Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Photos: Jerneja Jerak
Location: Orto Bar / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Interview date: 11/30/2012
A year after the release of their debut, Phoenix Down, which pleasantly surprised me, is quite a long wait, but you couldn’t ask for a clearer picture of Dirtswitch. The four-piece from Naklo near Kranj proved that the stuff works on record, and Slovenia got itself one more of its rare grunge gems, one that lets me patch up at least a little of my sentimental heart, the one that in my youth beat and bled for the sweet melancholy of the Seattle sound. Dirtswitch are an evolutionary upgrade and, if you like, a gorgeous side-product of that mighty past, but curiosity and endless questions have to be properly fed and soothed, so right before the gig at Orto Bar in Ljubljana I caught the band’s guitarist Jani Nendl and vocalist Luka Lamut in front of the mic. The temperature before the show was rising and you could cut the anticipation with a knife, yet the two guys gladly let us peek into the heart and soul of a band that bets on a dirty sound and the softness of surrendering to the imperative of heart and soul.
Rockline: It took a long time, but we finally managed to sync our wild schedules and sit down together so you can give me a look behind the scenes of Dirtswitch. Let me start like this: guys, first of all, sincere congratulations. You’ve been around for a few years, and one of those is already behind your debut Phoenix Down, which is without doubt one of the better and more ambitious projects the Slovenian alternative scene has to offer right now. So how did the band get started?
Jani Nendl: The three of us – me, Rok and Uroš – have been playing together with Luka for quite a while. The core of the original trio has been together since 2004, when we had a kind of cover band called High Voltage, with two more guitarists, then the lineup got reshuffled and we became Sky Station, but in 2007/08 the whole thing fell to pieces. That’s when I got in touch with Luka, whom I knew from college, to see if we could get together and start something new, or actually at first we were only planning to launch some acoustic project …
Luka Lamut: Yeah …
Jani: We rehearsed in the attic of some elementary school where we had a spot, and then our appetites grew. The acoustic stuff was OK, but we started cooking up something more serious, so we went looking for a drummer. After several failed attempts we more or less agreed to invite Uroš (Markič, the drummer from the previous lineup – author’s note) and Rok (Seifert, the bassist from the previous lineup – author’s note) to join us. That was the start. As for the music, what sealed it was my growing love for alternative and grunge, which had pulled me in a while back, and I also wanted to make music that would go in that direction. It all clicked and the collaboration flowed very naturally from there.
Luka: I agree. It went pretty much the same way for me – Pearl Jam were the high school story, and then we started turning our sails a bit more toward metal – some heavy metal – and that was the period when we realized that what we were listening to was good. The link in our lineup was, say, Alter Bridge, and that’s how we grew into a band you could also call post-grunge. I like that all four of us liked the same music, because I think in bands with too many different influences there can be confusion, and that’s no good. With us, all four felt the same music and fully identified with it, which is great.
Rockline: What about your musical background? The others had already played in side projects, cover bands and full-blooded bands – what about you? Did you get your experience with the mic and singing somewhere else, or was starting with Dirtswitch your baptism by fire?
Luka: I was active before, but at the very start I only played guitar in a couple of more metal bands, and I started singing completely by accident, because the singer got sick. So I tried out my vocal cords at rehearsal and found there was some potential there that you could do something with. That’s how I became an additional vocalist, and with a band that played all kinds of rock’n’roll we ran through a repertoire from the Rolling Stones and similar bands. Then the desire to make something of our own was born, and that only intensified how I felt about music.
Rockline: This year is the third winter since Dirtswitch was conceived. What’s your take, and what’s the story behind the name and the idea of the band? What was the spark that made you the Dirtswitch you are today?
Jani: I don’t remember the exact moment the name came about, but I always pictured it as the switch on a distortion pedal that pours fat distortion and crunch into the sound. That massive sound is also the essence of our band. I use more or less just one tone, but it’s dirty and piercing, and I think that describes and defines the music we make really well. The band’s metaphor was just a picture of hitting that magic switch and having our sound pour into your ears.
Rockline: Only a few bands in Slovenia can boast a debut, a full-blooded album, after just two years of existence. Last year Phoenix Down, your debut, saw the light of day. I was extremely positively surprised by the artwork as well as the outstanding sound itself. How did the core of the record come together? Were you writing songs from day one, and how did you go about selecting the material?
