DITZ On Their Second Album, Touring With IDLES And The Chaos Of Writing On The Road

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Ahead of the release of their second album, we chatted with noise rock band DITZ about the reality of writing an album on the road

With 2022’s ‘The Great Regression,’ we were introduced to DITZ on one of the most exciting debut albums of the year. The band pulled from all sorts of places, with noise-rock, post-punk and electronic elements all playing a role.

Now, after an extensive tour with IDLES, the band are nearly ready to put out their second record ‘Never Exhale’. Produced by Seth Manchester (Model/Actriz, Lingua Ignota) and written mainly while on tour, the process wasn’t an easy one. You can read our full interview with frontperson Cal below.

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Can you give me a quick rundown on who DITZ are and how you got to this point? 

Cal: I’m Cal, I’m the singer. I guess we’ve been a band for about eight, nine years nearly and we all met when we were at uni. We’ve just recorded our second album and it’s coming out in January next year.

As a vocalist in a genre like this, do you find it a challenge to kind of match the intensity of the noise instrumentals? 

Cal: Yeah, I guess so. I always find if we’re writing something that’s in a smaller room, I’ll probably end up writing something that’s a bit more loud because I’m on a smaller PA and trying to match the instruments, which are at the same volume they would be if we were playing a show. So that’s sometimes an aspect of it.

I’d say there’s no rules either. I don’t think we set any rules about “does the vocal have to sound heavy in this bit? Does it have to be shouted? Could it be spoken?” because you can make anything sound good as long as you have a go at it, you know. 

With ‘The Great Regression’, your debut album, it’s the first full statement that you guys put out together. Do you think it represented you as a band, as probably the first thing that lots of people heard of you? 

Cal: Yeah, I think so, because up to that point, what we were as a band was a live unit and we’d never done anything like that. I think the good thing about having that one as the first record is it does quite accurately demonstrate what it sounds like live. That’s something that I like about it.

With the second one, I think we’ve leant  a little bit more into trying to create something that’s a little surreal in places and not a direct live representation. 

How was the process of writing the second album different from the debut?

The thing about the first one is we had all the time in the world because we had lockdowns and we had spaces we could go to. We used a pub that was closed for a good portion of lockdown because it didn’t have any outside seats. It never managed to open up again for ages and ages, but we used that for a long time to practise and write songs there.

Even when we recorded the album, everybody could meet up and do stuff, but they didn’t have gigs yet. So we recorded the album before we were about to start playing loads of shows again. But we were well practised at the time, so it made it quite slick. 

With the second one, it’s almost the exact opposite. We had no time at all. Since our first album came out in 2022, I don’t know how many shows we’ve played. Probably close to 200 shows, it’s getting close to that. In between that and then finding time to go to work and earn money and stuff, there wasn’t a lot of time. 

So most of the songs on this one are ones that we’ve sort of cobbled together while we’ve been on the road. We’d borrow practice rooms off other bands, write a song, try it during soundcheck. If it sounded good in soundcheck, we’d probably debut that night. There’s only two tracks we haven’t played live off it so far.

Can you tell us a little bit about supporting IDLES and how your relationship with that band came about?

Cal: We’d known them for a while because, at some point, they were a smaller band and they were part of the scene that we’re a part of. I saw them for the first time probably in 2015 or something. They were a local opener for Ice Age at the time. 

We played one show with them in Vienna last summer and that one went really well. I think a couple of months after that, they asked us to do the full European tour and that was great. I don’t think there’s many bands that are at that level that we could actually feasibly support. We’re a certain niche and the only band that’s that big and that close to our niche is probably them. So, in a way it’s as lucky as we could be. 

Did you feel like that had a noticeable impact on who’s listening to your music?

Cal: We’ve gone back and done Netherlands a few times and people will be like “I saw you at that one show in Amsterdam”. We’ve done a few shows there and it seems like everybody that goes to shows in that country was at that one show.

I think we played to more people in those 17 shows than we have done in total out of every other show we’ve ever done, you know? It was hard to not get too used to it. We played a couple of stinkers right afterwards where it went from playing to thousands of people to 50 people and that was pretty rough.

Can you speak a little bit about working with Seth Manchester on this new record? He’s produced some of the most exciting albums of the last few years. It must have been quite an experience. 

We didn’t record with Seth. Seth mixed it and sort of planned the aspects of the recording. Originally we were going to go and record with him, but that is when the IDLES tour came, that was when our slot was. So we had to do a last minute swap around with the plan. 

We were big fans of so many of the records that he’s done recently, like the Lingua Ignota records and Liturgy and Model/Actriz. There’s a certain sheen to it. It’s almost like pop production, everything is so crystal clear and yet he’s working with these wonky bands, you know, it’s always something unique. That’s what I really liked about his thing.

The process of mixing it was in a WhatsApp group chat. There was me, the guitarist Jack and Seth. He did it all in four days. It was really long days. I remember that he’d started at around 2:00 our time, I think it was about 9:00 over there, And he’d be done around 2:00 his time.

We had to be quite on it and be near pairs of headphones all the time just to catch the next thing. He also worked so quickly. The way he just gets things back and forth and we send over 10 suggestions or something and it’d be back within half an hour. It was stressful and I think in some ways it’s to the record’s benefit because it kind of matches the writing.

There is a part of me that thinks if we’d gone over there and done it in his studio and, you know, spent that really focused slot of time, maybe it would have been the best way to do it, but we’ll never know. 

Do you like this chaotic process of writing and recording or would you like to have a more traditional process? Would that suit the band or would that take away from part of the edge of it? 

Cal: It depends on what we’re trying to achieve on the next one. We’ve done two records of songs that are expected from us. There’s a couple of curve balls on the new one, but generally it sounds like DITZ. I think the next one’s gonna be a bit more ambitious with certain aspects of the sound and see if we can do something a bit different.

Maybe it’s something that we do need time for, to find a space to write in a nice environment with very structured days. I think that would be quite good. 

I’d be interested to see how that would sound. Apart from the album release next year, are there any particular gigs or moments you’re most looking forward to? 

Chalk in Brighton is one of the ones I’m looking forward to, just because it’s kind of the biggest one we can do in Brighton. It feels like a bit of a milestone to be able to say we’re doing our Chalk gig now.

Other than that, we’re doing some ones in places we’ve never done before. We’re doing Greece and Bulgaria and Romania for the first time, so I’m really looking forward to that. We’re also doing Rome for the first time, which I’m quite excited about.

That’s one of the best things about going on tour, you get to see all these places that you wouldn’t and you get to see them through quite a different set of eyes to how a tourist would view it. You go and you play shows and you meet people and you make friends in a way that you don’t if you’re a tourist, you know. You are getting invited into the little local secrets that they have. That’s what I’m looking forward to the most.

‘Never Exhale’ is out on 24th January.

Watch/Listen to ‘Taxi Man’ here:

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