How did the band form and what does the band name mean?
We originally met online through a musician’s noticeboard way back in 2009. We didn’t know each other from Adam when we first met, but it’s blossomed out from there. Jack is a more recent recruit (replacing original bassist Nick Harris), joining us in the winter of 2018.
Our name took its sweet time in coming to us, we actually did our first gig without a name. The Dead Sea Apes came from a story in the Muslim tradition of a group of dwellers who lived by the Dead Sea, who were turned into apes for breaking the sabbath. It sounded pretty cool, so we went with it.
Previous musical projects? How'd you first get into music?
We’ve all been in noisy and weird bands up and down the country previous to joining Dead Sea Apes.
First concert that you ever went to? (Locally and National acts)
The first musical act that I saw as a young lad was Adam & The Ants on his Prince Charming tour. I went dressed up as a Dandy Highwayman. Clearly had a deep and lasting effect on me. I still find it hard to resist the urge to hold up a stagecoach whenever I see one.
What's your writing process like?
Our writing process is really instinctual and intuitive. It’s pretty rare that we come in to practice with any kind of premeditated idea beyond the odd riff here or there, but most of it is generated in the moment. If we do something that presses our buttons, then we go with that and take it wherever it goes. We’re very lucky in the fact that our drummer Chris is a sound engineer by trade and records everything that we do, which is great as no idea is really lost to us. We can pick up from the recording afterwards which things really work. Over time they kind of solidify into the songs that we record and play live.
There is always plenty of space in our songs, so that allows me some leeway as a guitarist to add more textural and free flowing noise in there. It can be pretty liberating to allow some of the chaos and things that you can’t totally account for to come into play. I also think that playing as a band in the same space to us is very important. The interplay of us all playing at once dictates the direction of the music. Its visceral in a way that a ‘recording project’ recorded remotely never really is. That’s not to throw any shade on that way of making music – some great stuff has been made that way - but I think the results are noticeably different.
Lastly, with being an instrumental band, I’ve always felt that titles are quite an important part of the music. They add an extra layer of meaning and intent to the music and can even give a little bit of a narrative arc to the album as a whole. There nothing worse than perfunctory titles added almost as an afterthought; It feels like a missed opportunity.
What other artists or songs inspire your music?
There’s so many really. I think as a band we pull in lots of different influences and inspirations from different places. Joe Strummer said something to the effect of ‘no input/no output’ and I truly believe that to be the case. I think it’s really important to build up lots of musical connections in your brain – as that will invariably affect the music that you make. I always found it inspiring, for example, where bands like PiL would introduce dub elements to their sound. I’ve always considered dub to be ‘psychedelicised’ reggae – but strange and mysterious in its own way. Sonically adventurous. Likewise, a band like Can, who can fuse funk, minimalism and wailing acid rock together into something totally unique. We also really dig Sonic Youth for their ability to mix monstrous noise with really gentle melody, classic rock tropes with arty disruptions and a fearless instinct to follow where the music takes them. The beauty of being in a band is bringing in disparate influences and then folding them into your own sound without turning them into some kind of pastiche.
I really think that we are living through a great time to be a music fan. Some people will tell you otherwise and that all the best music has already been made – but they’re the type of people who clearly don’t get out too much. I’d definitely recommend The Band Whose Name Is a Symbol, Blood Quartet, Wasted Cathedral, Abronia, Part Chimp and Bhajan Bhoy just to name a few from the top of my head.
What's the live experience like and your philosophy on playing live? Do you think the music live should be identical to the recorded version or should it be its own thing?
Has the band toured? What has the touring experience been, best shows?
I can’t say that we’ve had ever really had any bad shows beyond equipment letting us down or playing to handful of people (which is never really that bad anyway). Sometimes you might feel that you’ve played badly – but a lot of the time someone will come up to you and tell you how much that they enjoyed it, so I tend to go with their interpretation! Playing with bands that you really like is really good too. We’ve played with The Heads, The Pop Group, Acid Mothers, Part Chimp and loads of other bands that we dig too. We’ve also made some really good friendships along the way too, be that with audience members or bands that we’ve played with.
As for touring: we haven’t as such, really. As far as playing other countries are concerned, we have only played Scotland and Wales outside of England – but both of those are easily reachable from the North of England! However, we are playing Canada later in the year at Ottawa Psychfest, put together by the mighty John Westhaver (of The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol).
What's up next for the band?
We’ve recently just released our latest album: Rewilding. So, we are playing a few shows in support of that. It took quite a while to finish that album (our longest spent making it by a mile) – so its great that its out there finally – but we’re already looking to what’s next. We’ve knocked up a few new tunes and give them a run out live, so we are about to start recording them whilst the momentum is there. Besides that, we are preparing ourselves to fly over to Ottawa.