Mustard had the pleasure of speaking with Deadbeat At Dawn about their Skapocalyptic sound, their latest EP Dyscopia, and so much more! Check out the interview below!
1. Hello! Mustard would like to thank you for being here. How is everyone?
Yes! All’s good with us thanks. Been enjoying a weekend of punk rock bands and doing a bit of gardening. Pretty sweet, can’t complain at all.
2. Mustard wonders the origins of Deadbeat At Dawn.
To keep it as short and as digestible as possible, around 2005 Shrimp (bass), Nobby (drums) and Mike (vocals) started the band with a couple of other lads. I (Aaron, vocals) joined shortly after, and we played on and off for years with various degrees of enthusiasm, until 2018 or 2019 Dave joined on guitar and everything started to click. We’re occasionally joined by Unity on keyboard too, but she’s moved to London so we only get to have her with us every now and then.
3. You’ve defined your sound as Skapocalyptic. How did this sound come together? Could you share your creative process?
It’s the final wave of ska before the world ends. It’s about partying in the face of the apocalypse, and being a bit angry at the world, but also saying “if we’re going to die, I’m gonna have some fun with whatever time’s left”. We throw a bit of ska and punk around, and add samples, noises, raps and some singing and shouting and if it makes us smile then we go with it. We’re all into a lot of different styles of music, so a lot of that collides when we write together, and it seems to be working.
Last gig we played someone described us as ‘Beastie Boys meets Operation Ivy’ and I’ll take that as a description any day of the week.
4. You’re currently on tour. How is tour going so far? Does Deadbeat at Dawn have a favorite venue to play? Where would you most like to play that you have not yet?
Na, not on tour. I think we did a post a while ago with ‘End Of The World Tour’ written on, and has a handful of dates. It was more of a self depreciating joke about us not having a lot of dates, and the constant dread feeling of WW3 or something…
We do love playing Fibbers in York, and Mama Lizs in Stamford, both those venues are ace fun, and always end up with good bands and crowd there. Trillians in Newcastle was decent fun recently too. But generally, whether its a festival, a proper music venue, a social club or a squat, as long as there’s good vibes and nice people, we tend to have a good time whatever…
5. Like Dr. Dre you love to collaborate with other artists. Why is it important to collaborate? Who would Deadbeat at Dawn most like to collaborate with?
We do, we do. We just think its fun, when we get in the studio we get to add loads of stuff, sounds, the whole production process, things you don’t get at a live gig, so why not add more people? We’ve made loads of good mates with amazingly talented bands over the years, so its good to get them involved on recordings, gives the songs a fresh edge, and a new flavour. So many rap bands do it, and pop bands too, so we thought we’d do it too. We’re currently writing an album, and have a bunch of folk in mind for that, and don’t wanna jinx some of those, but could definitely see us doing something with Counting Coins in the future, Harrys got some crazy vocal styles and think he’d fit beautifully into our madness.
Not sure about dream collabs, so many to choose from. Would love to have Christy from Blaggers ITA on a song, he definitely opened up our eyes to rapping over punk, and they’re a big influence. Dick Lucas from Citizen Fish/Subhumans would be an incredible addition to a song, he’sgot such a unique flow and use of words. There’s a lass rapper from down south called Bryn, she’d be sweet to have on a song. Kane from BBCC has got a nice flow, that’d be an interesting one, plus those boys are all crackers, good Yorkshire lads, that would be getting messy. Skinnyman too, old school London rap there, he’s spittin some powerful words.
Snoop Dogg has gotta be the top dream collab though, don’t it?
6. The end of the world is upon us. We are in a Skapocalypse. What happens during these end days?
Spend time with your loved ones, appreciate them, love them and have a good time with them.
Learn how to survive by watching old 1980s apocalyptic films like Mad Max 2, New Barbarians, 2019 and Exterminators Of The Year 3000.
Good music, drugs, donuts and stroking cats should be increased to maximum capacity.
7. Ska has been having a resurgence in the states.Is the same happening in the UK? Besides yourselves what ska bands (or artists) should readers check out?
There’s always been a bit of a ska punk scene bubbling away over in the UK, it does lend itself well to UK culture and influences, it rarely sounds likes the OG Jamaican styles, but from Two Tone, through to the ska punk scene now, there’s a very definite British sound that’s evolved from ska. Currently I’d say Random Hand are riding the top of it, but there’s so many bands doing it in their own style at the moment, Faintest Idea, Counting Coins, Plot 32, The Platitudes, Nutty Skunk, Dakka Skanks… all really great, all doing their own thing. There’s loads more, I could go on for ages, it definitely feels like there’s a resurgence of the ska sound right now.
8. Dyscopia is your latest EP. Could you share more about it? Would you say you’ve grown as a band since your first EP, Dead Before Dawn?
Yes, and we’re still growing. I think Dyscopia, although Dave played guitar on it, those songs were still written before he joined, so really our Survival Zone single, that was the first thing since he’s been writing with us, and that sounds a world away from our early stuff. The album we’re on with at the moment has had Dave write with us for the whole thing, so it’s very different. I think, even on Dyscopia, we were still trying to find that sound we wanted, the perfect Skapocalpse sound, and now we’ve got it where we want it we’re comfortable doing a whole album of it.
9. Do you have any upcoming projects you’d like to share? Or places readers can see you on tour?
At the moment our priority is the album, its something we’ve never accomplished, and we’re so close to it now, just trying to get the last couple of songs finished and written over the next month, and hopefully we can get into the studio over summer and start laying it all down there. Our next gig is a massive all day event in Bristol, called Skankest, so many ace bands, all day from like 12 till 12. We’ve also got Rebellion this year, which is a big deal for us, that’s a 4 day punk rock heaven, just an insane line up.
We try and keep things active, at least on Facebook and Instagram, so people can check us there and see what we’re up to for anything more up to date.
10. Where can readers listen to your music?
All our recordings are up on the usual streaming sites, I guess Spotify is the most popular one, but we should be on all the others too. YouTube, we have videos and songs on there, plus loads of tour diaries. And Bandcamp too, our stuff is up there for anyone that uses that.
You can find links to all our stuff on our handy linktree gimmick…
https://linktr.ee/DeadBeatAtDawn
Music Shelf With Mustard 