Luka: We really did end up with a hefty pile of ideas and songs, and once we started recording and had the basics down, after fourteen days we sat down at the table and went over whether the direction we were hearing in the recorded material was one all of us liked and felt was right. We tried to capture some overall whole, so the record would have a common thread, and I think we pulled it off. That’s how the ballads fit naturally into the whole too, because that’s not something we were willing to give up, it suits us – I also like making something intimate and full of feeling.
Jani: The interesting thing is that most of the songs were written on acoustic guitar. It went like this: I’d play something at rehearsal and send the recording to Luka, and Luka would try to recreate it on his guitar, and something totally different came out. On top of that he added a vocal melody, and that was then the foundation and skeleton we added new layers to. That’s how our heavier songs came about alongside the ballads. From everything we’d created, including songs that came together completely spontaneously at rehearsals, we tried to pick out whatever was most homogeneous and sounded like a whole – like us. We wanted to record the album very early on because that was one of the goals and wishes we started the band with, but the process of making it was very long at first – we first walked into the studio in February 2010, and the record came out a year later – and the whole record is more or less our home production. Drums were the only thing we recorded in the studio. We tracked the guitars afterwards. Part of it was recorded in a smaller studio, but I recorded most of those basics myself, and then we only re-filtered them in the studio. The vocals were also made in the little room of our producer Tine Janžek.
Luka: We’re also grateful for the support of our friends from America, because when we started recording, there was a strange accent in there. We think we’ve got a handle on English, but when you record in the studio you notice the inconsistencies and tell yourself: »OK, they will not buy it!« So we worked with relatives, friends and fans in the US who gave their opinions and offered valuable advice and suggestions. Jani and I also went through some pretty intensive training on that, and I think we made something good and thoughtful, though you always keep chasing positive feedback, that essential feedback signal.
Rockline: You touched on the common thread earlier, Luka, so let me ask this – the phoenix is a bird that bursts into flames and new life sprouts from the ashes. What kind of phoenix ties your album together? Is it a personal confession or something else?
Luka: On one hand, it’s definitely our personal confessions. When I was eighteen or nineteen I survived a pretty serious motorcycle crash, and that’s also a thread behind the name Phoenix Down. What matters is that you fight and try to build something for the future, and that’s reflected in and woven into the lyrics too.
Rockline: And what about the consensus on the other side, since everybody has their own vision, their own piece of interpretation that gets assembled into a bigger mosaic?
Jani: I had a similar vision to Luka’s – his story coincides with our first contact, since we met just before that motorcycle accident hit him, and then we were at college together while he was still limping around and healing his wounds. With that vision and the image of the phoenix, which really grabbed me as a concept, the final name felt natural. From the standpoint of those ups and downs, that phoenix cycle, we wanted to build the whole record conceptually too, and the lyrics, which follow this sinusoid of ups and downs, had a hand in that as well. We have stuff that’s more optimistic and stuff that’s more pessimistic. Forever is a very uplifting track, Looking Back is based on a key turning point in a romantic relationship, where you simply have to decide whether you and your loved one are going to move on or the whole thing will fall apart, but it’s optimistic in terms of the words: »It’s not too late to make it better«. The whole record has this common thread, and Phoenix Down, the phoenix that’s falling toward the ground and hasn’t burned up yet, hints that the story isn’t over. The next record, at least in my vision, could easily be a continuation of this story, since a new birth and more optimistic undertones can easily follow. Of course, how the music develops from here will settle that. The band is constantly evolving and we try to listen to as much music as possible and combine as many influences as we can, so even the new songs we’re already working on sound like Dirtswitch, but it’s Dirtswitch continued, and no, we’re not going in exactly the same direction all the time.
Rockline: In the year since the record came out you’ve played a lot of gigs, both in Slovenia and abroad. What was the experience of playing abroad like?
Luka: Going abroad is definitely a factor in growing and maturing, because you step out of our little clubs onto foreign turf and a bigger stage, the kind you once stood in front of as a festival or gig-goer cheering on your favorite bands. A bigger stage comes with bigger responsibility, you have to play really top-notch, ideally flawless, because the crowd wants an outstanding, unforgettable show. You want to give your maximum, and when you manage to carry that over to the smaller stages too, you’ve done everything you could.
Rockline: Which countries have you already stamped in your band passport?
Jani: Abroad, so far only Austria.
Luka: We’ve played there several times, but in spite of that we still have quite a bit of trouble getting out there. Gigs aren’t easy to land and we’d probably need to run one intensive promo push.
Rockline: Otherwise you do everything – production, promotion, pushing the band – entirely on your own? And is a deal with some label in the works now, since with your debut in hand you’ve got solid, good trump cards yourselves?
