What brought The Dead Heir to record a double B-side instead of an A+B?
I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor was originally released as a B-side. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da was released as an A-side. We know which side we’re on.
Outside of this, there seems to be a recurring theme – you’re recording the album in the key of B, your latest photo shoot has the band running around in both bee keeper and literal bee suits. You could even say Nubanga has got a bit of a bee-inspired drone riff when it opens. How’d you come up with the concept?
We have infinite respect for the humble bee – they’re chillers that cooperate well, respect female leadership, communicate through dancing, fuck flowers and vomit honey. If we can capture some of their rad spirit in our performance, we’re happy. As how we got the idea, the similarity in key was initially an accident. We said “Oh shit, we can’t release two songs in B.” But when we tried changing the key of the songs they sounded rubbish. So instead we decided to structure an elaborate B-themed motif around the whole release to justify it. Bee suits are cheaper than capos, right?
How’d you manage to record that bad boy in the time between the residency, Al’s trip overseas and now?
Yeah, we’ve been busy. Very little sleep was the key. We set aside a weekend to get the job done and we did it. Shaun (Stolk) had it worst. He had work at 5am on the Saturday, came to the studio, headed straight to a gig afterwards, worked again at 5am on Sunday and came straight back to the studio. To make it up to him, we put him in a bee costume and chased him around with a big net.
You’ve got an absolute banger of a lineup on the night – six sets between six acts. How’d you manage to pull so many artists together?
Bees construct their hives with hexagonal shells. They understand intuitively that six is the most powerful and efficient number. It’s also a great amount of bands to see for 10 bucks. Jacob from JEM Presents and Al managed to track down Archer Moore, Jumping Jack and Neil, James Seedy, Sugar Teeth, Bob Harrow and Northland, and Dianas for us. What a buzzing hive this’ll be.
Will there be free honey at the gig?
We’re still working that angle, but I can guarantee that the night will be sticky and sweet regardless.
