that’s never discussed before the show so it’s a total chance thing.” He explains that generally Die On Planes tries to stay away from attempts at reproducing previously recorded stuff “...so it’s like a fresh creation all the time. Though we’re not perfectionists about it – if it sucks then that’s kind of good as well – because it’s just about the process; we’re not really after any particular end result.”

With the live set-up, is it just bass, drums and guitar or do you incorporate any electronics? “That all depends. If it’s just Dave, Steve and I then it’s usually a drum kit and the guys will have a couple of amps each, playing straight in. We don’t really use any pedals or anything like that, it’s all just about maximising volume and having the instruments behave a bit more weirdly with everything turned up to full all the time. That’s like a standard configuration if it’s all three of us but Dave and I did a show last year, supporting Thrones, and I think we were using all circuit bent waves and stuff. It just really depends on who is available to play at the time. We’re working on a project at the moment that has three drummers, which is like a five piece band. I think we’ll do a few shows in that configuration. Should be interesting, I guess...” Hmmm. Sounds intriguing.

I noticed the band rejects ideas of an having an intellectual base or starting point for what you do; please explain. “Yeah, it’s not intellectual. It’s really about removing yourself from the process as much as possible; I don’t know if that makes any sense but we’re more inclined to let the instruments play themselves and just have a minimal amount of interaction – at least that goes for the guitar playing part of the band – I play drums most of the time so I have to play something though it’s never like I’m going to try and play something really tricky or try and put a point across. It’s more about being as base as possible, and the playing is really simple and repetitive. There’s nothing intellectual about it; it’s more about exploring what that sounds like or feels like.”

So to paraphrase an infamous shoe company; just bloody do it? “Yeah! Pretty much. You just do it and it turns out however.”

Does the band ever swap instruments? “Yeah, it does happen, though I don’t know if we’ve ever played a show like that. We’ve played shows where it’s all been guitars but I don’t know if we’ve ever played a show where Steve’s played drums...but that could happen. It’s just the standard configuration that seems to work really well, and bringing in additional people to do other roles usually works pretty well too. But we don’t do that much switching; I might jump onto guitar if there’s not that much percussion involved.”

So who influences and inspires the band? “I can only really speak for myself but sound-wise, I guess all of us like The Melvins so I think there’s some sort of unintentional Melvins sound to everything but that’s just because we’re all into that sort of music and really like it. I don’t know if there’s any specific band or artist that directly inspires us, it’s more about our personal relationships that inspire the music; we’re all good friends and we’re all pretty weird guys but there’s not that much intention so I guess there’s not that much influence to draw from.”

Well, there you have it. I’m slightly less confused and slightly less frightened (though I’m still old so that’s a bit shit) about the stuff that Die On Planes are pumping out. As I like a bit of art and a bit of  experimentation (sexual, chemical and other), I rather enjoy what they’re doing. The next step for me is to catch them in a live setting with some heavy psychedelics heaving in my bloodstream. I’d advise you do the same.

Die On Planes - The Deep Future review

http://metalasfuck.net/zine/reviews/2012/die-planes-deep-future-own-label

What the hell is this new set up? Bear with me until I figure it out...

Interview with Colin Cadell from Schoenberg Automaton - Part 2

So the guys have been together for just over 3 months; they've released a demo and have been gigging in Brisbane and interstate. Here's the next part of the interview:

A.P: Interests other than music?

C.C: Film. I obsess over cameras & optics, film cameras, photography cameras, movies and the aesthetics of films. Any aspect of film - I’m pretty fanatical about. Which is what I think gives the vocals that I do with this band [Schoenberg] a lot of differentiation from what I’ve previously done. Apex [Null] was always very sci-fi themed and a bit out there because we were a lot proggier, and it was just fun to write. With Cross The Lips I was singing someone else’s lyrics as well as the ones I wrote; because of the genre & the medium it was fitting into I tended to write a lot more very abrasive, straight up, harsh & offensive lyrics because that’s more the way I felt how it should be expressed and more what people within that genre would prefer to listen to. Well, I know I do when I listen to that particular niche...
With Schoenberg my biggest influences are probably people like Kurt Vonnegut (author of Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle), Brett Easton Ellis...and then add to that the images from a lot of Japanese filmmaking such as Takashi Mike, Akira Kurosawa and Shion Sono. People like that who pushing that extreme envelope in Japan but still keeping some taste to it. The lyrics have ended up being a lot more psychological and a lot more thought out. I often set out not to repeat lines in any of the songs, other than maybe a word that might be repeated because it’s the same rhythm build.

