hard rock, heavy metal, stoner rock / Novosibirsk
"Haven’t even heard it, and reposted for the name only."
We had the idea to call the band Witchcunt, but eventually stopped at Mister Dickson. It’s a great name, powerful, and what is the most important, absolutely universal. Not like some unclear "Witchcunt": what is “witch”, what is “cunt” – nothing is clear, but it’s better not to show this band to dad. While, Mister Dickson, in any language, is Mister Dickson. And it’s comfortable with parents if they ask: "You play in some band, right? What's it called?" "Mister Dickson". And it is all clear – Ok, Mister Dickson. The next time they can ask you, "How's your Mister Dickson doing?"
We failed at playing Stoner rock that is quite natural. The compositions were stoner-like only when one of us brought them to rehearsals, but in three minutes they turned into something else. It sounds cool – "let's play Stoner", but in the end no one wants to play it. Impossible to make ourselves do it, it’s boring.
In fact, we just pretend to be a rock band, we're just having fun. Because we are able to make another ten albums in English as we’ve already done, but it will always be a kind of fake. So it’s quite possible that we will switch to Russian language. It isn’t official, but the subject is being discussed for a long time in the band. To some extent, of course, it’s a challenge, and it’s much more difficult: you won’t be able to sing about dinosaurs and witches in Russian. But it’s not about the complexity of the task – it’s about honesty. You can either be a rock band or not. Either you have something to say and to sing or you don't. Otherwise, it's just riffs and screaming.
Lyrics in Russian are always more than just a text. It's impossible to sing off the cuff, it should be something poetic and deep. Have you seen the Soviet TV show Music Ring? There were some intelligent people in huge glasses, such ordinary Soviet citizens who came to talk to the musicians. They call, for example, Mashina Vremeni, and someone from the audience says to Makarevich: "Tell me, Andrey, why did you start writing so blurry texts? Do you understand that you're the voice of the generation, and you influence minds? Do you understand what a great responsibility you have?" That was the attitude to the texts in those times.
Sold His Balls was downloaded by three people. And the first poor guy bought it for more than 8 dollars. This was our price for the album, until our guitarist said: "Eight dollars for it, are you insane?" So, we lowered the price to two-and-a-half bucks. And the sales ran up – two more guys bought the album.
The first album cover is universal, so the mood is there is like: AAAh, dinosaurs, rock! The album seems to say: "I don't fucking care, I'm just orange, these are just dinosaurs, it's just a chick, and these are just some guys playing in a garage." But the cover of the new EP is quite different; it is actually attached to the plot. Although its design is very logical compared to the first one, we thought: "Let there be a pirate showing the middle finger." Now we gonna do such thing every time – putting the middle finger in the center of any composition.
Making such album covers is a cool tradition, our distinctive feature, it's not just some random pictures. It's like Iron Maiden, their covers are immediately recognizable. It happened so that the artist is our friend and we work together. We sat at the same table and together came up with the design of both our covers. The cartoon clip is also our work.
We recorded Devil's Bait live: all together in the same room, with headphones. We recorded everything separately except the vocals. As for the experience of such a recording, for the drummer, for example, there was no difference: metronome is ticking, and he is focusing on it. Anyway, the drive that everyone should experience while playing together with the guys, can be obtained with a metronome too. And you still can fail in getting it playing together with the others – it doesn't depend.
We released the material in the form of EP, not the whole album because the guitarist said: "I should go abroad because of my job. I'm leaving." We had to record everything quickly, and we decided to record fewer songs but prepare them well. We had to remove half of the tracks, including those sewing the whole album together. As the result, the EP was pretty disjointed in terms of material and mood, but united in the sound. But if Sold His Balls was aimed to a greater extent to express ourselves, so the Devil's Bait is too different. Yes, let's say it's more mature.
We have no new record in the wav format. We still haven't taken it from the studio. Some of us downloaded this album from VK, someone from the share resources. It's the mp3 century, who really needs that Bandcamp? We wanted to upload the music there, but it requires wavs. We can convert mp3 into wav, and I wonder if anyone will notice it. People will probably download it for 8 dollars and say: "How the hell cool they waxed the sound. The equipment must be expensive."
The Unplugged album was recorded in two hours. We played in the Campus club, and recorded the sound via microphones. We got the tracks which were mastered later by Robert. We were going towards this recording consciously: arranged the deal beforehand, came to the studio with sound producers, customized the sound, listened to it. As the result we got what we wanted. Very cool thing, I wonder why no one does this.
It's not good idea to make a video coming from the terms: "We need to make a video because we are a band." Another thing is when you quickly create a clip in two days because you decide: "Oh, I want a video for this song." And you don't even know how it will end, when the first five scenes have been already drawn. It is being built brick by brick like a house without the finished plan. And that's normal, that's natural.
Once we were called to play to an unknown place. It turned out that it was the birthday of the bike-club "White wolves". We went to some biker's den, which was located among auto-service buildings. The party was completely private: there were some old bikers and not very old ones, bikers' wives and women, and bikers' children. We looked there so weird. And got no feedback: you strike riffs with all forces and hear three claps after the song. We never saw a single gaze: that is, neither hate nor any support. Perhaps rock music in general was alien there. They're bikers, it does not mean that they are rockers. And we were called there, apparently, for just the entourage.
On the May Feast all members of the band played, with two guitarists. It was cool. We had just released the first album, and then, twenty days later we were on the May Feast. Guitars, of course, went down a little because of the weather, but it's didn't matter. There was a great drive, people sang along, in general, we had the feeling of the concert, which really makes proper impression on the audience, and the audience likes it and we like it, and everything is well. But most of the concerts were not like this, most of the concerts were, of course, like all of the ordinary concerts, when ten people come. But the truth is that, these ten really like it.
Our drummer is temporary unavailable. If we hadn't been sick and had come to the rehearsals, we would just have played and that's all. And now we do nothing but talk a lot. It's also interesting to talk, but if we had songs, we wouldn't have to talk, actually.
