Tell you what – we love hearing from artists when things go right. We equally love hearing from artists when things go dreadfully wrong. A song that was a piece of piss, written in 20 minutes? Or years in the making and a bastard to write?
Whether it’s a song that came together through great duress or one that was smashed out in a short amount of time, we’re getting the lowdown from some of our favourites on the one song that they can’t stop thinking about – in their own words.
Adam Bernhardt and Kat McGouran, the Toronto-based duo Dermabrasion, talk us through the single ‘Goblin Dance‘ from their debut album ‘Pain Behaviour’ (out now via Hand Drawn Dracula). Take it away, Adam and Kat…
Words: Andy Hughes (Photo Credit: Shelby Wilson)
Adam Bernhardt: “The origins of ‘Goblin Dance’ start with the dissolving of our previous band WLMRT in early 2020. At the time, I had no projects on the go, and was still sort of processing what it meant now that I no longer had a creative outlet. To that end I decided to get a drum machine, a Roland boutique 909 which I quickly traded for an original Roland 606.
My intentions at the time were mostly to have a backing track that I could write songs to, and maybe bring those to some friends and get something started from there. But within weeks the country shut down, and I was suddenly stuck at home with a shiny new old drum machine. A local music store was running a promotion on a home recording bundle which included an interface, a mic, and an Ableton subscription. I got that, and that was kind of it. This setup would be the basis of our entire 2021 EP, ‘Lunate’.
For the drum pattern, I was messing around with the standard patterns (boom cha boom boom cha) but I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if I just hit random buttons. Somehow I ended up with this kind of old school hip hop vibe, like an Eric B and Rakim beat or something. I’m a big Godflesh fan, so I slowed it down to a crawl, and that’s how we ended up with the main drum pattern for ‘Goblin Dance‘.
In terms of the guitar parts, it’s a mix of influences. The main verse is pure Rowland S. Howard. I’ve always loved ‘Junkyard’ and his playing on that album, and those shot notes remind me of ‘Hamlet’ off that album. The other main riff and chorus parts I think are very Daniel Ash, the second riff is basically just ‘Double Dare‘. On the chorus, I hit these big open chords, with the D chord, slid up a whole fret but still droning on the D string, something that gives it an interesting color. The warbly chorus guitar is something I’ve been doing for a while, even in our old band. It’s very inspired by Keith Levene’s (Public Image Ltd.) playing on songs like ‘Theme’ or ‘Memories’. I’ve always liked how tense and nervous those lines sound, so that was something that I wanted to bring to the track. The bass part was more a matter of finding a rhythm that worked with the beat, the triplet pattern gives it this kind of rolling feel that you can’t help but nod your head to.“
Kathleen McGouran: “The bassline is a beast to keep steady and was really hard for me to learn to play and sing at the same time. Adam wrote it and I didn’t take into account having to play it when I started trying to write a vocal part for it since we weren’t even sure we’d ever play these songs live. The very first recording of this song had Adam on vocals talk-singing-narrating objects around the desk just to test out the equipment… “social insurance number… hair tie… moisturizer and makeup brushes…” but it was always called ‘Goblin Dance‘ (that came from him too).
It took me several different versions to get the vocals right. This whole project is a lesson in editing and learning how to be myself. There’s recordings where I’m screaming a lot more and there’s like, double the words. I was trying to be Anna Mayberry from HSY on the first few demos. It just wasn’t hitting. I was listening to something sci-fi and heard the term “space harpoon” and that locked it in for some reason. It helped me find a melody for the chorus that then set this slow, syncopated delivery for the rest of the vocals, and matched the more groovy, subdued tone I’d already developed for ‘In the Time of Queens‘ and ‘Magic Missile‘.
When we released the version on ‘Lunate’ I was surprised people really gravitated towards it but I’ve come to recognize its power. Now it’s almost a standard or signpost for what we’re trying to do musically, especially with drum patterns. After working with Josh Korody (Breeze, Beliefs, Nailbiter) who produced ‘Pain Behaviour‘, the drums on the LP version are mean as fuck (after Adam retracked them in the studio on a Behringer RD-9, which is now our main drum machine). It’s a whole new level now. But I’ll always love the sound of the 606 from the first version because it marks the very beginning of this whole journey. And people tell us it sounds like the Sisters of Mercy demos.
That being said, I still get nervous about playing it live. I really didn’t do myself any favours with the way the rhythm of the vocal delivery syncopates with the bassline. You’d think it’s easy to play the same riff for basically 4 minutes and maybe for many people I’m sure it is, but it makes the slightest hesitation or mistake all the more audible. As I get ready to queue the track I never know if I’ll be able to pull it off. Sometimes I definitely don’t.
The lyric video is about as hack as you can get. The background is a YouTube video of a lava lamp that I recorded on my phone from the computer screen, just because! Then I sat in a chair for 12 hours and edited a bunch of old internet references together on my pirated copy of Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. Luckily it’s now cool for videos to look like they came from a 13-year-old’s computer in 2006. It’s goofy and aesthetically a bit different from everything we’d already shared, and there’s a few little jokes that are probably only funny to me. But that’s the vibe of this song, actually, and maybe the whole band.“
Like what you see? Why not stick around and check out the other articles and interviews!
Don’t forget to follow Birthday Cake For Breakfast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
Birthday Cake For Breakfast 