A.P: If someone chucked you a bunch of money and told you to make a video for one of your songs, how would it look?

C.C: It would be odd. I think bands when they’re starting out should focus on doing something so experimentally weird that they’re not even involved with the video; almost like a short film –I’d love to do that but having said that I’d kind of like our first one to be a performance type thing...

A.P: Well, people do like to get their faces out there...

C.C: Exactly, and people want to see the band on the first video because they don’t even have a clue what the band looks like when they’re playing.

A.P; You could always do a T.I.S.M and play with masks on...

C.C: Because we’re monstrous fans of games like Bioshock, a cool thing would be something like us falling into a massive lake, then coming up out of the water and then wandering out onto a beach with all the equipment set up, and then start playing. It would kind of fun and silly. It could combine the mystery of the opening scenes of Bioshock; and as people have seen with our artwork aesthetic; there’s a lot of bio-mechanical/steam punk influence. We’re really into the whole idea of robots that look really worn out and used up, like they’re incremental to the environment as opposed to being created for a purpose...

A.P: Sound like a good description of humans...the artwork I’ve seen so far almost reminds me of art nouveau and the movie Metropolis...

C.C: A lot of our aesthetic comes from Shane & my obsession with art-deco (laughs), which people find kind of weird because we’re people in their mid-twenties, living in Brisbane and playing death metal...we like it because it’s so quirky and it looks wrong. Cool but wrong.

A.P: There’s something inherently stylish about it too.

C.C: That’s the thing; they had so many ‘off’ angles and disgusting shapes but at the end of it, it looks so much more human and creative than something you’d see now. Everything now looks like a fucking ipod commercial; polished to buggery and what are you doing at the end of it? You’ve got the same product...now it’s pretty much just a case of what label do you want to buy; what label looks coolest to you – and that’s not for us. We really want an aesthetic that is ‘us’, which is something that I think a lot of bands have lost.
When I was 13, listening to bands like Pantera & Slayer, I thought it was awesome. Slayer had that aesthetic of (adopts comedy metal growl) ‘We’re all about warfare and Satan’, and they looked pissed off and it worked. Pantera – dudes claimed to be massive party rednecks; all their videos – party rednecks. They had this aesthetic and they went with it. We don’t want to portray ourselves as something we can’t be.

A.P: But you don’t want to get yourselves locked into a category?

C.C: No, no...which is why we keep that robotic side to it, with the bio-shock and the steam punk; having those semi-organic robots. We can progress the image if we want to.

A.P: Or retrogress?

C.C: Exactly. Whose to say with the album we don’t go forward 300 years and all of a sudden it’s Blade Runner style cyber-punk? The aesthetic will still be very similar but the key lines and definitions will change. But it won’t change the way the band looks as an aesthetic image; it will just be a different shape.

A.P: But what about how the band will sound?

C.C: Musically I don’t think it would change either, that’s what works so well for us; if we had that image in play as we do now, it would still work because you would still have those weird, old fashioned bits coming in with the mechanical and very modern parts. While we like to have progression in our music, we also like to have progression with the aesthetic of the band as well. There’s nothing worse than seeing a band constantly with the same aesthetic and mentality, writing the same music. Everything should be progressing somewhat.

A.P: ‘Should’ being the operative word; people feel safe with what they know...

C.C: That’s it. If you’re having the same aesthetic with every album but the music is only changing differentially then you’re going to start losing fans.

A.P: Well, if you don’t change then you stagnate. But then again look at Motorhead – they haven’t really changed their ‘formula’ for 30 years...and they’re still fucking awesome.

C.C: But they hold true to their aesthetic. Lemmy is rock and roll. There is no other way to describe the man. He is rock and roll in essence.

A.P: You talk very eloquently; I can imagine you being interviewed on the telly by some famous person.

C.C: It probably sounds obnoxious but I do feel more comfortable talking about myself.

A.P: It’s a subject that you know well.

C.C: (laughs) Yeah, I find it a lot easier talking about myself as opposed to trying to bullshit about something else.