WE INTERVIEW CHASINGDOLLS!
I love ChasingDolls name! What’s the story behind this?
Haha thank our sixteen year old selves for that one… Poetry has always been a big part of our sound and the name came from one of Hayden’s poems about sleep paralysis. It was the best name out of the very hit or miss list we drafted out when we first started jamming songs together. It rolled off the tongue and has stuck with us haha!
What’s your favourite part of the alternative music community?
Our favourite part about the alternative community is how open minded it is and how the spectrum is endless. It’s counter- culture through expression. Full of niches for people to find whatever helps them express themselves and escape the system’s formula. In Chasing Dolls we love so many different alternative sub cultures, so we all come together to form our own planet in the alternative universe!
You described growing up in towns local to south west. Has your sound been impacted by the sense of place there? Has the music scene in the areas also influenced you in any way?
In smaller or more forgotten towns that we grew up in around the south-west you search harder to find people into alternative music and its chaos. Therefore since we found each other, we’ve always been close, a band of brothers, which allows us ultimate trust when jamming together which makes playing live so fun.
We also often have to build the gigs, parties and bring the community together as it can be spread out. It’s wicked finding more of the tribe that sticks together, all from different skateparks, scenes and towns across the south west. We’ve all been involved in creating different events to share with this crazy cool community!
The sound shares the desire for something more and escaping the rat race, but through different perspectives. The sound is desperate but uplifting in a chaotic way, much like a lot of our scene!
I’ve heard about some interesting stories from shutdown and popup gigs along with Missing Limbs… Can you tell us more about this!?
Haha where to start…We love pop up gigs. Whether that’s at the skatepark in our hometown, or posting something up for the adventurous that fancy an interesting setting. Us and bands we’re tight with have a lot like that planned for this year. Ones they’ll make documentaries about the madnesses we managed to pull it off hahahah. Well…
Keep a sneaky eye on the Instagram for any secret gigs!
We played at the East London Halloween skate jam at Downside DIY recently which was a wicked day. We got to skate all day together with some stylish skaters. It’s so fun looking across the park seeing all your band mates on a board hahaha
Then when the jam begun, we were in a chaotic sanctuary playing our songs to people listening and dancing, skaters throwing down the gnarliest tricks and other bands Prodigal and Fanchon killing their sets too. People tried shutting that down, even with fireworks! but the skate community kept everyone protected and the atmosphere was electric!
In terms of shutdown, a couple years ago we attempted to put on a gig at a pub in a rural hometown of ours and this town does not have regular alternative gigs at all. Long story short… over a hundred people turned up in this tiny pub which they’d decided to put the rugby on, so was swarming with pissed posh people already…
They told us to push our set back if we wanted to play. Infuriated, we obliged only to keep the prospect of the gig happening. Eventually the first band Toast started playing and everyone was having a blast. This except for the horrible bar manager that could not take such movement in his pub, even though we had let them know and prepared them best we could for what happens when live rock music is played.
Long story short… once the gig got shutdown by authorities, we had a 100+ people who had all traveled to the remote location of this rural town stood in front of the venue, lit up by blue flashing lights. They were buzzing with fury and anticipation. It was time for us to try and redeem the night. At this point it was about 10-11pm and we made some calls to mates with generators and speakers, so we could set up a pop up party for our community that got let down. A couple of us went with the friends that were bringing the speakers and generator to set up speedily, whilst two of us led the mighty convoy on foot to our secret location! A night that turned devastating as it got dark, was rectified by the rebelling and motivating community that we’ve found ourselves in from this band. The pop up popped off with everybody up for the spontaneous adventure of redemption!
Your new single Blood Moon is set to release next month following a debut EP! Can you describe your creative process for this upcoming music?
Blood Moon is out on the 21st of November. We were listening to a lot of 90s emo like Slint and Cap N Jazz and were super hooked. That must have had some influence to our creative mindset when we were jamming around the time of writing Blood Moon. We never want to be pinned down by formulaic structures when songwriting. One of us will start something and then we will build the world of the song together.
For Blood moon it follows a theme of the perspective of love through the perception of the moon. Walking home late night from a partner’s place where the love doesn’t feel like it’s the right time. The blood moon that seemed different sizes and distances away from various viewpoints that were passed on the way home.
It evoked thought and the moon became a metaphor about how this love is being seen. When I over thought the love/ moon (it) seemed so far away, but is it love if overthought to a point of detachment.
The moody with a flicker of shimmer guitar is the glimpse of the moon on the dark night. The drums taking you the long way home with the atmospheric, scattered drum pattern representing a heartbeat unsure, with the unnerving edge of the bass line with its moody groove. The music encapsulates the dark and unnerving feelings on the confusing, lost ride home from an unsettling love…
Cheers and keep us updated,
Chasing Dolls x
