Artist Interviews

Q&A: The Death Set

By | Published on Tuesday 25 January 2011

The Death Set

Six short months after dreaming up The Death Set on Australia’s Gold Coast in 2005, co-founding duo Beau Velasco and Johnny Siera relocated their rap-rock outfit across various ponds to the US.

Finding an ethos in common with the Brooklyn and Baltimore-based DIY music scenes, they honed their experimental lo-fi sound with a series of raucous live performances for which they became renowned. Hype surrounding the band gained momentum with the 2006 release of EP ‘To’, which was succeeded by ‘Rad Warehouses Bad Neighborhoods’ in 2007.

Full-length debut ‘Worldwide’ was the next (il)logical step, released by Ninja Tune imprint Counter Records in 2008. Velasco and Siera toured the album relentlessly with the likes of Bonde Do Role, Japanther and Dan Deacon, recruiting sometime Santigold drummer Jahphet Landis and fellow Antipodean Dan Walker along the way to join the melee.

The making of sophomore LP ‘Michel Poiccard’ was preceded by the tragic death of Velasco of an overdose in 2009, following a lifelong struggle with drug addiction. Velasco maintains a posthumous presence on the new record, his surviving bandmates having poignantly dubbed in vocal samples of his from old Pro Tools recordings, one of which opens the first song. Released via Counter on 28 Feb, the album features strong collaborations with Diplo and Spank Rock, and marks a worthy tribute to the much-missed founding member.

With the album’s first single, ‘Slap Slap Slap Pound Up Down Snap’, out now, we caught up Johnny Siera to get his rather brief responses to our Same Six.

Q1 How did you start out making music?
I actually started making dance music before punk, but I always played guitar as well as tinkering with MPCs. Then they both kind of got compressed like Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca in that garbage compactor.

Q2 What inspired your latest album?
A whole lot of fucking life experience.

Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
It’s always different, but we’re always trying to make different things normal and normal things different.

Q4 Which artists influence your work?
Old movies, old books, old friends.

Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
If you like it, love it and thank you. If you don’t, find some other shit.

Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
To make the absolute most of it, and to bring it to the most ears and eyes possible. And to continue to make the best possible art we can, regardless of whether people hate it or love it, cos if you’re not polarising an audience, in my opinion, you’re not making something that important.

MORE>> www.thedeathset.com



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