1.For those that have never heard of you before, can you tell us a little bit about the musical project?
My tag-line for The Dead Yesterdays has always been ‘four spring sonic mayhem for the musically disinclined’, so I guess that’s as good a place to start as any! Musically The Dead Yesterdays is predominantly Harsh Noise, combined with elements of Harsh Noise Wall, Noise, Ambient Noise Wall and Drone. I’ve never been too interested in limiting myself to any particular sub-genre and just go where the inspiration takes me. ‘Four spring’ is referring to my Elecrofaustus Blackfly, a noise instrument with four springs mounted on a metal case. That’s my go-to instrument of choice, but I also use a range of bought and self-made noise instruments, field recordings and a liberal tonne of pedals to achieve my sound.
2.Recently you have released a new album, musically how does it differ from the stuff you have released in the past?
Tensely Waiting is a pretty natural progression on what I’ve done in the past, but definitely represents a new peak for me. With this release I feel I’ve managed to combine elements of Harsh Noise, Harsh Noise Wall and Drone in a much more cohesive way than I’ve managed previously. The two long tracks that make up the release each take you through a number of gradual progressions through different textures and atmospheres, and I reckon I’ve got a good balance between letting sounds and atmospheres develop, and it not becoming repetitive.
3.Some of the song themes on the new album deal with climate change and the global pandemic, can you tell us a little bit more about your interest in those topics?
For me creating music as The Dead Yesterdays has always been a really cathartic experience, and I often use it to work through how I’m feeling about different things. ‘Tensely Waiting’ is really a reflection on the events of the first 2 thirds of 2020, and man what a year it’s been! Back at the start of the year you had wildfires raging in Australia, while here in the UK we had torrential rain and flooding. Climate change is already here you know, and yet politicians and big business continue to block any meaningful change, and when you can already see the devastation our negligence as a race is wreaking on this planet it’s just enraging.
And Covid, couldn’t really cover 2020 without reference to that could you? That’s second track is really referencing too things, ‘While the world stood still’ is a pretty clear reference to Covid, and really who thought we’d ever live through something like that? Aside from a brief period in the summer when restrictions eased we’ve been pretty much locked down since March and I’m really starting to crave some live music! But for me the other thing Covid threw into sharp contrast was the different responses from various world leaders around the world. Boris Johnson in the UK and Trump in the USA didn’t disappoint with their utterly incompetent response, and that’s what the second part ‘cruelty and incompetence reigned’ is referring to. It was particularly infuriating here in Scotland, because the Scottish Government had a measured and compassionate approach to the pandemic led and informed by the science, but frequently had their efforts disrupted or thwarted by the utter incompetence coming out of Westminster.
4.What is the meaning and inspiration behind the name 'The Dead Yesterdays'?
It was inspired by the Wino and Conny Ochs song ‘Dead Yesterday’, I feel it represents my downbeat outlook pretty well, and I didn’t want anything too serious or pretentious. I also liked the thought that if you saw The Dead Yesterdays on a bill you wouldn’t necessarily realise it was a noise act, could suit a band from any number of genres!
5.Can you tell us a little bit more about the artwork that is presented on the new album?
The artwork is absolutely brilliant and I actually changed the name of the album to match it. Originally I’d planned to do the artwork myself, some pretty typical collage type thing in black and white. But then I saw a post on Facebook from the guys at Cursed Monk Records in Ireland saying that an artist, Ben Gencarelle, was looking to work with more bands and had a few pieces available for free on a first-come-first-served basis. I followed the link and immediately loved Ben’s art, I’ve always thought of Noise as the musical equivalent to abstract impressionism, and to get to marry up my sounds with art the quality of Ben’s was too good an opportunity to miss. So I got in touch and was lucky enough to land my first choice, ‘Tensely Waiting’. Up until now The Dead Yesterdays has stuck to a monochrome aesthetic, so it was also pretty fun to completely switch direction and use something as vibrant as Ben’s piece. You can check out Ben’s work at www.bgencarelle.com or on Instagram at Instagram.com/bencarelle.
6.Since 2017 you have also released a good amount of music, do you spend a great amount of your time writing and crating music?
