Things seemed to have worked for Djanimals generally, too. More than worked. Pretty much killing it.
Jonti Danilewitz had just chucked some of his home records up on Myspace for fun. Less than a year later, he and his band were off to America to record with Mark Ronson. Now he’s jetting between LA and Sydney, finalising tours and videos and releases. It’s been a wild ride for Djanimals, and they’re about to head down to Melbourne to show us exactly why.
Danilewitz sighs when asked if he’s back in Sydney for long. “For the time being, and then I’m going to LA in two weeks and for only two weeks and coming back. Then next year I’m going for two months… who knows really? I’m here for a little while at least.”
It sounds like almost a slog but for Danilewitz, frontman, brainpower and creator of electro-impro-ambient-psychedelic-jam-pop Sydney-based six-piece Djanimals (formerly Danimals), America is a place of opportunity and inspiration since he landed there to work with Mark Ronson after winning the TED LAB competition, which Danilewitz looks back on fondly, despite perhaps witnessing both side of the coin… which he’s pretty reluctant to tell me about in full, because he’s just a heaps nice dude.
“It was pretty cool. It was a really amazing opportunity and I learnt so much, but it does expose me to the best and worst of the music industry at quite a fast pace. But yeah… it was cool. I’m going to be telling my kids about that one day,” he laughs. “And we recorded that crazy song, so it’s cool,” he grins. “I probably shouldn’t actually get into the worst!” he adds, laughing, “[It was all about] learning about the industry and how things are put together and just being able to collaborate with musicians of that calibre as well as learn within our band and that kind of thing. Basically the worst was just that a lot of things got like – ah, I shouldn’t…” he laughs again and trails off, finishing with “– I experienced a lot of good things.”
For these trips, Danilewitz assures me it’s all business, though, and that he’s “just sorting out stuff, shooting a video and sorting out the releases for next year and just planning everything I guess. I’m going there to find out when I should go back next year.”
That’s a lot of travelling. The band and equipment don’t come with him every time, which helps, but for now Danilewitz is definitely laying a little low to make sure the dollars can last him. “It’s never good!” he laughs. “When I was living in New York it required so much [money to live there] that I had to come back and now I’m just chilling at my parents’ house and scraping by. It’s going to the stage where next year I’d like to settle down and there won’t be as much back and forth.”
Things have been pretty crazy, not just in terms of travel, but the recent name change debacle too. Finding a band in America also touring under the moniker of Danimals – a name originally devised by Jonti as D’Animals, as in the French – Danilewitz approached them and were pretty much greeted with a cold hard fist of ‘no’. “We went to them and they said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to sue you. So just change it,’ so uh, now it’s Djanimals.” He pronounces it with more of a silent D than a silent J. “Yeah, like the djembe drum, like a hard J,” he explains.
As if that isn’t all enough – on top of the whole working with one of the world’s foremost producers in America – the band have changed their lineup a little, with James Domeyko (of Domeyko/Gonzalez) joining his bandmate Jaie in Djanimals and bringing his impressive skillset to the band. “He’s playing everything,” laughs Jonti. “He does even more than I do during the show. He sings, guitar, saxophone, keys, so a whole bunch [of stuff].”
And despite adding a member and a whole lot of energy, Danilewitz assures me that the Djanimals sound is being honed down, rather than going crazy. “We’ve been refining what we’ve been doing,” he says. “It’s a lot more dynamic now – we can do the harmonies and it’s nice to have that factor when it all goes crazy.
“It’s definitely developing,” he continues, happy to talk at length about the more technical side of his music. “It feels like it’s really still in its early, early infancy – before, what we were doing was all in our spare time – because it was something that we could only do whenever we had the time (due to his involvement in Sherlock’s Daughter). Now it’s like we’re settling down and we’re starting to develop ideas. James has had a massive influence. He’s been teaching me a lot about different time signatures and stuff like that,” he chuckles.
With the band now at six members, it’s got to be tricky trying to sort out all the different ideas, especially since Danilewitz started it by himself, with no intention of really ever taking this to this level. As such, the band now work together in a much more collaborative way. “Yeah, but it’s still quite separate,” Danilewitz clarifies. “All the recordings are just me in my bedroom and then James has been adding stuff. It’s really quite collaborative, that element. Otherwise it’s really quite equal – everyone’s moving in the same direction in terms of that and we all talk about certain types of music we like and then we try to recreate that.”
One of the main influences for Danilewitz lately has been, unsurprisingly, something very American – a hip hop collective from LA. “I’ve been quite obsessed with Future Collective in LA, [who are] just like these young kids who are making this really twisted and really creative, leagues-ahead-of-their-time-style hip hop and they’ve got this Wu-Tang thing going; they’ve just been releasing albums every two months or so and yeah, I’ve been really into that,” he rambles. “When I DJ, they tell me I play too much hip hop!” he adds, laughing.
A big part of the Djanimals story is also the encouraging scene in Sydney, populated by bands like Megastick Fanfare, Seekae and the recently hugely successful Kyu. “It’s been really supportive and really encouraging,” Danilewitz gushes. “That’s been the best thing. I only started playing because the Megastick guys heard my recordings and made me play live. They were actually going to be the band originally, and then the Kyu girls started playing live a lot. It was really encouraging and everyone’s still collaborating.
“We did a show not so long ago where it was just kind of like a jam show with all of us. It was just bass drum and like one note and a pop melody, and we got about twenty people to join in. A lot of the time it doesn’t work and it’s just like white noise, but when it works it’s amazing and really communal.”
Things seemed to have worked for Djanimals generally, too. More than worked. Pretty much killing it.
DJANIMALS launch their new single Nightshift In Blue with help from friends Kyu and Domeyko/Gonzalez at The Northcote Social Club this Saturday November 20. Tickets from The Corner box office, 9486 1677 or northcotesocialclub.com. They also have two DJ sets this weekend – at Purple Sneakers at Miss Libertine on Friday November 19 and Rats at Colonial Hotel after the NSC show on Saturday. Nightshift In Blue is out now on 7”.
