After speaking to DMA’s guitarist Johnny Took last year before their sold-out Newcastle show, I caught up with him again to talk about the band’s second album release and their upcoming date at Leeds Festival.
Your new album ‘For Now’ is out now. How do you feel it compares to the high standard you set with ‘Hills End’?
I don’t know it’s better or worse, but it’s definitely different; in regard to the fact that there’s been a little bit more thought put into it, like production-wise we learnt a lot from the first record. It’s more hi-fi but not in like a sterile, soulless hi-fi way – there’s kind of a warmth to it. There was no point making ‘Hill’s End 2.0’ – we wanted to come with an evolved sound.
Will you bother reading reviews of the album?
If my manager slings one my way. But to be honest, if it wasn’t a good review I wouldn’t get offended because it takes a lot of different people to make this world go around; if everyone just agreed with each other then the world would be a pretty fucking boring place.
I spoke to you last year after your first album was released and you said you were all still learning what kind of band you are. Do you feel you’re still going through that learning process with ‘For Now’?
100%, man! I think we’re still working it out but it’s cool, you know. I think as an artist you’ve got to keep learning and I don’t actually think we’ll ever stop learning. That’s another reason why I’m happy with the way we sound on ‘For Now’, because that’s the way we are now, but as we learn and grow, our next record could sound completely different and that’s cool.
Your shows normally get pretty rowdy, but what’s the craziest thing you’ve seen at a show so far?
Aw dude, we played this one show, St. Kilda Festival in Melbourne. It wasn’t like the biggest gig or anything, but I saw photos from it and there was a guy in a wheelchair crowd surfing, still in his wheelchair – I’d never seen anything like it before. And then at that same gig, everyone kind of rushed the stage and the stage manager, she like fainted, couldn’t handle it, she like passed out, we were like ‘woah, what the fuck’ and then we had to stop the show and get the ambulance – that was pretty hectic.
DMA’s play Leeds Festival this month. Head over to leedsfestival.com for more info.
