You also manage Blue Swan Records correct? So, I have no free time to do anything! (laughs) I’m playing in Dance Gavin Dance and then I have my side project, Sianvar opening the tour. Is that one of the ways you pass time on the road? Yeah! For Sure! I don’t have cable, so I just do Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime. (Laughs) How funny! Are you guys big into watching Netflix? He almost negated me on naming it because of that! And I was like, “no one is going to watch this shitty movie! (laughs) Let’s just name it Count Bassy!” It’s funny because I named it “Count Bassy”, and then, a couple weeks later, Jon Mess saw a movie on Netflix where there was a fake band named Count Bassy. There’s a kazoo in it! (laughs) It’s a cool track, probably my favorite song off the new record right now. ![]() It is! I named “Count Bassy” because it’s a different song for Dance Gavin Dance for sure! It’s one of the chiller songs on the album, but at the same time, I still feel like it’s kind of heavy. This wouldn’t happen to be a reference to the jazz musician would it? ![]() Looking through the new track list, “Count Bassy” was a title that especially caught my attention. They do a lot of vocal writing work in the studio while the music is all written up-front. But vocally, yeah! I’d say that they try to see what sounds right, because you could get all your vocals good in the studio, and everything doesn’t sound the way you’d thought it would. We have everything written completely before we get in there. Is there a lot of improvisation that goes on in the studio then? We like to make sure that every emotion is represented and whatever the music calls for, because the instrumentals are written first, will be addressed because that gets brought up by the music. Over the course of our albums, we’ve talked about pretty much everything. There’s no restrictions on lyrical subject matter. We’re not going to come out and hammer people over the head and say, this is what we stand for!(laughs). No, not at all! We’re not a methods band. Were there any lyrical themes or topics in particular that you wanted to focus on with the new material? Everyone kind of chose their producer for their instrument and then we put it all together so that everyone could get a tone they felt really represented themselves. So, we did drums and guitar with Kris Crummett in Portland, vocals with Erik Ron in LA, and bass with Drew Elliott in Sacramento. We did things a little different this record, but it was just because we wanted to shake things up from a creative standpoint. ![]() On this album, we let songs go off the deep end in different directions and it has some pretty cool results.Īwesome! With albums, you guys are regularly charting in the Billboard 200 and fans are just eating up all the new material! Do you think this success had any influence on the production process for Artificial Selection? In the past, we’ve always kept the Dance Gavin Dance backbone, post-hardcore, and branched out here and there within songs, but ended up bringing it back. This album branches out a lot further in each direction than normal. Yeah! We have, I think, made the most diverse record we’ve done so far. Can fans expect this same kind of variety with Artificial Selection? Jumping right into the good stuff, in past albums you guys have been known to explore a range of musical styles such as pop-punk and progressive rock. Hi Will! Thanks so much for joining me today! I’m very excited to speak with you about your new album. And no surprise, it contains even more variety than the last! Below, Will gives us the inside scoop into their new album, his favourite tour snacks, Netflix, and more! I had the pleasure of speaking with Will about the band’s eighth album, Artificial Selection (out June 8th via Rise Records). Swan not only serves as an anchor for the band, but his catchy guitar riffs permeate Dance Gavin Dance’s sound and give their music a youthful and rebellious edge. Second, riding along with this steady stream of success, is the consistent presence of one of the founding members, and guitarist, Will Swan. With the majority of the band’s seven studio albums landing in the Billboard 200, Dance Gavin Dance are always a fan favorite. However, despite this, there are two major aspects that have remained constant over the years. With a lineup that has acted as a somewhat revolving door of sorts, consistency, in the past, hasn’t appeared to be the name of the game. Along with their signature track-to-track variety, Dance Gavin Dance has also experimented with a host of different musicians. In other words, the band has no problem testing the typical boundaries of musical classification. ![]() Each record unapologetically defies genre labels and ranges anywhere from pop-rock to post-hardcore. In fact, the California quintet have released seven studio albums since their formation in 2005. Dance Gavin Dance has never been a group to rest quietly on their laurels.
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