Over the last couple of years we’ve been overjoyed to watch so many bands from the 90’s post-hardcore golden age come back into focus. While in general we try to keep our ear to the ground for things happening now or in the near future, the fact that kids growing up today are revisiting, reevaluating, and falling in love with bands from that era is beyond encouraging.
We won’t spend anymore time yelling at clouds, wondering why Drill for Absentee didn’t catch a windfall of success in the first place, but mostly because we’ve done that already. If you read the blog consistently, you know we’re pretty big fans. To this day, Circle Music radiates with possessed, even dangerous energy, and the band recently reissued this classic with four additional tracks via Expert Records.
Now, the next chapter officially begins – check out this exclusive cut from Strands of a Lake, the double EP:
As the kids say, that song sure is fire, but in a way, we knew it would be before we heard it. Technically it’s from the sessions and recordings for Vol. 1, but it’s been remastered with a more consistent sheen.
Here are some more details from the press release:
Staying true to their origins, the trio revisits the conceptual and musical foundations that first distinguished them in the underground scene. The unmistakable DFA alchemy that turns calculated chaos, lyrical darkness, and raw poetry into riveting musical journeys is sure to capture the attention of both longtime fans, and a younger generation exploring underground music history. As guitarist and vocalist Michael Nace states, ‘Our new sound includes the foundations of our post-hardcore roots, together with all of the new and eclectic music influences that we’ve picked up over the past 25 years.’ Bassist and vocalist Kevin Kelly adds, ‘We’ve taken on so many disparate musical influences over the years, and participated in a wide range of musical projects. Our new sound was bound to reflect that, but at its core this band is still very much the same project we started decades ago. It still sounds like Drill for Absentee.’
The band’s re-emergence began unexpectedly when Michael discovered YouTube’s evolving ‘math rock’ scene – far removed from DFA’s 1990s ethos – inspiring him to revisit old guitar parts. This creative spark led to ‘Hums,’ a track echoing the band’s signature complexity, and a transcontinental collaboration with Kevin (now living in Los Angeles) and new drummer Ken Kuniyoshi (Okinawa, Japan), recruited after his virtuosic covers of 90s post-hardcore gems caught Nace’s ear. ‘That’s how it started,’ remembers Ken. ‘First with Mike and I exchanging isolated tracks and overdubbing and Kevin joining on bass, which became the reincarnation of Drill For Absentee’. Michael says that distance has forced them to reinvent how the music takes shape. ‘Our creative process in the 1990s was much more conventional, with the band getting together a few times per week to develop new musical ideas and perfect our setlist. With these new songs, the fact that we live in three different places has completely changed the way that we collaborate on new music.’ Defying geographic barriers, the band crafts music remotely: trading tracks digitally, refining mixes across time zones, and preserving their darkly poetic aesthetic. As Kuniyoshi reflects: ‘Being oceans apart didn’t stop the creative process, and we set ourselves apart from others as an international band.’
The band chose to call their upcoming release a “double EP” to reflect the stylistic evolution their new collaboration has taken: Volume 1’s four tracks deliver a visceral homage to their 90s math-rock roots – angular, tense, and dripping with the post-hardcore intensity that first defined them; Volume 2 reveals an ambitious and exhilarating pivot, exploring complex rhythms and expansive textures that demonstrate the band’s 25-year musical journey. ‘I think the remote recording process has a lot to do with this new sound,’ says Kevin. ‘Passing tracks back and forth and recording in our own spaces allowed plenty of room for experimentation, which led us in some unexpected directions.’ As Ken puts it, ‘We sound like a different band on each side – Vol 1 sounds like a continuation of Drill For Absentee from the 90’s, and Vol 2 has a progressive-rock feel which was a very pleasant surprise for me as this was an unexpected direction after finishing recording Vol 1.’
