Dappled Cities

When you listen to DAPPLED CITIES you actually see things. Vivid colours, strange animals, story-book characters. It’s as if a world that you didn’t know existed, and all it’s possibilities, is now within your grasp. DAPPLED CITIES can take you there, as one respected reviewer put it, “by weaving between grandiose indie-rock, oddly bent pop and big-emotion, big-gesture music that seems refracted through a vaguely hallucinogenic mirror”.

Two years after the ludicrously intense international touring and general global endorsement of DAPPLED CITIES art pop opus, 'Zounds', the band are preparing to deliver us their 4th studio album. A work that will eclipse their highest achievements of a ten-year career traced back from their current status as live cult favourites from New York to Paris, to the teenagers first playing music together in their Australian childhood suburbs.

The band, originally called Periwinkle, formed in 1997 when 15 year-olds David Rennick and Hugh Boyce were joined by Alex Moore and English born Tim Derricourt. Their first album, 'A Smile' (released in 2004 under the new moniker - Dappled Cities Fly), was a home-recorded, independent hit in Australia, and its tracks were later remixed as 'A Crooked Smile' EP by the likes of an emerging Wolfmother and Spod.

The band’s sophomore effort 'Granddance' was a grandiose record full of oldeworld ideas and cutting-edge sonics (& their first platter on the US Dangerbird label), which was uncoiled to mass acclaim in 2006. The following two years were spent touring the US with the likes of The Fratellis and Tokyo Police Club, with fiery forays home riding shotgun to silverchair, Modest Mouse and LCD Soundsystem.

Not many Australian bands attempt to face the US beast as head-on as DAPPLED CITIES over this period, and almost inevitably the band experienced their first line-up change in a decade. Founding member Hugh Boyce retired and was replaced by Allan Kumpulainen on drums, while touring keyboardist Ned Cooke was instated as a full-time member. Brimming with vim, road-fit and on the brink of something special, the band uprooted from their home of Sydney and got States-side. They shot videos in Wyoming gas stations, played impromptu gigs in South Dakota sound factories, partied with Hugh Jackman and Steve Malkmus and even managed to film a 26-episode children’s odyssey for Disney called ‘Alphabreaks’.

New York was both Poison Apple and Forbidden Fruit, says Dave. “We made the most of the $10-per-day budget we were on but there were five of us sleeping in a one-bedroom bed-sit in East Village and we finally turned to cash-in-hand street jobs to survive.” Under the expert A&R guidance of Justin Meldal-Johnsen (music director and bassist for Beck, Ladytron and Nine Inch Nails) and respected American co-producer Chris Coady (TV on the Radio), DAPPLED CITIES got busy making the mayhem and magic that would become the 'Zounds' album.

If 'Granddance' had sound-tracked the band’s New York period, 'Zounds' would come to represent a change in mood and environment as the 5 members stacked into shared digs in North London soaking up the inspiration, music history, pints of lager and mega-competitive scene of that other global music capital. It was in London the band began working on material for their 4th album, paying particular attention to an exploding Brixton club scene, which offers some hints at what is to follow.

DAPPLED CITIES have never been a band to replicate sounds or ideas – they’ve always been art in motion – and while 'Zounds' explored sonic powers they’d never dealt in before, it is apparent that DAPPLED CITIES trademark live energy had been harnessed on these new demos and that the future album promises to lift the band to new, unimaginable heights.

The band have recently reconvened in San Francisco after a well-deserved break to commence work on their defining album. With an incredible US collaborator onboard to bring the very best out of the new sounds and virgin recording sessions, the only hint we can get from the band on the new work is this - “It promises to be as daggy and classy, cunning and futuristic, as us!” Now, the wait.