Interview: The Death Set (Fact Magazine, 2008)
There’s something going on in Baltimore; something removed from the club scene for which the city is so musically famous. Bands like Ponytail, our interviewees The Death Set (who have recently signed to Counter, Ninja Tune’s rock offshoot) and Ecstatic Sunshine are playing and recording some of the most life-affirming rock music around; punk songs reduced to pure spasmodic, animal form. Bmore correspondent Raven Baker was at the Baltimore Bass Connection’s Christmas show featuring Spank Rock, XXXChange and The Death Set themselves, and reported back thus:
‘Like Lightning Bolt, The Death Set shun stages, preferring to set up on the floor inches from the audience. A compact band, usually two guitarists and an iPod, The Death Set will play just about anywhere: squished between leather couches in a club’s lounge, in the corner of the small studio where singer Johnny Siera used to live, or in one of numerous clandestine warehouse spaces.
‘If anything, the more haphazard the set-up, the happier the fans are. Clambering atop pool tables or hanging from pipes in the ceiling, obstructions become playthings for the audience. Nothing stops the crowd from surging around the band in an ecstatic, fist-pumping mass. Little wonder that the Death Set shows can get messy – once, former guitarist Beau Velasco cut his face and finished the set covered in blood. At a Brooklyn show, girls pelted the band with water balloons, frying their equipment. During steamy summer nights in Baltimore warehouses, fans gleefully stumble across floors slick with beer and sweat, knocking over mic stands and members of the band.
‘Recently in Baltimore, the band joined their Ninja Tune label mates Spank Rock for an annual holiday show two days before Christmas. The small ramshackle club, The Talking Head, was packed beyond capacity. Ignoring the exasperated door staff, revellers bum-rushed the entrance while others tried to wheedle their way into what has become one of Baltimore’s hottest year-end bashes. By the time The Death Set went on, right before Spank Rock, there was hardly room to lift a beer to one’s lips let alone dance, though this didn’t deter anyone from trying. Uncharacteristically, the band played from the small, low stage while the crowd, who filled the room and the stairwell, went apeshit; thrashing their arms and roaring the band’s rallying cry of ‘The Motherfucking Death Set!’”
The aforementioned Johnny Siera took time out from rehearsing the Christmas show to talk to FACT about this burgeoning scene, how it came to be, how he got involved in it, and the processes behind the Death Set’s extremely unique sound…
—
Tell us how the Death Set came to be. You were based in Australia, right?
Yeah, it was originally formed in a town called the Gold Coast, which is… Not sleepy, but a surfing town trying to be like a glitzy, LA sort of town. It was real boring. Then we moved to Sydney for a bit; we did a tour with this Brooklyn band called Japanther, and it kind of inspired us and psyched us all up, and we ended up doing this East Coast tour of Australia and then moving there.
Then we were pretty much like ‘why don’t we move to Brooklyn?’, and so that was decided. We moved to Brooklyn, where we had a mutual friend who we’d lived next door to in Sydney, who was friends with a girl called Emily Rabbit. We stayed in her house in Baltimore, and after spending a while in Brooklyn we were penniless… I mean, it was awesome, but we ended up moving to Baltimore. And that was awesome in a totally different way. It was really spontaneous; we just wanted to tour. And we couldn’t tour [in Sydney] the same way that we can tour over here.
I guess the whole motivation behind it was seeing bands playing thirty shows on the spin and thinking ‘wow, that’s amazing; we want to be like that’. And that’s about it.
Was there ever a specific desire to move to Baltimore, given its musical legacy?
Definitely not, I’d never heard of it! It was bizarre; before moving there I knew nothing about it, but when I first came down I saw… Well, there’s this building called the Copycat – I actually just moved out of it – and it’s an art display house place. I was still living in Brooklyn and I came down for a show; it was Dan Deacon and a band called Ecstatic Sunshine. And the kids were just going fucking bonkers; it was honestly like nothing I’d seen in my entire life – not in Australia, not in Europe, and not in New York. I was blown away; Dan was making everyone lie on the floor and jump up when the song starts. And compared to the typical cross-armed responses we’d got in the previous places we’d been to, it was really inspiring.
