Have You Heard presents Beach Fossils live at Moonstar Studio Tonight!
We catch up with Dustin Payseur, front man of American surf-rock band Beach Fossils, for a quick chat ahead of their debut Bangkok gig tonight (Nov 16) at Moonstar Studio.
As a resident of Brooklyn, were you affected much by Hurricane Sandy? A couple of media reports suggested that a recording studio you had been working at was destroyed?
Yeah, that's right! The recording studio we were working in got completely flooded. We had two days off in-between recording and it just so happened that [Hurricane] Sandy hit right on those days. The studio got destroyed; it was completely flooded. Luckily, the guy who ran the studio had backed up our session, like, two hours before it flooded. We almost lost everything and by that point we had already mixed the majority of the album.
How long is the recording process? How long does it take you to produce an album?
Well, we were in the studio for, like, 16 days but I had already recorded the entire album at home—the same way I had recorded everything else. I was happy to release it the way it was but I thought why not go into a studio, it would be cooler.
Did you enlist a hot-shot producer for the forthcoming album?
Yeah, we got this guy called Ben Greenberg. He's produced a lot of punk records and he plays in a band called The Men. I knew that he would do a good job because I'm really careful about that. I don't really trust anyone with my music but he had a really raw approach that I could respect. I think he did an awesome job.
So when did it all begin for you, when did you start making music?
I was eight or nine. My parents are musicians so there were always instruments around the house. The first song I ever played was on bass. It was some Beck song, something from Mellow Gold.
You've previously said that Beach Fossils was your first attempt at making pop music. Do you find it easier to work within a three minute pop structure?
Definitely! I think the shorter the song, the better. If you can fit everything you want to say, everything that you feel in under three minutes, that's pretty good. That's the aim. I really like how everything is so compressed. But hey, tell that to Coltrane…
So, I take it you'll be showcasing some new songs at your concert. Will they stand out from your existing material?
Well, our sound has matured a lot. It's come more into its own sound and it's more energetic and I think that it has developed its own personality. But mostly it's more fun to play and that's something you'd be able to tell that just by seeing us.
Nostalgia is a word often associated with your music; does this bother you? Why do you think this is so?
Sometimes I got frustrated by it just because people said it so much but it's also kind of true. I mean a huge inspiration for the album was thinking about how it felt to be a kid in my parents' back yard and it's summer-time and it's hot... and it's gross. There's just this feeling that you can't explain that you want to capture in a song. Maybe I got frustrated with everyone calling it nostalgic because it's true and I don't like them to know that. Dominic Hanratty and Chanun Poomsawai
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