DD/MM/YYYY to Record First, Write Later

Toronto indie rockers DD/MM/YYYY are about as experimental as they come, but even they feel the need to branch out sometimes.

This year they added an exotic locale to their tour history when they showcased at the Music Matters music conference in Hong Kong, they'll share a bill with mega-legend Iggy Pop at NXNE on June 19 (just one of their three official NXNE shows) -- oh, and there's that ever-so-minor thing of revamping their entire recording process.

"We got an Ontario Arts Council grant by proposing this idea that we're going to write the music by recording it first," multi-instrumentalist Matt King tells Spinner. "It's a matter of getting a big stock pile of recordings of various parts, and then piecing things together and adding things on top, or re-recording things at the end, to make it a fluid piece."

It's not as though the band's last release, 2009's 'Black Square,' didn't receive accolades for its labyrinth-like digital textures and spastic punk chords, so why are they ditching the winning formula? King explains that he feels the band's live persona sometimes eclipses their songwriting.

"I feel like our recordings almost need to step up their game because people always talk about our shows," he says. "To take the idea of recording and use that more in the process of writing might change what our final product is like."

While King admits to being the one in the band spearheading the concept, he credits a variety of other things for planting the seed in his head.

"You know, there's this thing called 'sampling' that DJs do," he says facetiously.

"Basically," he continues, jokes aside, "It's like taking sampling and bringing it into the format of how we write music and mixing it together. Usually we have a part and build up a song around it, and then work on it and work on it and then we record. This is something a little different -- we're trying not to separate the live and recording."

DD/MM/YYYY plan to spend most of the summer at home in Toronto recording (and then writing) songs for their next effort, planned for 2011, as well as a forthcoming split record with Calgary's Women.

"We're working on two releases right now so we're practicing like crazy," King says. "We played something like 130 shows last year so we're all excited to be at home writing and to get back into that space."

DD/MM/YYYY will play at the Garrison on Thurs. June 17, at the Gladstone Hotel on Fri. June 18 and at Yonge-Dundas Square on Sat. June 19, all as part of NXNE.