Welcome to In Conversation, a special interview column on the site where we sit down with artists and dive deep into everything music. This week Joe chatted to Sam and Candi of fakeyourdeath on their latest EP, ArcTanGent and crafting their sound.
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Joe: How did fakeyourdeath as a project come about?
Sam: Like lots of other things, it came about during lockdown, just sort of messing around trying to make some electronic music. Then when the world kind of opened back up, we started trying to make it a live project as well. It’s definitely an experiment that’s carried on, in a good way.
Candi: Yeah, pretty much it was, literally, boredom. We are both musicians, so it’s just a really quiet, boring period to be alive. We thought, why not keep doing something that we love, and try out new stuff? If world is ending, we might still try and do something new.
Sam: We come from a place playing heavy guitar music and love that. We were wanting to try and write something different for us and then merge it with our interests of heavy on electronic stuff.
Joe: With the first single dropping at the end of 2022, is what we are hearing now a product of what was written and produced in lockdown?
Sam: Yes, all from that period, actually. We are going back a while now, but it’s all from that same sort of timeframe. There were other songs as well that didn’t get recorded, and songs which have since been recorded and future plans, but this EP is that original sort of batch of songs.
Joe: Last year you played ArcTanGent festival, how was that as an experience?
Sam: It’s wicked! Having been to ATG before and thinking it’s a great festival, then getting the chance to play there. All those great bands being there, and being able to wander about about and bump into these bands you love was a great experience. It’s one of those festivals where all our mates were at too, so we had a really good time.
Candi: And with the likes of Empire State Bastard being there, we got to play with some people that we really respect, which was really cool. We’ve both been fans of of people in that band for many, many years. It did feel like quite a nice moment of ‘this is working, this is going well’. We’re usually quite a late booking because there’s only two of us, we just hop in the van and go.
Joe: Which other bands did you see and anyone in particular you enjoyed?
Candi: We missed Thursday as we were playing with Frontierer in Brighton, and we missed [The] St Pierre [Snake Invasion] and Chalk Hands because we arrived around late Friday night. We saw HEALTH, who we love, and Rolo Tomassi too.
Sam: We saw some of Deafheaven‘s Sunbather sat, we saw our friends in the band Copse, which was quote cool. I was most excited to see Converge, then we missed them, which was a bummer.
Candi: Seeing HEALTH was good though, we saw them a few years ago in Brighton, so being able to see them on a bigger stage again was cool. We really like them and they’re quite a big influence on our sound, so that was nice, felt like a quite nice moment to play I and then go see them.
Joe: I might go this year.
Candi: It’s such a nice festival, it’s got such a good vibe to it. It’s just everybody’s really friendly, which you go to bigger venues and sometimes bigger festivals, that’s just not the case. In this one, it just felt everyone was really welcoming. It was really inclusive, it was just a great, great thing to be part of.
Joe: When your performing on these bigger stages, compared to when you’ve performed on smaller stages such as the Dev in Camden or the upcoming show in Blondies, is there a different approach or mindset when it comes to your performance?
Sam: I think the changes are probably more mental – we don’t change much to the actual setup. Smaller venues work better because we have our own light show. We want those all those photos, where we are like in the crowd and everything’s really rammed in. When you’re playing on a bigger stage there’s only two of us so we have to fill it with something, which means you kind of approach it differently. The way you set up and how you fill that space, and so on. It’s just a different mindset really, but we’re probably still getting used to the biggest stages and figuring it out.
Candi: It is as different for me, as Sam is obviously quite static on the kit and I’m the only moving part. So when it is a smaller stage I don’t move as much and we’re quite unified as a unit, unless I go into the audience. When it’s a bigger, there’s a lot more cardio going on. Both of them are great, I think I’d like a few more bigger stages under my belt as a performer so we can hit that transition well.
Joe: You’ve got the EP coming out this month, how are you feeling about that?
Sam: I feel like it’s gonna be good to get out, because it’s been a long time coming, but we’ve also released three of the five tracks. Everyone sits on music for a long time, and that means we’ve heard it for a while now. So it will be good to get it out because there’s more stuff lined up to come – hopefully quicker off the bat this time. Feeling good though, and looking forward to the release show, and just looking forward to having it our there a concise product of those five songs, as it feels like they’re meant to be that way.
