Dan Wright

Additional Editing by Anouska Liat

Fearless and driven, sitting down with session drummer and creative Dan Wright was like unboxing a mind spilling over with thoughts and ideas.

I’ve seen that you’ve been making short films and photoshoots in conjunction with the music that you make, how important is the media outside of the music to you and your projects?

It’s primarily important, you can have a band but it’s what sets you aside from other bands. Obviously if you’re in a band anyone can get up on stage and play, but it’s also how you portray yourself outside of that. The thought process wasn’t just “let’s get up on stage and play”, it was more “well let’s keep people endured with it by adding things that they can throw themselves into”, so with the short films that we make there’s hidden messages in them and  cryptic things in the background to see who actually pays attention. In our newest [video] there are hidden meanings that tell people when our first single is out, so we don’t advertise it but if you watch and pay attention, you’ll find out. So in a way it is important; it’s a way to keep people intrigued with what you’re doing without having to go “come to our show!” 24/7. It’s something different to do.

It inspires a sort-of cultish fanbase then?

Yeah, just without the killings [laughs].

You’ve recently started your music review blog, can you explain the thought process behind that?

You’re not going to like this answer [laughs]. With most review blogs in Manchester, I feel like they mainly talk about how the sun shines out of people’s arses, and how there’s nothing wrong with the track and how it’s perfect; the best thing God has ever given them. It’s not the case. No song is perfect, nothing is perfect, every song has flaws. I play for Harri Pain and I’ve also reviewed him and slagged off his song (laughs). Not necessarily “slagged off”, but I’ve criticised the song numerous amounts because you can take any song and think it’s amazing, but even artists that are my favourite artists I’ll think “yeah I have an issue with that”. You can’t listen to a song and say “that had everything in it”; everything has something that you would personally change but someone else might not. A good 90% of review blogs here just state “this band’s great and here’s why”. That’s it. There’s no “this band’s great BUT they could do this differently”, and that’s what I want to do. I want to create a blog where it’s not afraid to shine the negatives, but not in a negative light. Rather than going “this song’s dogsh*t, you should stop”, it’s more constructive and not licking arse.

Given that, are you happy with the wider state of journalism or do you think they are too afraid to make a few potential enemies?

General journalism I think is fine. There’s been a massive debate for months whether journalists are too harsh; they pick apart everything down to the finest detail, and sometimes it’s not needed. They can go overboard with criticism, but it’s good that there are criticisms rather than the same perfect review like in Manchester. Change the record.

So you’ve got many different projects on the go, is that how you operate?

Yeah, I worked as a session musician in Huddersfield for two years so I was always under pressure all the time. I once had thirteen songs to learn in the space of two days; it was for a black metal album as well, I f*cking hate black metal. But I think after doing that for so long you get used to the mindset of “If you’re not doing too much, you get bored”. So while I was only doing Orca, on the side I was like “I could do this, this and this”. By the end of Orca I had five things on the go, and now I currently have nine projects all at the same time. I’m working with Olly Kenway, Joe Marsden, Harri Pain, Let’s Chat About That, Artistic Logistics, Incarnate, short films, photography, and the blog. It’s good because it keeps you occupied, and it keeps what you’re doing relevant all the time, because you’re not just posting the same thing [on social media]. It keeps it fresh without being too much and I think it’s the best way to be. Not that I get bored, but I like to have the ability to be free and do what I want, so with a band I’m constrained to just playing drums, and sometimes that’s just not enough. I’ve got all these ideas that I can’t get out there by just playing drums in the same band on the same song, unless I did it with interpretive dance or morse code. A different week is a different project, but not completely changing projects each time.

So do you think being in Manchester presents a lot of opportunities for you then?

Manchester is no joke, it’s a big city with a big music scene. You have to take every opportunity you get because if you sleep on it then it kinda sleeps on you; it won’t wait for you to be ready. You have to throw yourself in and get in the mindset of “I have to work hard”. That’s why I do work so hard on all my projects, because there are so many good bands; Crystal Wolves, The Rants, Animal Omens, Shebang, and all of them work so hard. That’s what fuels me to say “well I want to work harder”, so that people think ‘Oh, what’s going on over here?” and pay attention to me instead.

Is there an album that’s been released in the last decade that you would say in 30 - 50 years time would still be relevant?

It’s a shame ‘Kid A’ was released in 2000 (laughs). Instead probably ‘We Like It Here’ by Snarky Puppy. They’re a 15-strong band that play jazz that’s really interesting and intricate, not just noise or lounge music. Every time they play it’s different. They have a basic structure but improvise around 50% of their songs and just look at each other to play solos. There’s a YouTube video of them playing one song and it’s around ten minutes long, but five and a half minutes of that is just a keyboard solo. It’s insane. I’m not a big fan of [jazz], it has to have elements in it for me to think it’s cool. If you’ve just got a drummer, pianist, bassist, guitarist and vocalist it’s a bit “ehh”, but with [Snarky Puppy] you’ve got a synth, violin, trombone, double bass, bongos, piano, two drums, three vocalists, five guitarists; there’s so much going on at once and it’s so intricate, like a jazz orchestra.