This recent wave of Baltimore rock bands – not just you, but Ponytail, Ecstatic Sunshine, Double Dagger – seems to have come out of nowhere. How close are you to these bands; is it a scene in that sense?
Yeah, definitely. We’re all fairly close; we went on a summer tour with Ponytail, I mastered their record, I mixed Ecstatic Sunshine’s record…
Really? The last Ponytail one?
Yeah, Kamehameha, or however you pronounce it…
I’m never sure; I’m bad with things like that.
It’s really close; it honestly really has to do with a couple of specific buildings, one of which is the Copycat. I used to live with Jeremy from Ponytail, and I lived next door to Wham City. I don’t know if you know about Wham City, but that’s the collective [and university dorm] that Dan Deacon [pictured, left] and Santa Dads used to be a part of. And then there’s another building where the guy from Ecstatic Sunshine lives…
This really all came out of the fact that there’s a bunch of musicians living in close proximity, and having space to do shows – most of these people were just doing shows in their houses at the time, so it just flourished from there. It’s kind of on a down side now because the fire marshal stopped us doing shows, but for a while it was just insane; shows every day… Well, not every day, but definitely every week.
Wait, why have the shows stopped?
Well they haven’t stopped altogether, but they’ve stopped at the Copycat. That was a fire marshal thing, and it threw a big spanner in the scene. But yeah, it’s really prolific; it was really prolific a year ago, with this one main building throwing shows. There’s an art school around the corner, so when you get drunken underage art school kids with nowhere to go, and you give them a warehouse full of crazy bands… It was well timed, you know what I mean?
I know you’re playing a Christmas show with Spank Rock, but as an outsider from England looking in I have to ask: how much collaboration is there between the club scene and rock bands like you and Ponytail?
The club club scene? I guess if you say club over here it means Baltimore club; that’s just completely separate. For some reason the Death Set, even though we’re – well, we’re not strict punk, but we’re definitely a punk band first and foremost… I love hip-hop, and I love club music, and I like to be friends with bands who’re doing that sort of thing. We’ve always been friends with Spank Rock, but it’s generally more friendships than direct collaborations.
Bonde Do Role did a remix on our last EP and so did Dan Deacon, and I like to treat our band, even though it’s a punk band, in a similar fashion to if it were an electronic group. It makes sense to me. The music in our scene is completely different if you’re comparing it to Baltimore club, but if you’re talking the more eccentric, experimental stuff like Dan Deacon then it’s not that different. I mean he plays the same venues as punk bands. I guess it’s the warehouse scene where everyone has a close connection.
Your music’s incredibly hard to place; it’s as chaotic as it is harmonic. Tell us about the processes behind your songs. How do you make what you make?
One of two ways: it’s usually written separately on guitar, then we take that away and work on putting beats behind it, stuff like that. Or it’ll come from a computer; using a soft synth or something, and when that sounds good the song will get written around that. It’s definitely computer-based, if you know what I mean.
The songs aren’t written with us all jamming out together; it’ll be one person writing the song and then we all go about doing the production behind it, or it’ll be me sitting on my computer fucking around with a bunch of synths and samplers, and thinking ‘that’s cool; maybe I should write a song around that’. And then it’s built up from there using the standard things: pro tools, soft synthesisers, samplers, pots and pans – whatever the fuck we’ve got lying around, or that we can borrow…
Who comes up with the lyrics?
We both do. Whoever writes the song usually comes up with the lyrics… Actually, that’s not always true; sometimes they’re bounced off. It will either be a completely separate thing, or it’ll be different members of the band bouncing off each other.
Wait, how many people are in the band now?
It’s two main members. Tonight we’ll have two drummers; we used to play without a drummer up until last summer, but I like standing on and jumping off drum kits [laughs], so it’s worked out really well having one. We have this drummer; we were hanging out in Brooklyn, just jamming, and he was amazing. And then we got another drummer because the first one couldn’t go into Canada, so I was like ‘why don’t we just have two drummers?’ But usually we play with just the one.
But the two of you are still the main core?
Yeah, the two of us are the main core, and then for the live shows we’ve branched out with drummers. It’s much radder. It’s super; way more dynamic…
How far done is the new album?