Candi: It’s quite nice. With three of the five being released, we did have to go and be like ‘how are we going to make it interesting?’. How are you going to make it worthwhile, and ask your fans to actually listen and re-engage with those songs? It also gives an opportunity to do a whole live set, which is great. We were able to translate some of that live energy that we have and have it as like a secondary visual piece to go along with the EP. It makes it much more interesting because because when we alive when we’re live. That’s the thing that we’re really good at, and that’s the thing that that we really enjoy. We’re really kind of nerdy about stuff, like the light show.
Joe: You’ve discussed certain themes and topics before, such as in “humanity” – are there any over-arching themes or narratives on the EP?
Candi: It’s really just sort of ‘quite angry rants’. A lot of it was written when we were in this very weird time. Also, we had come from that kind of heavy guitar land, where there was this whole side to me as a person that I didn’t feel like I could explore – a lot of the anger I felt inside while in that band, it wasn’t the right place, and wasn’t the right genre. The overarching aspect is, I guess, finding how annoyed I am on the inside, and making you all listen to it. There’s a lot of themes in there and it’s really about society and about our place, whether that’s interpersonal relationships, relationships with authority, or even with ourselves. It’s me being annoyed at everything and everyone that I see.
Joe: What’s the approach to crafting the instrumental side that matches that?
Sam: I guess I’m trying to create these soundscapes using electronic music which are still heavy. It can be quite tricky to get, but I’m after nasty, ominous kind of sounds. While taking inspiration from a bunch of different electronics bands, some heavy ones and then some nice stuff like Crystal Castles and Blank Mass. There’s some other straight up IDM like Machinedrum and a whole variety of things. It’s a process with a lot experimenting.
Joe: Was it a case of doing those electronic parts first, then making the drums match or was it the other way around?
Sam: The drums are normally the last piece of the puzzle. Originally, when we wrote the stuff, there wasn’t really an intention to play it live. So the drums came as an afterthought, and that has kind of carried on. It definitely starts with the electronic stuff, crafting it into a song, passing it back and forth between the both of us. And then then it’s like, ‘Okay, how are we gonna do this live’, and then I’ll get on the kit and dial in that side of things.
Joe: What has been your favourite part of the project so far?
Sam: Playing live and trying to create what we are live by making people feel uncomfortable, and creating this energy around the band. The reception of it is cool, I didn’t expect many people to be into it or to maybe do as many gigs. It’s just great to be doing it and keeping it going, and now it’s lit this fire under us.
Candi: When you do you do music for a long time, we’ve both been in bands for like years and years and you get to that point where you’re like, ‘is anybody gonna give a fuck?’. When you see people that actually do it’s like, ‘oh, this is exciting’. You feel like you’ve hit the nail on the head, as you’re expressing yourself in a way that that really does connect with people. It feels really real, and it’s a really exciting thing. To match Sam on that, I really like screaming in people’s faces. I never realised how much I would enjoy that, but it’s fucking brilliant.
Joe: What does the immediate future look like for fakeyourdeath?
Sam: Progression, and keeping a steady stream of new music, so we’re not leaving it too long in between. It’s still early days, and we’re still almost finding out what our thing is, so there’s lots more music that we’re working on. We just hope to put it out as regularly as possible and hopefully play some more shows. There’s no crazy plan right now.
Candi: We’ve got some stuff under our belts as Sam said, and to just keep getting better, keep pushing things and kind of seeing where we can go with it. Then hopefully there will be some touring in the future, so we can go to service stations, which is everyone’s dream.
Joe: As a final note then, what is your favourite service station?
Candi: There’s one near Bristol that we went to once after a gig at like two in the morning, and I swear it’s like Jurassic Park.
Sam: There’s one that we can’t remember what it’s called. We’ve never seen it since, so we’re not sure if it was real or not. It was like a forest, there was like a stream, it was beautiful.
Candi: We don’t know where it is, but that one, that one’s my favourite one.
Thank you to Sam and Candi for sitting down us with us, you can find listen to null/void here.