Mobile phones at gigs is a really contested issue right now. Seeing people on their phones when you’re drumming on stage, does that demoralise or annoy you?

Can I just say that these are probably the best questions I’ve ever been asked. I usually get very general questions like “why do you like playing drums?” and “why do you like this band?” and stuff (not that relevant but bigs you up...your choice to keep or chop it). No it doesn’t really affect me. If everyone, like the entirety of the audience, was on their phones then it’s a little disheartening. It feels like everyone is more focused what they’re filming, and while they’re filming you the attention is on “does this look good?”. Just enjoy it! When you get a few people here and there it’s ok, but when we did the Orca headline show the majority of people were on their phones and I was like “just put it down, have a listen, and look at what we’re doing”. We put so much work into the actual physical aspect of it, so when we felt that people were too busy staring at their phones we felt it was unappreciated. I think it’s not a problem when it comes to big-time gigs. When I went to see The 1975 around 95% of the people in there were on their phones, I was one of them for certain songs, but being on it for the entire gig it’s like “why have you paid when you could just watch it on YouTube?”. I think it’s a bit of a grey area; it’s good but it’s also bad depending on the percentage of the audience that are using their phones.

Do you regularly use your phone at a gig?

I did, but then I came off social media for about two and a half weeks and during that went to go see ‘Harriet Curry’. I didn’t use my phone once during that and I enjoyed it a lot more. The thing that affected me was when I went back to see my friends and they were like “how was it? Have you got any videos?” and when I said no, they said “I wish I could have seen that”. You don’t have anything to show, but you do have the experience yourself. I went to a gig last week where I didn’t use my phone, and I feel you just enjoy it and get a lot more out of it. But if you want to show someone how good it is, you kind of need to be on your phone and that’s the problem with technology; it’s overtaken it a little bit. A lot of people won’t go to gigs because they know they can see videos of it, which is cool, but for artists it’s a bit of a ballache. You get less people paying because they’d rather sit at home watching it rather than going and watching it themselves.

You get artists like Jack White now who are employing phone bans at gigs.

Really? That’s mad.

Do you think there should be phone bans at gigs?

Yes. Straight up, yes. Maybe not to every gig, but if the artist puts a lot into the physical side of it, like The 1975’s live show, I don’t feel a lot of people got to see it fully. There was so much going on, I was like “holy f*ck, this is mad!”, but because a lot of people were looking at their phones they missed a lot of the actual experience, so it was a little bit wasted. I think for specific types of gigs where it’s more physically intimate there should be a phone ban, whereas if it’s a band who are going to play songs for twenty minutes at a small venue then maybe not. F*cking get rid of them all, burn them all.

Who has influenced your fashion sense?

(Laughs) I would mainly say Matty Healy because he wears a lot of feminine clothes. Initially I saw a photoshoot of him wearing white pants and these great big f*cking black heels, and I was like “Oh my God, he looks so cool”. There was a lot of stigma around it because unfortunately a lot of people are still in the mindset of “a man can’t wear women’s clothes”, and I really believe this needs to be rethought because it’s 2019, people can do what they want. How is me wearing a blouse going to affect your meal out? So yeah, he has a very weird artistry look to him, he looks like a musician because he’s so open and free with how he dresses. Yes, sometimes in shows he wears ‘the norm’, shirts and trousers, but then he’ll go on stage in the most outrageous sh*t you’ve ever seen, so then that keeps people intrigued because if you have a desirable and infinite look to you people are going to want to stick around you longer, knowing you aren't going to wear the same old sh*t every time they see you. With that in mind, I try to copy Matty’s attitude in being free and open with what I wear, half of the things I own are ‘women’s’, literally I’m wearing women’s shoes right now. It’s not just freedom of expression, it’s having that ability to be free without criticisms telling you ‘you can’t do that’. Then again, that gives you more of a standpoint to say “yes I can” which creates publicity and then higher sales, so it’s a massive butterfly effect.

Finally, what do you do to relax?

I don’t really relax (laughs). Since I’ve moved to Manchester I’ve had around a week off. I get the occasional spare hour which I spend writing songs, playing video games, listening to music, or just thinking of ideas for the projects I’m in. For me, relaxation isn’t playing [drums], even though I’d be working on writing a review or working on a short film, that is relaxation because I’m not physically lugging my gear across the city, setting it all up, playing it, then lugging it all back. That’s the one thing I hate about being a drummer, there’s so much sh*t to carry all the time (laughs). Even essays are relaxation to me. Most people stress about it, but for me it’s just sitting down with a laptop, music playing; with nine projects on the go, taking an hour out to just write something unrelated is great, as long as I’m not playing drums, that’s what relaxation is to me.