It’s only been in the last decade for it to become common for alternative musicians to fully embrace the concept of blending a catalogue of styles and sounds that otherwise wouldn’t be associated with the rock genre. From the blending of J-pop and metal with BABYMETAL, to the combination of rock and EDM as seen with ELECTRIC CALLBOY, to TWENTY ONE PILOTS where no song is the same with their constant roundabout of musical genres, the entire community sits in wait to hear what’s to come next. This is no different when it comes to Sheffield electro-emo, angst-pop trio, AIR DRAWN DAGGER, where a love of various genres and writing songs in the back of a cake shop resulted in their formation, with each new release allowing them to grow in confidence when it comes to creating such unique sounds.
Sitting down with founding members Maisie (lead vocals) and Lewis (guitars/backing vocals), they talk through where their style came from and some challenges they faced as a fresh-faced band within the scene. Lewis says, “I say it came around naturally, I remember when me and Maisie were writing in the back of a cake shop acoustically and sort of deciding that there was going to be no rules. I feel like a few years ago, when we started, that it was still very much tribalistic in the scenes and stuff in that people were like ‘no, it’s pop-punk’ or ‘no, just do emo’.”
“We’ve always loved different stuff, it has to be a melting pot for us, or I don’t think it would be as good if we stuck to one thing. It come from metal to hip-hop influences or synths and electro influences as well, it’s always been in there. And doing the mixtape last year really got us to push it to the forefront, to really shove it in everyone’s faces in that we are going to blend different sounds and genres in what we do.”
AIR DRAWN DAGGER themselves have been fortunate in their time as a band through being able to collaborate with certain producers and filmmakers when it comes to each release cycle. Their latest EP, Songs To Fight The Gods To, was produced by Neil Kennedy [BOSTON MANOR, CREEPER], who they reveal had been first to make contact, along with working with Aaran McKenzie [WHILE SHE SLEEPS] on music videos.
One of their more recent videos for their song You Should Have Known Better depicts Maisie in a range of locations deemed unsafe for women, and one by one she reclaims each space. Maisie herself says that it was a collaborative concept between them and McKenzie: “We had a lot of different concepts being thrown around for this video. We were working with Aaran McKenzie, we kind of threw a lot of concepts back and forth between us and this is what we landed on which is an almost melting pot of a few concepts we had to begin with. Although we came at it from different angles, this is kind of the melding of creative minds, I suppose, of what this has come out to be. There was a lot of back and forth, it’s definitely completely different from where I thought we would go in the first place but I’m glad that we ended up there.”
She continues to explain their history with McKenzie. “We’ve been working with Aaran for a couple of years now, we really trust his input. I think that one of the reasons why we trust him so much is that he’s really open to listening to other people’s ideas, but at the end of the day when you know that you can trust who is doing the filmmaking and you know that you can say ‘this is what we want to do’, and they’re going to make it look good, you don’t have to rein yourself in and be like ‘okay, how’s this skill set going to work out?’ because he’s always just going to make it happen. That’s a big influence towards what we do when we say, ‘we really want to do all of this mad stuff’, and he’ll be like ‘okay, let’s make it happen!’”
“He’s like a really creative genie. We’ll say, ‘why don’t we try this?’ and he’s like immediately onboard, he never like, ‘maybe we shouldn’t’, instead he’s all, ‘yeah! Let’s do all this and more!’” Lewis happily adds on.
From the concept of the music video, it’s evident on AIR DRAWN DAGGER’s stance on topics relating to sexism, calling out oppression, and taking down the patriarchy with their lyrics making it even more obvious on their thoughts and criticism of the world around them. Again, this is something that just comes naturally to them as Maisie says. “I always write from experience; I always write on things that I care about. I don’t want to speak for the guys, but I can imagine that they also feel quite strongly about these topics as well.”
Lewis agrees with her, “for sure! They always come out quite well, don’t they, from how we demo stuff which is, like, not too conscious really. It just comes from a state of just creating and then the finishing touches always come along like, ‘oh, okay, look at that! Look at that saying something eh! Really giving it a go!’”
Songs To Fight The Gods To is out now via Silent Cult Records.
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