DZ DEATHRAYS: INTERVIEW + AUSTRALIAN TOUR

DZ Deathrays are the dudes you wish you were friends with, just to witness the crazy shit they do up close and personal. They begun playing at house parties and have just come back from a UK tour with a spot on The Great Escape Festival (alongside bands like Friendly Fires & Sufjan Stevens, no biggie). Next up they’ve just announced Australian tours with Dananananaykroyd & Children Collide. Not bad for a bunch of punk bastards hailing from Brisbane.

You must be pretty stoked that NME rated you guys in the Top 10 acts of The Great Escape! Heavy! How’s it feel?

It feels pretty surreal at the moment considering I used to sit around at work and read a lot of NME news off their site almost every day.  It’s also a bit nerve wrecking to think that they can make or break bands so easily.

Who were a few of your favourite acts from TGE?

I think my highlight was seeing Die!Die!Die! performing their new material, those guys just keep getting better and better.  The funny thing about that festival was that I ended up seeing mainly Australian acts except I did see a hip hop group at about 2 am on the last night that were awesome but I never found out who they were… I guess that’s festivals for you.

What happens on tour no longer stays on tour, it now ends up on facebook. One of your more dubious status updates was “Doing a piss wreck bar photoshoot”….Um, please explain?

Haha I didn’t think anyone really pays attention to those… Anyway one of the friends we made over there was Dan who was a photographer for NME and we had the day off so we decided to do a photo shoot with him. Dan knew some guys in north London who owned a pub and they kindly gave us a lot of drinks and let us run around the bar for a couple of hours taking photos.

Got any other moments of mischief from the tour you’d like to share? Any broken bones, hearts? ….Or just brains?

We didn’t break any bones however one of the guys on the tour broke a rib trying to do a runner on a cabby. We didn’t break any hearts that I know of but there were a lot of broken brains. On the second night of the tour the Cerebral Ballzy guys somehow convinced a bar in Leeds to play heads or tails and winner got half price shots… I don’t remember much after the bar staff agreed to it, but the shots were already only like a pound each anyway. It kinda escalated a bit from that night on…

Who are some of the rad bands you played alongside at UK gigs?

We spent the first week and half touring with Cerebral Ballzy and an all girl punk band called Thrush Metal who were both a lot of fun to play with.  We also just ended up playing a lot of shows with friend’s bands from Australia like Bleeding Knees Club and the Touch which was awesome.

How does the Australian scene compare?

Touring the UK after touring Australia was unbelievably easy. We drove most of the dates of our Australian tour just before going over so when we were there the drives were only like 2 or 3 hours between cities as opposed to the 12 hours we are used to here. As far as the music scene goes we never actually got to see many UK bands, we were playing every night with exception to 2 or 3 and all the festivals we did were full of international bands.

Now you’ve conquered the UK and been given props by NME – what now? Where would you love to kick off your next tour?

In Sydney on July 29th at the Annandale with Danananananananananananananakroyd

Besides DZ Deathrays, what are some other ingredients for a wicked house party?

A massive stereo system pumping Motley Crue to a bunch of drunk attention-seeking girls wearing skimpy clothing drinking free booze. Emilio Estevez could be there giving his pep talks from the Mighty Ducks about taking beer bongs instead of hockey, and for some reason he has a backpack full of fireworks as well. If you had all that at a house party I’m sure it’d be fun hazy night most likely ending up at a hospital.

TOUR DATES

w/ Dananananakroyd

Friday 29 July – Annandale Hotel, SYDNEY

Monday 1 August – East Brunswick Club, MELBOURNE

For tickets see HERE.

w/ Children Collide

For dates and tickets see HERE.