It’s another clear summer’s day shining over the inner city Sydney suburb of Newtown, and I find myself reaching the quiet end of King Street. Strolling away from the distant screams of children and banter floating down from the nearby pub and café strip, I’m accompanying the Dardanelles as they search out a special effects store for some blood to use in a photo shoot.
Just as the offending noise and traffic start to fade ever so slightly, we reach our destination. Slipping inside the white, brightly-lit store we find ourselves in amongst all manner of rubber, paint and latex, with no sign of our intended purchase. Just as we prepare to leave, we spot shelves of fake blood. Seeing our interest in the product the assistant instantly comes to life in the most animated fashion, asking excitedly; “Are you going for a dragged through the gravel look? Or maybe, slashed? Mutilated? Decapitated?” We try to conceal our amusement over her fanatical passion for the product. I put a cap on her suggestions with a simple “vampire bite?” answer, to which she exclaims with a little too much excitement “Now THAT’S an easy one!” and we breathe a sigh of relief. Finally, we’re on our way out of the store and on to Dardanelles’ first photo shoot with the newly cemented line-up.
It may sound crazy, but these types of scenarios are now a common part of this Melbourne four piece’s day to day life; the following day saw them almost thrown off their Virgin flight back to Melbourne after a small string of misunderstandings, but it’s something the boys have managed to take in their stride and can keep good humour about. “We were like the scum of the earth on that flight, but at least they couldn’t kick us off,” laughs Josh, reviewing the drama. But then again, making a big first impression has always been how these boys roll.
Their dramatic rise over the last few months has seen them sign to new Sydney-based ‘it’ label Mosquito’s Tweeter, ink a management deal with Crucial Music and release their debut self-titled EP. They’ve also clocked up a tonne of frequent flyer miles as they make their way up and down the East Coast, adding to the ever-growing list of blistering live shows stacked up under their belt. You could be forgiven for thinking that these guys had been slogging away on the indie trail for a few years, but you’d be well off the mark. In fact, the boys have only been together for just over a year, and even more surprisingly they’ve only been taking the band as a serious full-time commitment since their EP tour in November.
“When we recorded the EP in February last year we just thought those sessions would provide us with a demo, but they ended up setting us up with a record deal, management deal, it got released as an EP, and here we are now,” provides Josh of the band’s whirlwind year. They may be an electrifying and solid outfit now, but that’s far from how they started out. “I think at the beginning we were sort of going for a folk/metal fusion,” laughs Alex. “Whenever a song would build up, Quinny [Josh] would belt it out on his $50 Casio keyboard, which used to break before every gig, and sound like something out of Apocalypse Now!” he continues, before reflecting on the nightmare of their third or fourth show (which also happened to be the first one Josh’s father came to see). “My guitar amp wouldn’t work, so I had to DI [direct amp] my guitar, which ended up making it sound like a banjo. Josh’s keyboard wouldn’t work either, so that had to be mic-ed up,” he trails off, letting Josh continue the story. “So my keyboard ended up sounding like some sort of glockenspiel, and the combination made the set sound like some kind of converted idea of Christmas carols or something!”
Their early stops and starts were due to the fact that none of them had had any previous experience in a band, but thankfully they were blessed with patience and the ability to learn fast from mistakes made. “Because we didn’t come from bands previously, it took a while for things to fall into place. We always had strong ideas of how we wanted to sound and what we wanted to do with music, which involved taking things that we liked – which is a huge range of things – and honing it all into a sound of our own,” Alex remarks of those early days. One thing that the band had early on was a good work ethic, they knew that to achieve the sound that they wanted they’d have to work hard when writing and in rehearsal.
Since the release of their debut EP, the boys have had everyone from the indie kids to the raver masses dribbling over themselves, and journalists trying to slap all manner of titles on their style. So far their style has been a hard one to pin down to any one genre, so titles like ‘post crunk nu rave’ have been linked to their name, something that the band neither condone nor deny. “I think it’s very journalist-driven,” comments Josh, “but I think a lot of people have finally started to see through the whole nu-rave thing now, and we’re going to start to see a bit of a blacklash,” he comments on the future of the genre. “It was pretty ridiculous to see a lot of the bands they were trying to pin the title to, like Klaxons, who are less keyboard-heavy than a lot of your average metal bands,” he laughs.
The band have always stood strong against limiting themselves to one particular fashion or movement, refusing to shorten their shelf life by becoming a part of any ‘ready-made trend’. “Every single musical movement that we’ve seen in the past 3 or 4 years that has been tied to a particular scene, has never really stayed alive. As soon as you start to connect music with any one scene or trend, it’s always going to be temporary, so it’s a dangerous thing for a band to do, it’s a shame when you see music die an earlier death than it should, just because the scene it was connected to has died,” Josh considers thoughtfully.
“I’d say with us, we’ll always be unique and remain above any scene, because we trust ourselves and our judgement enough not to fall victim to the scene syndrome. I think it happens more to bands with low confidence in themselves that feel the need to huddle together with other bands in a scene, because they don’t feel strong enough in their own character and personalities to survive alone. The whole point of starting a band is to show that you’re unique and to stand alone, and of course other people can come to that if they want,” Alex adds.
Catch the Dardanelles as they light up the stage in a frenetic mass of addictive and schizophrenic sonic madness as part of the Australia Day extravaganza at Revolver in Melbourne. Their debut self titled EP is out now through Mosquito’s Tweeter/Inertia.
