In Conversation With #144 - Dead Slow Hoot
London / Sheffield based alt-rockers Dead Slow Hoot have just released their brand new EP - ‘A Kinder Kind’. They took a moment to talk to us about how the EP came together.
Hey there Dead Slow Hoot - how are you? So your EP is out now - how does it feel to have it out there in the world?
Hugo - Hey there, I’m good thanks! It’s a really lovely feeling now that the record’s out, it’s the most personal collection of songs I’ve written and it’s like getting something off your chest that you’ve been holding in for a long time. People have been very kind with their feedback as well which always helps!
It is called ‘A Kinder Kind’ - what is the meaning behind that?
Hugo - The title was originally just a working title when Lukke started sketching out the artwork, but it really felt appropriate for the subject matter. It’s really about trying to steer myself back on course emotionally, trying to focus on not being a selfish person and accepting what I have actual control over. It just felt like a very symbolic phrase because ‘A Kinder Kind’ is only an incremental improvement on what’s already there, so it’s aspirational in a sense because there’s no ‘kindest’ version of yourself.
Lukke - yeah, it was a working title for a long time, even pre-pandemic, but as the rhetoric around 'building back better' (or, 'building back greener' etc) increased, the motif of trying to be a kinder kind felt more pertinent. The grammatists among us will note that 'kinder' isn't a word and the record should be called A More Kind Kind.
Where was it recorded? Any behind the scenes stories from the creative process that you are happy to share with us?
Hugo - We recorded it with David Glover at Tesla Studios in Sheffield who also records with Self Esteem and Slow Club, which was a great experience. Our creative process is normally quite rigid in that I usually have quite specific vision of how I want things to sound, but we were much more collaborative in writing this EP. All of the songs featuring a full band were really written as a band which I think really comes across in the finished tracks. The craziest thing about recording though was that we hadn’t actually been able to rehearse anything for 6 months before getting into the studio - because of the lockdown etc - but we somehow managed to get 7 tracks finished in 5 days without any wrong notes!
Lukke - Glover did great work on a few tracks by our pals in Oh Papa so we had heard great things. Plus, his studio was only the floor above our rehearsal space at the time and you should always shop local.
Dom - One thing we’d never done before was to incorporate live takes. On previous records we’d record the whole band first, just to get a guide track to overdub on and then mute. But this time we actually used those takes for the bass and drums. We also did ‘Dark Pockets’ and ‘Still Life’ as live takes, with no click tracks. That was quite a test of our musicianship. I think the short amount of time we had stopped us from going too crazy with extra parts. On ‘No Reunions’ it was a bit ‘everything but the kitchen sink’, but this time, by the time we’d finished the drums, bass, guitars, vocals and strings, we only had about a day and a half left, so only the stuff we were really sure about ended up on the record. I think that helped us keep our feet on the ground.
What are the key themes and influences on this album?
Hugo - Thematically the record is really about trying to deconstruct negative behaviours and then finding a healthy way to be yourself, which roughly maps onto the 2 halves of the track listing. Musically we drew from a lot of influences for this record, I really wanted to explore new musical techniques that we hadn’t tried before. On a few tracks (Taller Tree and Gesticulating Wildly) we tried out negative harmony and we also experimented with polymeter on Low Road - both of which are concepts I got into from watching way too much music theory Youtube that I still probably don’t fully understand. In terms of artists that influenced the record, we drew a lot of inspiration from Protomartyr, Radiohead, and Mothers for the more energetic tracks as well as Wilco, Juana Molina, Miracle Legion, Cornelius, Jesca Hoop, and Big Thief for pretty much everything else.
Dom - Well those are Hugo’s influences anyway! I’ve only heard two of those bands! As a big fan of Sigur Rós and Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, I got really into doing ambient swells on this record. Hugo’s got quite an in-your-face guitar tone, so I normally play quite washed out, subtle parts so as not to tread on his toes. He told me how you can play anything through your guitar by holding a phone up to your pickup and manipulating the sound with your pedals, so I tried that on the outro of ‘Gesticulating Wildly’. The recording I used was of me, Hugo and Glover talking about that song in a beer garden. I also recorded a conversation between Hugo and an Uber driver about gardening, which ended up on ‘Dark Pockets’. Bright Eyes do a lot of that sort of thing, and Jamie T.
Do you have a favorite lyric on the album? If so, which one and why?
Hugo - Picking a favourite from my own lyrics feels a little self congratulatory! I think the one that always sticks out to me is ‘can you ever wear a fur without inheriting a trap?’ from ‘Until Your Breathing Drowns It Out’. It’s a song about trying to live in the present without letting nostalgia make you feel resentful, and I think that kinds of sums up that feeling - you can’t move on with your life if you’re trying to replicate the past every time it changes.
Now the album is out there - what next for you?
Hugo - We’re finally gonna play some shows! We’re playing in Sheffield and London in August (18th and 19th respectively) and we’ve got more shows coming up later in the year. We’ve also got a few music videos still to come out from this record which we’re excited about so watch this space.