Interviews : Adrift For Days (Lachlan R. Dale) – 22/12/2010

Coming seemingly out of nowhere, Sydney’s Adrift For Days launched themselves right into the deep end with a 71 minute debut album that has proved to be one of the best doom releases of the year (which you can read our review of here). With the band already working on album number two, and a host of live shows on the horizon, we caught up with guitarist Lachlan R. Dale for a chat about what the band are up to, and his thoughts on doom in general.

For those unfamiliar with the band, there album is available free of charge this handy link right here.

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Metal Obsession: First up, a generic question for those who aren’t familiar with Adrift For Days; how would you describe your band?

Lachlan R. Dale (guitar): We try to combine down-tempo blues with psychedelia and meditative drone. A reviewer named Aaron Yurkiewicz expressed it far better than I ever could; he described us as “smoked-out psychedelic dronefuzz”. I like that.

MO: You recently released your debut album, at a whopping 71 minutes long. Was there ever the thought that perhaps you should start smaller?

LD: Time wasn’t really a consideration. We just wrote the songs and found that they demanded a certain breathing space. The more we fleshed out ideas and atmospheres, the longer the songs became. When we went into the studio we didn’t have a set of carefully defined songs; we just jammed together in the same room, going from take to take and playing sections as long as we felt necessary

We recorded most the music in one day. We really didn’t have much time to listen to everything back, so when we left the studio we hadn’t the slightest clue as to how long our album really was, or how many times we played anything.

MO: How has the response been to the album so far?

LD: I didn’t harbour any expectations. I don’t think that it’s really a bands place to anticipate critical response – especially with a band like ours. That not what we try to do. I can’t speak for the rest of the band, but I only try to express myself, and I only ever play for myself. It’s for others to react to what we do.

That being said, to date the response has been far beyond what I ever could have hoped for. It has been extremely positive. The only real challenge we’ve found seems to be getting people to take the initial first listen. As ever, most are lethargic.

MO:  Do you have a favourite track?

LD: I think that would have to be “Along the Moonriver”. That song stared as an encapsulation of something I really wanted to express – then the other members of Adrift for Days got involved and really added a whole new dimension and meaning to it, such that I could no longer consider it just “my song”. It became something much, much more.

MO: Despite still having a very consistent sound, it draws in influences from traditional and stoner doom, ambient and noise and psychedelia amongst other areas. I gather the band have quite mixed tastes?

LD: I learnt about music from two close friends, who also happen to be two musicians who I respect very much. They taught me to take influence from the widest spectrum of your tastes as possible. As a band, we have an absurdly varied range of tastes, which I think is an incredibly positive thing. If we didn’t, we might have ended up as just another Eyehategod cover band. For us, it’s all about indulging in our own musical interests and expression without having any barriers up. Nothing is off the table.

MO: Who are your personal influences?

LD: Neurosis. Bohren & Der Club of Gore. Eagle Twin. Jimi Hendrix. Earth. Portishead. Herman Hesse. Ralph Steadman. Alex Gray.

MO: You’ve already started work on album number two, how far into it are you?

LD: In retrospect I think the process of recording The Lunar Maria was too rushed. We agreed as a band to ensure that it did not happen again. We’ve been working on new material since the middle of 2010, and will probably continue to right up until we record once more in the middle of 2011. We recently recorded four new songs with some free studio time as an exercise in pre-production. There is definitely no shortage of new ideas or new material, but we’re prepared to give the songs the time they need to develop.

MO: How is the sound developing in contrast to The Lunar Maria?

LD: I think we’re getting better grasp of our wider spectrum of influences. Overall the songs seem more dynamic and more atmospheric – and the input from other members continues to increase. If we achieve what we’re aiming to do, this album will be far more varied and deeper trip than The Lunar Maria.

MO: So should we expect to see a few new tracks sneak into your live shows soon?

LD: When we went down to South Australia in May 2010 (three months before we released The Lunar Maria) we had already snuck a few new songs into our sets. It’s a constant rotation really. I like the idea of fleshing out our newer material live to give ourselves another perspective before we go into the studio. You never can tell though; we just play the set we feel like playing on the night.

MO: Speaking of which, got any shows coming up?

LD: We’ve got a handful of sporadic shows booked in Sydney. We’re hoping to play in Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide before we record the next album, and there are some tentative dates booked. As a band, we’re happy to play anywhere – all it takes is someone to make it happen. I’d love to get out to Perth and Tasmania – or the plethora of smaller towns in Australia. Wherever people will have us, we are happy to spread our pious message of drone.

MO: Moving away from Adrift For Days, you’re also in a handful of other bands including Serious Beak and the relatively new Battle Pope. Tell us about them.

LD: I played in Ebolie for five years with the members of Serious Beak. When Ebolie ended, we continued to jam and naturally progressed in a new direction. Serious Beak is sort of an instrumental, progressive, grinding, chicken-picking, mathy, polyrhythmic, Latin, breakcore clusterfuck of chaos, spontaneity, technicality and absurdity… kinda like if Meshuggah’s Chaosphere had sex with Danny Gatton, Michel Camilo and The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Calculating Infinity.

Battle Pope came out of the awareness that I really missed playing in a fast, crazy, catchy party band. Serious Beak and Adrift for Days are pretty emotionally or technically involved bands. In Battle Pope we play down-tuned heavy swing mixed with grindcore, hardcore, punk and rock. Think Log meets Captain Cleanoff with a dose of James Brown.

I also play in another project called Dyke Destroyer, which is sort of an improv-noise collective. It is the antithesis of everything else I do. It is anti-music.

MO: Back to the doom, Australia certainly has its fair share of fantastic bands in the area. Who would you recommend your fans investigate?

There is one band in particularly that awakened me to droning doom and that is Adelaide’s Space Bong. In the right environment, they can be absolutely mind-blowing. The only other band that has managed to impress their music upon me is, without a doubt, Canberra’s Looking Glass – though they fall more into the psychedelic/stoner category than doom.

I am the first to say we are definitely spoilt for good bands in Australia, but there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of doom and drone. There are a lot of “doom” bands out there that are really little more than stoner rock bands slowed down a little. This isn’t just about playing slow; that is not how I define doom. Doom makes the air shudder and the earth move. Doom makes existence resonate. The feeling uncontrollably vibrates in your chest and in your temples and threatens to split your skull from the sheer resonance of a guitar drone.

THAT is doom to me. It’s almost a spiritual aspect which goes unrecognised by most. Earth understand it. So do Sunn O))), Eagle Twin, Neurosis and Om.

To keep up with everything happening in the world of Adrift For Days, head over to http://www.facebook.com/adriftfordays