Don’t forget to pre-order the Vol 1 / Vol 2 combo here via Expert Work. Oh, and there’s very little that can show up in an email from a band we love that would make us more happy than new music, but one of those things is an expansive set of quotes from each member to share with you:
“There are pros and cons with remote songwriting and recording and I believe we maximized the benefits by being able to practice and rehearse at our own pace. I would play along to a segment of a demo guitar/bass track about a few hundred times over a course of a few weeks until I came up with something and that’s not even a guarantee since new and better ideas/arrangements would pop up – all the beats don’t sound anything like the first initial demos, same as how bands traditionally fine-tune the tracks together at a studio. Quite frankly, I barely managed to keep up with Mike and Kevin!” – Ken Kuniyoshi
“Working on these songs with Ken and Mike was such a fascinating experience, and wildly different from DFA’s process in the 90’s. Many of these new songs originated with just a kernel of an idea; often Mike would send us a riff and we would go from there. For a few of the songs, most notably “Styli,” I stitched together a variety of related musical ideas into an entirely new form, filling in the gaps with my own ideas. Mike and Ken then learned and recorded the new version of the song, and then I built on top of that. Collaborating with bandmates spread across the world creates challenges, to be sure, but it also offers opportunities to explore new creative ideas we might not have otherwise found.” – Kevin Kelly
“To build off of what Kevin said, I think what differentiates Volume 1 from Volume 2 on Strand of a Lake is that the arranging process — which Kevin largely spearheads — became fully realized on Volume 2. The 4 tracks on Volume 1 came to the rest of the band in a largely established song structure, whereas with Volume 2, we tried to ideate parts that could be modular. “Styli” is the perfect example of this: Kevin had that great bass groove, and I had 3 or 4 guitar parts. My original scratchpad structure was the mirror opposite of what ended up being the finished product; Kevin flipped it completely on its head. We’ve talked about taking this modular approach even further, not having any preconceived notions of song structure — just parts that are like building blocks that need to be stitched together with transitions and other connective parts.
One of the big differences in working on music remotely like this is that you don’t get the real-time feedback from your peers that you get when you’re ideating together in the same room. Our 90s approach was very much a live workshop model, with ideas spinning out of jams and other improvizations, and just building up and evolving ideas on the spot. You get a very different work product when you work that way, in the moment. It’s a creative process that is happening more in parallel, whereas our remote process is working serially. I think this serial approach is really advantageous if you can pull it off, because it gives you more time to refine your idea against whatever initial idea you’re building off of. In a live writing setting, you’re more likely to “settle” on your idea because you’re hearing it in the context of the entire band playing it together. Also, you’re not as likely to challenge yourself to write a piece of music for your instrument that pushes up against your own personal limitations, since there is some implicit pressure to get it largely worked out in tandem with the rest of the band. Sure, you’ll take those new parts home with you and refine them, but in a workshop environment, it’s more common to get your individual part 80% there with the band, and the remaining 20% will come from practicing it at home. When you’re reacting to a recorded idea in the comfort and pace of your own home studio, 100% of the part you develop is the result of your own pace, allowing you to truly refine it and challenge yourself to go as far up against your limits as possible.
Thus, I think that working remotely definitely leads to different creative outcomes. In the 90s, we worked very hard on incorporating polyrhythms and time signature overlapping, but it wasn’t always successful. Our use of overlapping in our 21st-century music is definitely more cohesive, thanks in large part to the time and space that serial writing and remote recording affords.
All of this being said, there is still something lost from not all being in the same space/time together, so how can you artificially recreate that working dynamic? We tried something on “7riangles” that led to a unique outcome. Like “Styli,” “7riangles” underwent deep structural edits by the band, and Kevin and Ken developed their parts to accompany the guitar. After all of those parts were written and established, I created an alternative, “parallel universe” guitar performance that was completely different from the original ideas; all of those ideas were muted, and I worked on new ideas based on what Kevin and Ken did. So, this “parallel universe” ideation was based on rhythm section ideas that were derived from the original guitar ideas. I gave these new ideas to Kevin, and he wove the original and parallel universe ideas into a composite. Som on “7riangles,” sometimes you’re hearing the original idea, sometimes the parallel universe idea, and sometimes both at the same time. Is the same effect as working on ideas together in real-time? Probably not. But it seems like an interesting attempt at recreating that dynamic in a remote setting.” – Michael Nace
(Thanks for reading! If you’re looking for more music, check out our Bandcamp compilations here. If you like us, or possibly even love us, donations are always appreciated at the Buy Me A Coffee page here, but if you’re in a generous mood you can also donate to folks like Doctors Without Borders, the PCRF, Charity Water, Kindness Ranch, One Tail at A Time, Canopy Cat Rescue, or Best Friends Animal Sanctuary that could probably use it more – click on their names above to check ‘em out if you’re so inclined. Thanks again!)