The new record has been done for ages; the reason for the delay is that Counter, from Ninja Tunes just bought out the record, as I’m sure you’re aware. It’s finished; it’s coming out probably March or April, which gives us some time to prepare and promo for it. We’ve got a seven inch coming out in Europe and the UK, and that will be the prelude to the full album. So yeah, really soon!
I’m sure your live shows allude to where you’re going, but what can someone who’s only heard the Rad Warehouses and To EPs expect from the new album?
It’s about – well, it is – twenty five minutes and eighteen tracks. It’s still hi-energy, up-tempo, spastic punk rock songs with electronic elements; it’s a little bit sparsed out with interludes and stuff, but it’s still pretty fast-paced. It’s 100% like the EPs, so you can expect more of the same. I’m excited dude, it’s been on my shoulders for a while so it’s nice to really get it out there…
That’s good to hear. Even though you’re male, I always get a bratty, riot grrrl vibe from your music. How into that sort of stuff are you?
Oh, the riot girl stuff? You’re not the first person; I actually read this blog where it was like ‘New Riot Girls!’ with a picture of us [laughs]. I didn’t really get it, but I dunno, we’re definitely snotty… I mean, I love pop-punk; the Buzzcocks and stuff like that, so I guess there’s that side of pop sensibilities to us. But I like snotty, dirty-sounding electronic music as well. I guess that’s where our snottier side comes from; I don’t listen to crust punk or anything but I like real filthy drum machine rhythms…
What sort of stuff specifically?
I don’t know, that’s a good question. I guess what I mean by that is the more… not dance dance music. I mean I used to love dance music and I’d go out clubbing and stuff, but I really mean the more eclectic sort of stuff like Dan [Deacon] and another guy from Baltimore called OC DJ.
I guess I like listening to electronic music in warehouses more than I do clubs. You’re playing to a different aesthetic, and I think that comes across when you make tunes; you’re thinking of the aesthetic that you’re playing towards. The main goal is creating a crazy, spastic atmosphere in these warehouses that you rarely get in a club, in my experience… It’s a looser, crazier style; you’re not getting dressed up and going out dancing.
You’re touring Europe in January. You talk about playing warehouses in Baltimore, but presumably that won’t be the case abroad – have you made plans to adapt to that?
Well honestly, I don’t know most of the venues that we’re going to play. We’ve toured a fair bit in the States, and we do play clubs. Most of the time, to get rid of my ridiculous fear of playing on big stages to no people, we just play on the floor, and then it feels like a warehouse show. That’s usually our way of getting over it.
That’s quite a cool technique…
Well I don’t know if you’ve seen that Lightning Bolt video, The Power of Salad and Milkshakes, but that’s similar and it’s just insane.
I haven’t seen it, but they did play in Aberdeen where I go to university, and they’d blown all their amps by the end of the set. I know in Leeds they had the ceiling tiles falling down, so I can imagine what it’s like.
It’s just these shots of them playing to crowds, going insane, and it’s always on the floor. That’s the sort of attitude I’m going for.
Nice one. Tell me about Retarded Kitten.
[laughs] That was basically a seven inch – well, actually just a couple of songs that weren’t really Death Set songs. I was just fucking around; I was living in Brooklyn at the time, and I met this guy called DJ McNanny who runs a small label called Run Roc. And the other guy was Dave Palaitis from Lifetime, who did the production on it. It was just a fun little thing; I had a couple of songs and I gave them to those dudes, they produced it and added to it, and we played a little show. It was just a small thing, but it’s a fun little document, you know what I mean?
So there’s no more plans to record under that moniker?
Probably not. We’ll see, maybe. Most of my efforts have been going into the Death Set, so that was just a fun side project, just for the sake of doing something else.
-
Raven Baker’s five essential Baltimore records:
Ponytail – Kamehameha (Creative Capitalism, 2006)
Thrushes – Sun Come Undone (Morphius/Birdnote, 2007)
Dan Higgs – Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot (Thrill Jockey, 2007)
Celebration – The Modern Tribe (4AD, 2007)
Dan Deacon – Spiderman of the Rings (Carpark, 2007)
Intro and Top Five: Raven Baker, Interview: Tom Lea