Jani: There’s no label yet. We’ve contacted some foreign labels too, but there’s been no response so far, so the focus is more on promotion through internet media and social networks, and with all our work we try to win over a wider audience on top of the people who’ve been close to us since day one. Promotion and music videos are our tools, and we handle everything more or less ourselves, though I’d say we started working with an English promoter, we sent him the record, and besides a few ads in magazines we got quite a few reviews, which were very positive. We’ve put that collaboration on hold for now, because after today’s gig we need to sit down and really nail down a clearer strategy. We’ll definitely try to pave a path to some label too, but right now our goal is to promote the music as much as possible so the widest possible circle of people gets to know it.
Rockline: One of those channels, which you put to good use, is YouTube, where you recently posted your latest music video, with which you pay a worthy tribute to the memory of a grunge giant – Alice In Chains singer Layne Staley. Man in The Box showed that you guys are top-notch when it comes to execution and inclined to perfectionism. Is this AiC tribute a one-off, or do you plan to pay tribute to someone else and put out an EP of covers?
Luka: Interesting question, but so far we haven’t thought about presenting Dirtswitch through covers. This was one way of doing it, and above all a wish come true for the whole band, because the song is extremely close to our hearts and Alice In Chains’ music binds all of us into an even tighter whole, we fell hard for that music. We had an idea, a vision – for the video too – and we thought, why not also introduce Dirtswitch abroad this way, through a song we love so much, so that people would say: »OK, these guys can actually play …«
Rockline: Tonight’s gig is with Celje-based LastDayHere. How come? What was the spark for this rather unusual and out-of-the-ordinary combination on stage?
Jani: We’ve been following LastDayHere since their debut came out, and we’ve quietly been on the same wavelength since then, but we never got around to working together – at least not in a way where we’d share a stage and do a joint gig until today. The first reason is that they were pretty busy touring abroad and recording their upcoming new record, and November 30 turned out to be the ideal date, because for us it’s the end of the promo tour where we tried to present the record live as much and as well as we could. Working with a band that’s bigger than us and has more experience than we do felt natural and very welcome, and at the same time we’ll be able to test live whether the energies and our mutual musical sympathies carry over to a shared stage, and see whether our music can reach their listeners, and vice versa.
Rockline: The minutes are ticking away and soon you’ll have to do what you do best – put on a show and give your studio child a worthy presentation – so just give me a quick taste of your short-term and long-term goals. What are Dirtswitch’s next steps?
Luka: Next steps? In 2013 we’re longing for a new record, a new CD. I’m still one of those »oldschoool« enthusiasts who like to listen to music in physical form. I like a record that has a booklet and lyrics. That’s the kind of record I like to get and like to buy! I think I’m not alone and that people like that still exist, and that’s what gives us the drive to keep following this principle – having the support of people who buy the record, listen to it and give feedback.
Rockline: I assume the contours of a new album are already being sketched and drawn, so tell us what we can expect. What will Phoenix’s successor be like, and what’s being born at your place?
Jani: I think the successor will definitely be rawer. Maybe the production will take a small step back and bring out the essence of our band even more, since we plan to record the next record live – all four of us in the same room, seeing and feeling each other at the same time. We’ve already picked the studio, and I think we’re approaching the songs with a clear idea of this too, so they’re rawer and more primal, and there’s not so much of that wall of sound that impressed us on the debut. Everything is based more on groove, on rhythms, and the vocals are still singable and melodic. We’re working a lot more on the backing vocals so those melodies come through a bit more, and I think we’ve set everything up even better than on the previous album. It all sounds even fresher than before, back when Phoenix Down was first taking shape.
Rockline: That’s exactly right, because I pointed that out myself when I reviewed the debut, where I wrote that you need a bit more courage and contours of your own. Do you promise we’ll be able to feel that on the new record?
Luka: Definitely!
Jani: Definitely! I think so too!
Rockline: And finally, as is already tradition, I’m handing the dictaphone over to you for your closing thoughts, so address our readers however you feel is most fitting.
Luka: As far as I’m concerned, I’ve only got three words: Music is alive!
Jani: I’d like to use the chance to thank Rockline for this interview, and as for me, it’s like this – as a band we still feel the music and create with our hearts, and we just hope that people like that still exist everywhere in the world, people whose hearts and ears this music of ours will reach, through the ears to the heart, so to speak, and that they’ll support the band and come to gigs, and in doing so prove that music, and especially live music, is still alive the way it should be, and that rock still tears it up and is far from dead.
Rockline: Rockline will keep following you on this road, and with your work so far you’ve already earned our support. Thanks for the interview.
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