Se7en Questions with band
Death Party UK
Who are some of the artists or some of the works
that inspired you to get started in this field? Of today’s current artists, who do you draw inspiration from?
Death Party UK is a musical project (consisting of Trevor Bamford and Scarlet Moonchild) that evolved from a fairly narrow set of influences and in fact started life as a side project to another band. The main artists that influence the specific sound of Death Party UK are:
The Gun Club (we take our name from one of their songs), The Cramps, The Saints, early Fields Of The Nephilim, a general smattering of classic Gothic Rock and Post Punk, as well as the overall sound of late 50’s and early 60’s Rock’n’Roll. The attitude of Johnny Cash and the wall of sound approach of Motorhead mixed in with aspects of Neil Young and Captain Beefheart.
As for current artists, we have not heard any that impact our music, although we may like and appreciate their music.
What have thus far been some of the negatives of being an indie artist in your field?
Oh wow, that’s an interesting question. To be honest, it comes down to just one thing, lack of money. If you have the money, you can use it to advance and enhance your career. You can pay for pluggers, and representatives who will get your music all over the place as well as interviews and features in mainstream media publications. As an underground artist, there is only so much you can do with limited financial resources and time.
What have thus far been the positives of being an indie artist in your field?
Total control over what you do, how you do it, and when you do it. It’s nice to be able to have that.
What have been your favorite completed projects to work on up to this point? Can you tell us a little bit about them?
I think settling into the Hellfire Rock’n’Roll ongoing release series. I worked out a while ago that as an underground band, you had to keep product coming out all the while, just so you can have a presence on social media. Be it music, videos, etc. Social media now rules the world, and it is a content hungry beast which needs feeding all the time.
In other bands I was in before, we would spend a year, or even two, recording, mixing, mastering, creating the artwork, etc., etc., for an album, then planning a promo campaign which resulted in a big(ish) fanfare release (depending on how much money we had to throw at it) only for it to slip out of the public mind within a few weeks. If you continue to promote the songs etc., off the album, social media soon got bored as it was “old”.
This would then leave us in a situation where we had no new songs to chuck about on social media and left in the doldrums for another twelve months or so before we had another batch of product.
So, I hit upon a solution whereby the band (Death Party UK) releases a series of digital only singles during a 12-month period, with videos following up shortly after release. And at the end of the year, release all the singles plus a few bonus tracks and exclusive mixes in a limited-edition CD format and unlimited digital format. Then re-promote everything as being part of this special mini album. This way we are pretty much constantly in the public mind on social media and we are never in the doldrums situations as there is always more content in the can waiting to be released. I call each one of these releases Hellfire Rock’n’Roll and separate them into volumes.
I hope to release volume 3 sometime this year.
What projects are you currently working on or have planned for the near future?
Well, as I mentioned above, we are currently working on Hellfire Rock’n’Roll Volume 3 which we hope to get out soon. In addition to that, we will be putting out promo videos of some more songs. The next video will be for My Own Way which was released on New Year’s Day digitally and will be on Hellfire Rock’n’Roll Volume 3.
As well as that, we are currently mixing a live gig we played in December 2017 which will be available as a live download album to all subscribers to our VIP Area on Bandcamp.
https://deathpartyuk.bandcamp.com/
And on our soon to be launched Paetron site.
https://www.patreon.com/deathpartyuk
Where do you see yourself in a few years and what would it take for you to consider your career a success?
TBH, we do this for love and as long as we break even and get some people to like our music, and we get to play some cool gigs either in the UK or abroad. Then that will be what we would call a success. Oh, that and getting some good kudos reviews.
If you couldn’t do this anymore, what career path do you think you would have followed and why?
I would become a lecturer in Popular Music at a college once again, as that is what I did for many years. I would also become a quality assurance specialist for a couple of exam boards. Scarlet would become a creator of Gothic and pagan wonders, as that is what she is also involved in.
