From signing to Sydney record label, I OH YOU, to releasing their debut EP, Johnny Took from DMA’s discusses the band’s stellar year with AARON BRYANS ahead of their appearance at the Circo Festival on Saturday, June 28, at Claremont Showgrounds.
DMA’s are all about doing their own thing and perfecting their music; and people love it.
From recording their latest material from the comfort of Johnny Took’s bedroom to setting Sydney alight with a huge debut gig at the Camperdown Café last month on 48 hours’ notice; The Newtown trio, comprised of Tommy O’Dell, Matt Mason and Johnny, have been sending shockwaves through the industry.
“When we first recorded Play It Out, which was probably a year-and-a-half ago, we decided to make a video and finally put something together,” Took reveals. “Our plan for that was to put out a track and hopefully get some people talking about it or find some management; and we did that. And once we got management on board we showed some more of the songs we’d recorded to I OH YOU and they jumped on board. It’s working out well for us. We had a plan and we wanted to do it a bit differently to the standard, gigging around town and slowly building your set up. We wanted to spend more time in the studio and we were conscious about that.”
Although recording in Took’s bedroom seems like an incredible challenge, the team has worked on its expansion and set up for years.
“I had this bedroom set up for about three years now,” he explains. “When we first showed the demos to our management and then Yohan at I OH YOU they all had a fondness for the sound of the demos and there was something endearing about the fact they were done in the bedroom.
“We had our own kind of sound to it, which I was pretty surprised to hear. I thought we’d go into a studio to do something but I’m happy we didn’t now. I like the fact that this is the sound that people have heard from the tracks we’ve done over the last couple of years. We did try a song in a studio with a really good engineer and it didn’t come up with what we wanted. The space that I’ve got here is just enough to get the sound that we need to get.”
Although DMA’s are now starting to receive national attention and a rise in popularity; Took believes the desire to tour won’t affect their writing tenacity.
“We try to never stop writing. I find that writing is one of those things that you’ve got to keep doing. It’s kind of like if you stopped doing exercise you’d get unfit. We’re always going to keep writing, but I am looking forward to touring properly. We’re about halfway through our EP tour at the moment. We just had Sydney, Melbourne and Sydney. It was so nice to play three shows in a row.”
The DMA’s will be in Perth for the Circo Festival on Saturday, June 28 at the Claremont Showgrounds alongside a killer line-up that includes band faves, Violent Soho.
“We’re just looking forward to playing with the Violent Soho dudes. And we haven’t really done DMA’s in a proper festival line-up so I think the sound will go down really well.”
