Locals Only: Druid Fluids

When you're writing music together, does it tend to be a collaborative process, or is there one person who usually brings the initial ideas to the table?

This band's a bit of an interesting format because it's kind of just me in the studio, and it’s me tinkering around with ideas, then pretty much creating a full demo and bringing it to the band. But there are some outliers where, let's say I’ve got the bulk of an idea and I'm struggling with the arrangement or something like that, that’d be mainly brought to Lewis, our drummer.

What artists or sounds have been finding their way into your music lately?

I think all the inspiration that I got from my early days of listening to music (from my dad) was like The Beatles, The Beach Boys. It's been nice really leaning hard into the '60s kind of pop melodies. I'd be kind of remiss not to mention all the neo-psychedelic stuff, like Pond, King Gizzard and Tame. The band Air have actually had a massive impact on us.

How has your sound evolved since you first started playing together, and where do you reckon it's heading next?

When the band first started, I reckon it was like 10 years ago or more. We'd play at parties, and it was very improv. Now it's kind of the antithesis of that. It's very, very calculated, and the songs are very considered.

Having finished this next album, I can see the direction going a bit stripped back. I’d be interested to see what it would be like to not be hiding behind all the effects and synthesisers.

Your debut album, Then, Now, Again & Again, captured ideas written across many years. How did the experience of making Pareidolia compare, and what’s different this time around?

The first album, I had no fucking idea what I was doing. I think I recognised that I really like working by myself. I felt quite naive and quite green, and obviously there's professional people that get paid lots of money to do that kind of job because it’s quite hard.

So, throughout learning the process of that and making a million mistakes, I feel like, for Pareidolia, I knew a lot more. I had a lot more conviction going into what kind of sounds I was trying to make and how to achieve that.

I guess it was more considered in the approach, and there was probably just a bit more maturity. The jury's out on that.

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The title Pareidolia refers to finding meaningful patterns in random or ambiguous things. What drew you to that concept?

It's kind of all based around the human tendency to perceive a meaningful connection between unrelated things. Pareidolia specifically relates to visual stimuli, so it could be like you see a face in a cloud or Jesus burnt into your toast or something like that, something in the tea leaves.

I just thought it was a really interesting idea of how our biases can form the way that we perceive things. I think it’s very telling of the times at the moment: why certain people align with certain political ideologies or what resonates with them. It's kind of like the human yearning for understanding, really. What do we think we see or what do we want to see?

The album moves between psychedelic, prog-rock, experimental, and more melodic songwriting. How do you know when a song needs to follow an unexpected direction rather than stick to a familiar structure?

I was infatuated with giving the listener whiplash and having a turn at every possible opportunity. Now, maybe there’s that maturity word I was talking about earlier. Maybe it doesn't need to go double-time at any moment. Maybe it could just sit.

I think what I like about a lot of the '60s kind of psychedelic stuff is really well-structured kind of pop songs, but it’s the way they decorate those ideas. Whether that be production or sonic palette. So, I’m trying to get more into that zone, it’s a bit of an arm wrestle between those two worlds.

What's been a standout moment for you as a band so far: a particular gig, a crowd reaction or something that’s happened behind the scenes?

We toured Europe, which was incredible. That, I think, for all of us, is probably a little starry-eyed dream that you’d have as a kid. It’s like being an astronaut, going to the moon or something. And now that opportunity is coming up again, which is great. I think another one for me is probably WOMAD. I grew up going to WOMAD. I’ve gone every year since I was about four or five years old. My parents would take me. So, it was nice to be on the other side of the fence, I guess.

What's next for the band once Pareidolia is out in the world?

We're going to be touring a lot next year. We've got some pretty cool opportunities around the world. Just keep creating, I guess. Yeah, that's the goal.

Pareidolia is out Friday 13 November. Pre-order'pre-save here. Keep up to date with all things Druid Fluids @druidfluids.