Yeh I do, music keeps me sane and I play and record as much as I can. My output has slowed a bit recently, but for the first couple of years of doing The Dead Yesterdays putting out as many tracks as possible was kind of the point. By 2017 I’d already been making noise in one form or another for well over a decade,but had precious little to show for it. Each track would be planned out to a torturous degree both in terms of concept and sound, I’d spend so long working on each one, literally years in some cases, that by the time it was ‘finished’ (and man they NEVER felt finished) I inevitably hated it and didn’t really feel that confident ins haring it too widely. I was getting pretty sick of this and decided something had to change, so I created The Dead Yesterdays, started recording every practice and submitting the tracks I recorded to various digital compilations. I think in the first year I put out somewhere between 20 and 30 releases mostly compilation tracks but with a fair mix of albums, eps and splits thrown in too. Looking back not all of it is great, but I developed more as a musician in that one year than I had in the previous ten, and it really helped my confidence!
7.With this project you record everything by yourself, are you open to working with other musicians or do you prefer to work solo?
At it’s heart The Dead Yesterdays will always be a solo project, my outlet for my more noisey experimental ideas, but that said I’ve done a fair few splits and collabs and wouldn’t want that to end any time soon! I definitely wouldn’t mind working with some other noise musicians on a more permanent basis, always wanted to try something like Jazzkammer, for anyone not familiar look up their album Endless Coast on bandcamp, definitely worth a listen.
8.You also have been a part of a good amount of splits, can you tell us a little bit more about the artists that you have shared these recordings with?
I’ve been really lucky to work with some absolutely awesome artists. My first split was with the sadly defunct Danshoku Dino, I really loved their album ‘Blues Sabbath, Black Chaos’ so when they approached me for a split it totally blew my mind! I love combing contrasting styles, I’ve done a few splits with crust/grind acts like Chikara and Puta Malaria,they’re always hilarious because there’s such a huge difference in our track lengths, but I think the styles are pretty complimentary, and I did a collab track for a compilation with an ambient/techno act Whoknowswhocares which was tones of fun and meant I had to dial back on my tendency to completely fill ALL the headroom on a track! Probably the most notable of all my collabs though was the one I did with the drone doom act Mostly Hair and Bones. I’ve been a fan of doom since my teens and the chance to combine noise and drone doom was too good to pass up! The result ‘Corpses’ was so good that me and Dan, the musical genius behind Mostly Hair and Bones, ended up making the collab a permanent thing and formed our experimental metal band Catafalque.
9.On a worldwide level how has the reaction been to your music by fans of harsh noise and drone?
Ha! It’s hard to say! But then I’ve never had much trouble getting folk to agree to splits or getting tracks onto compilations so that’s something. I’ve been fortunate to work with people from the South East Asia to the USA and tons of places in between, so I guess it can’t be too badly received!
10.Where do you see yourself heading into as a musician during the future?
More live shows that’s for sure! For the last year my focus hasn’t really been on the Dead Yesterdays, I’ve been focusing more on Catafalque and another drone-doom solo project I’ve launched; Gnarl. The Dead Yesterdays isn’t finished by any means, but I’ll definitely be taking a more sedate approach to releases as I split my attention between these different projects
11.What are some of the bands or musical styles that have had an influence on your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?
It’s funny ‘cos for my Harsh noise stuff at least my sound is something I really arrived at through my own experimentation, I never really set out to try and sound like anyone in particular. I’m not saying that I wasn’t aware of noise and acts like Merzbow etc It just wasn’t something I really thought about when I was making noise. Lasse Marhaug both through his numerous musical projects and awesome fanzine Personal Best has definitely been a major influence. I’d also encourage anyone looking to explore Harsh Noise to check out the Tenzenmen compilation Noise From China, it’s probably my favourite Noise comp of all time!
What I’m listening to at moment? ‘Untitled’ by Mai12, a Greek Harsh Noise act. It’s saturated almost to the point of being HNW, but they deftly weave in other sounds keeping it just the Harsh Noise side of that line, highly recommended! The new Emma Ruth Rundle/Thou collab is absolutely awesome, ‘Grave of Dog’ by Sightless Pit and ‘We Love to look at the Carnage’ have hardly left my regular rotation since they dropped earlier this year, and the new Sumac album! It’s got to be said whole it’s been a shit in so many ways, 2020 has been pretty awesome for new music!
12.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?
Stay safe out there and look after each other, I don’t think this crazy year is done with us yet! And for the curious you can check out Catafalque and Gnarl here:
https://catafalque.bandcamp.com/
https://gnarl.bandcamp.com/
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