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?