The forecast is frost

Daemien Frost are a Dublin three-piece who specialise in a rather obscure strain of electronica. Their sound is, to say the least, a somewhat baffling blend of instrumentation and soundscapes layered with digital noises, complex rhythms and combustible guitars.

“I was at a loose end after being in my previous band, The Null Set, and I wanted to start playing again,” says Hag, the strangely dubbed hyper-drummer, on the founding of the band. “Dave (guitar), Mark (bass) and myself have all known each other since we were fifteen. I met up with Dave again, and we started playing around with drums, guitar and a keyboard for other sounds and textures. We’d all kinda fallen into the same way of thinking.

“One of the things myself and Dave did was to lay down a rule that says that it wasn’t allowed to sound like anything else; so with that pretext, we went in and started writing stuff. I’d be into Don Cavalero, all that noodly stuff, Dave would be into Black Sabbath and Mark is into Truman’s Water. It’s three people bringing different things to the table, so to speak. That helped a lot in making the sound.”

Having formed just over twelve months ago, Daemien Frost have been busily establishing themselves both live and on record with a string of split 7” releases with the likes of The Jimmy Cake and Montana Pete, a recently released album, Corpus Daemo, and several live dates across the UK and Ireland. “We went on a tour of England a couple of months ago, we played Nottingham and Leeds,” says Hag. “It went down really well. England’s notoriously difficult; some of the gigs had only forty people at them but in Leeds we played in a cocktail bar in the middle of Happy Hour. Everyone was just shouting and screaming. It was really good fun!”

The recording of the album took place in quite unlikely circumstances, namely a fruit and veg importing and exporting warehouse in the middle of Smithfield. “It’s an ex-prison. We were suspended up on an elevated floor that takes up half of the room, and we recorded there on a digital 16 track. We borrowed all the equipment from people we know: amps, mics, the desk, everything. We spent ages getting everything just right. You have an idea in your head and unless it sounds the same way outside your head, you aren’t going to be happy with it.”

Complexity and originality go hand in hand with Daemien Frost, so much so that in the midst of layer upon layer of sounds and beats, it’s extremely easy for the listener to get lost in the sonics. However after a couple of listens, the music seems to fall into place and gel into a sensical aural experience. Weaving together such a sound is no easy task. “We wanted to use our imaginations with the music,” he says. “We worked very hard at the songs, spending a lot of time structuring them and putting bits together and making a big jigsaw. I like music that’s challenging. Music that’s obvious doesn’t interest me, in a musician’s capacity. It’s the way our heads work. It’s not intentional, we don’t go along and try to make something that makes sense after the third listen, it’s just what comes out.”

As for the future, Daemien Frost are investing in video shoots to go with the record and complement the music visually. “There’s a couple of guys in The Connect Four Orchestra who are in this group that make animated videos. We shot one last weekend and there’s another couple in the pipeline as well. Because we’re so precious about the songs themselves, there’s a lot we’d like to convey visually as well as musically, structurally and rhythmically. If you’ve got co-ordinated visuals going along with it as well, it can only add to the sound. Without sounding all arty and wanky, that is.”