Album release days can bring out a variety of emotions for different artists, especially when it’s your debut full-length being finally put out into the world. Months of writing, recording, producing, all resulting in the final form of your debut record, now ready for everyone to hear. It’s something that electro-emo trio, AIR DRAWN DAGGER, have recently experienced when they put out their debut album, A Guide For Apparitions, a record that not only follows what we’ve come to expect so far with their genre-bending and sound experimentation with the main consensus being there are no rules, but also brings in themes of the supernatural and mysticism.
Ahead of their hometown album release show at Sheffield’s Corporation, we were able to attend and speak to the Yorkshire trio, witnessing the general excitement for the upcoming show and acoustic set for their Patreon supporters. At this point, the album had been released a day prior and, apparently, today’s fast-paced nature is in direct contrast to what took place on release day according to guitarist, Lewis Budden, who mentioned how, despite the build-up and the general anxiety-infused excitement in the days leading up to it, the actual release is mostly one filled with emails and social media; “Album release days have quite a lot of admin as, unless you’re playing a show on that day, it’s just like posting things and spreading the word, doing PR and stuff. It was such a positive reception though.”
Frontwoman, Maisie Manterfield, agreed with Lewis’ description yet still acknowledged the worry whenever a response comes through in reaction to the album, “I think you kind of hold your breath every time you see like a comment, or you get a message come through, but literally every interaction that I’ve had so far in regards to the album has been like really positive which is really nice.”
Yet the overall atmosphere is good, and you can feel the excitement from the moment of setting foot in the venue. When asked how they feel to finally have the record out, Lewis said that they are ‘chuffed’, “It’s been like bizarre, I didn’t know like really what to expect but it’s just been like a lot, I’d say. It’s just been a lot because we’ve been like so focused on the show it’s been a really good distraction having a big album release show. That’s the main focus rather than the album coming out and getting worried about what people think.”
Looking at the credits for A Guide For Apparitions sees some familiar names with producer Neil Kennedy (CREEPER, BOSTON MANOR) and visual direction from Aaran McKenzie (WHILE SHE SLEEPS), both of whom AIR DRAWN DAGGER have worked with numerous times in the past, so including them in the creation of their debut album was an easy decision. Lewis said, “We worked with Neil (on their last EP, Songs To Fight The Gods To) kind of knowing that we would probably create an LP afterwards, it was on the roadmap internally. What we love about Neil is that he’s really good at maximising what’s good about each band he works with. He doesn’t have a sound as a producer, but he really good bringing out what’s special about each band he works with and what’s unique about them. Whether it’s CREEPER or BOSTON MANOR, he worked with them at their early stages, whether it was EPs into albums, so they can bridge over that, so to speak I guess that was something we had in mind working with him initially. And Aaran is just ingrained in what we do now.”
Maisie then added on about how Aaran’s creativity both supports their visual ideas and takes it even further, with the trio laughing how it feels like there’s no adults in the room when it comes to bouncing around ideas. “We just wouldn’t make a video without Aaran as I can’t imagine working with anyone else at this point. I think that with everybody that we work with is that they are just really good at what they do. So, when we go with like really ridiculous ideas, we’re comfortable at being like, ‘Oh, we want to do like XYZ’, and they’re like, ‘well, why don’t we just do Y?’. They kind of take everything and zone in and make that one thing really, really good.”
As mentioned, A Guide For Apparitions features heavy themes relating to the supernatural, witchcraft, dark fantasy and the gothic, unsurprising given that AIR DRAWN DAGGER’s name comes from a Macbeth quote. And the visuals weren’t just reserved with the album with posters put up around the venue linking to the “church of AIR DRAWN DAGGER” from their website, and the live show featuring characters, fake blood, a ghost, and a narrative relating to the burning of a castle.
According to Maisie, the supernatural concept was something thought of long before a single song was even created; “So, I wrote the concept for this before I wrote a single lyric, I kind of already knew where I wanted to go with it. So, we kind of built all of the imagery, all of the branding, like the album covers around the same concept, so it was an easy win for us. It was always going to be supernatural, I don’t think would ever make an album that was not supernatural.”
“I really love like supernatural stuff and I’m really into like all like witchy things stuff like that. So, for me that’s quite like an easy thing to lean into and I think you guys are kind of the same.” Both Lewis and drummer, Ross Dore, nodded eagerly when Maisie looked over to them with Lewis adding, “It was always going to have a concept for sure like everything like when you look back to the mixtape of the EP that sort of mysticism and stuff has been like building for quite, I think we needed to like round it off and like push it and see how far we could take it, I guess, with the narrative.”
“Like we’re fucking nerds as well so like any time to like explore fantasy and world builds then we’re going to go for it.”
A Guide For Apparitions is out now via Long Branch records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS120 here:
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