Peggy Chats with: DAMEFRISØR

Your weekly go-to new music guide brought to you by our London music journo, Peggy as she uncovers the latest ‘bands and artists to watch’ in the post-punk, new wave, jazz and indie communities. This week she chats band-forming drunken encounters, live highlights and phonetic spellings with Bristolian, post-punk newcomers, DAMEFRISØR. 

@peggyfromearth

We’ve seen you publicly as a band since mid 2019, but what’s the ‘meet cute’ story of how you first met?

We're all originally from Bristol and most of us have known each other for ages either from school or nights out; the band started with Armon (bass), Kazhi (vox), Nyle (drums), Jamie (guitar) and a friend of ours who later left the band Dylan. Kazhi and Nyle bumped into Garin (guitar) in December of 2018 at a techno night at the Arnolfini. We were all pretty drunk and heard Gaz played guitar so we invited him to join the band, honestly thinking we wouldn’t see him again, but a week later he turned up to Nyle's house for practice hahah. Then earlier this year our friend Sam (synth) joined.

On seeing you perform live at South London’s infamous hub for emerging post-punk bands, The Brixton Windmill, I heard immediate echoes of Joy Division’s introverted Ian Curtis and subsequently an early New Order. How would you describe your musical style? 

From the beginning we’ve always been open to mixing genres. Of course we’re all into Joy Division and New Order but besides perhaps the vocal style we musically take a lot of influences from everywhere. Everyone in the band has a very eclectic taste in music and that really feels to affect the way we write our songs.

What was the songwriting process behind your debut single ‘Huile’ and why was it chosen as your first musical offering?

That song came about super quickly and we loved the energy and emotion behind it. Thinking about it now we were all just itching to get something out! We felt like it was a good introduction into the music we were making at the time so we released it as our first single.  The protagonist featured in the music video for your latest release ‘And You Know’ appears to be attempting to enjoy a boozy affair for one (we’ve all been there). What were the ideas behind the video and how does it sit well alongside the track? 

Armon filmed that video intending to use the footage for ‘Huile’ back in November, but once ‘And You Know’ came out we all felt the footage suited the song better. Visually it translates to the themes of the song in terms of self loathing, alienation from other people and reflection. Which live show has been your most memorable to date, all be it for good, bad or ugly reasoning?

We’d all agree that our most recent/first headline show at The Old England in Bristol was our best so far, the energy was there and it was lit. Walked out to Travis Scott too.

Your hometown of Bristol is in no doubt a thriving musical hub, but where would you dub its ‘go to’ venues for scouting out upcoming bands and artists, whether mainstream spots or best kept secrets?  There are a lot of great venues in Bristol but we would have to say that The Old England is were its at! There's always something good happening down there! From really good bands playing to nights like ‘Illegal Data’. Its easily the 'go to' to hear new music and meet likeminded people!  March and April looked set to be busy gigging months, supporting both Talk Show and The Jacques on their headline tours. With the UK government’s social-distancing measures still in place, can we hope to see these gigs rescheduled and do you have other live shows we can look forward to?  Initially we were gutted that those dates were cancelled! I guess we saw it coming, but it's obviously important to remember that they were all cancelled for good reason. The Talk Show gigs have been rescheduled to the 9th and 10th of September in Bristol & Brighton. We’re also playing with Fehlt in September. Looking forward to playing again! As such a new band we've only just started getting used to playing shows, cant wait till we can get back to it! Iceage and Matt Maltese seemed to have sparked the first wave of pandemic themed releases; have you found similar inspiration and have you been able to keep active as a band in physical separation?  We’ve all been effected in an emotional sense, so of course that’s going to affect the way we write songs, but we haven’t really taken inspiration in the sense of using the virus as subject matter for our songs. We’ve all bought interfaces and been working on stuff through email.

You’ve released two singles to date but what are your plans for the near future? Any whisperings of a debut EP?  We’re in the process of writing an EP at the moment, we have a few songs right now but this separation has delayed everything. But were planning to use our time during this period to write as much as we can! On a final note, I’m ashamed to admit I’m often corrected on mispronouncing your band name. Can you settle this debate once and for all, how is it spelt phonetically?  DAME-E-FRIZ-YUER hehe Love Armon, Sam, Garin, Kazhi, Nyle, Jamie and Ollie. @damefrisor  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6pUBYQ7PwPZpq7TzLd7Nr6?si=NtOet6MjQMaUb4KkiVV-DQ Bandcamp (music and merchandise): https://damefrisr.bandcamp.com/music