Tyler Shield from Desenser took time out to talk about their journey so far;
Thanks for the interview Tyler, can you tell us about your musical backgrounds and how the members of Desenser got together?
The first time 3/4 of the band met was in college, me and Luke (drums) used to go up to the studio live room to mess around and play and Dan (guitar) was in the live room working on some stuff. After hearing us play and the kinda stuff we were messing about with he asked if we wanted to start a band and we literally went from there! We wrote 3 songs straight off the bat and demoed them (they were dreadful) but two of those three went on to be 2 of the tracks on our first release! We used to play as this three piece for a few years before having 2 years off and coming back with a new addition to the band enter new Dan and became a four piece with me dropping the guitar/bass duties and just singing.
Who has influenced you most in music and what are your most treasured records?
Well as a band as a whole there’s not that much that we all solidly agreed on other than us all loving heavy music! When I asked Luke about this he said his most treasured is ‘The Black Parade’ for showing him what good music is not haha. For me personally I was brought up by my Dad on nothing but classic rock so my absolute seminal album would have to be AC/DC- Highway to Hell. I just think this captures everything I love about music and the power it has, it’s nasty, snarling and dirty and it quite literally started my love my for music. I’ve still never heard a vocal command the music quite like Bon Scott’s, a true icon. For Dan (guitar) I know it would definitely be a Nine Inch Nails release most likely ‘The Downward Spiral’. He absolutely loves industrial music and this shines through in loads of his writing style and definitely into our music. He’s been trying to get us to cover them for years and he may (or may not) get that WISH... And for Dan (bass) his most treasured is Boy Harsher- Careful, a techno duo who absolutely nail the 80’s darkwave vibe. It uses some amazing analogue synth sounds and the lyrics and aesthetic add this amazing creepy vibe to it.
I loved your debut release in January 2020 and expected you to go onto great things but obviously Covid 19 hit us all and everything came to a halt.
Thank you so much for that Bassey and all your support was absolutely chuffed to see it made your top 3 of the year! It was tough to be honest with you, to stick out our debut EP get 2 gigs in then have to stop dead and lose all momentum was just the start of things to come really. Still there’s always someone worse off and we’re definitely on the lucky end of the spectrum of this awful virus. We kinda lost all motivation but in writing this new EP and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is making us all ready to get new music out there and start really pushing it.
How has lockdown affected your creativity as both a band and individuals?
In all honesty it’s absolutely crippled our creativity as a band we managed to get some practices in, starting work on the new EP in the summer when things were brighter but since then with things getting worse we haven’t been able to. We did actually get some real good skeletons for most tracks on the new EP but there’s plenty of work left to do! Just about waiting for the right time to be able to put it out and be able to give it the support it deserves! We have been productive individually though, Dan (guitar) especially has put some seriously amazing music out under his tag 4rsef4ace which you should definitely check out! You’ll really see the versatility in his writing he can literally write anything he puts his mind too.
I understand the band are working on a new EP; can you tell us the idea or theme behind the project and when it will be out?
Yes we’ve put the writing on hold these last few months but we definitely have a theme and musical direction behind us. In terms of the style we’ve grown massively as songwriters since the first EP and it’s instantly apparent, we’ve been using more elements from different styles of music instead of the ‘straight up’ punk vibe. We really wanna push what we can achieve with these songs and make em the best they can be! In terms of a theme we’ve decided to base the EP around the four horsemen of the apocalypse each song representing a different one. I remember listening to the Johnny Cash song ‘The Man Comes Around’ where the intro and outro has Johnny reading from the book of Revelations. He says ‘...and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat upon him was death’. I remember hearing this and being absolutely fascinated about what it meant, at first I was just amazed at these words I thought they were so striking, then once I delved in and read the passage I was hooked. I went straight to Dan and said we have to base the EP around this! Usually he hates anything biblically related but he agreed to this one as we could make it more relatable to different stages of life and experiences which is what this EP and each song is going to be based on!
Where can folks get to listen to your music?
Our debut EP is available on all streaming sites! Spotify, Apple, Bandcamp etc we did have some physical copies but we’ve just sent out last ones out! Will be sorting some more along with our next EP by the time gigs come back round!
Check out Desenser on any of the following;
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