Dermabrasion have kindly sorted a Q & A for us. We did send threats of computer explosion and of giant spiders being sent to them. We don’t feel mean about it. They seem like very nice people and we hope they weren’t too frightened. We are all friends now. Read on, listen to the music, enjoy.
Hello Dermabrasion….welcome to the DeClunk universe.
Hello DeClunk Universe, thank you for having us. It’s a rather nice universe.
Please introduce yourselves and tell us what each of you bring to
Dermabrasion.
Adam plays guitar and writes 90% of the music, including the drum tracks and most of the basslines. I am Kat, writing this. I’m mostly in charge of brooding and bad vibes. I also play bass and trigger the drum tracks when we play. I write the words and sometimes I get to write a bassline if Adam didn’t get to it first.
Where are you right now? Please give us the time and describe your
surroundings and what you are wearing.
It’s just past 11 p.m. and we’re in the coffin we share in Toronto, staring at our respective screens. We put the meat suits away in cold storage by this time of night, it’s all tendons and bones from here until morning.
How/where did you meet?
I suppose we met at a mutual friend’s Hallowe’en party in 2013. Adam was a cowboy, hanging with our friend William dressed as Lana Del Rey. I was Morticia Addams, hanging out with our friends dressed as Juggalos. We started going to shows together in the months after that, and eventually started a band in 2015 that we played in until we all called it quits right before the pandemic.
Dermabrasion…..great name. How did it come about and were there any
other names in the hat? We want to know the other names, after all,
some band might read this, struggling for a name and take one of your
rejects.
I have been plagued by skin disorders for my whole life and fell debilitatingly ill with a skin condition a few years ago that was induced by topical steroids. My skin literally fell off my body for two years. The name was Adam’s idea but I went with it immediately. I liked it because, if anything, if my skin were really horrible, covered in cuts or marks or scabs or whatever, and we had to play a show, like–what did you expect? Dermabrasion – and, as it says on the tin, I am scabbed and flaking and bleeding on stage (that day so far hasn’t happened to that extreme, but doesn’t mean it won’t). I don’t remember many rejects except various spellings of “eczema” which already existed and we were considering before I realized my skin issues were way beyond eczema… A few other rejects ended up being words in our songs. I really liked the word “succor” and ended up using it in Grim Sister.
Pain Behaviour is the title of the new album. Please can you tell us a
little about it. We like the artwork, who is responsible?
Pain behaviour is a clinical term that describes the specific thoughts, feelings and actions that experiencing pain can manifest in people. Whatever kind of pain you carry influences every aspect of how you interact with yourself and the world.
The artwork is by a dear friend of ours, Leesa Westwood (@leesawestwood). She is incredibly talented and we have several of her works hanging in our coffin. However I do see it as a spiritual sequel to the art from our demo, Lunate–which is the original recordings of half of this record. Our other dear friend Kyle Ormsby (@pure__plastic) did that art, as well as the single art for Halberdier which we released in Oct. 2023, and two t-shirt designs that are kind of iconic locally, if I do say so myself. They have really helped us cultivate the kind of mood we are bringing.
Any plans for a physical release in the UK and for us to get our grubby
little DeClunk hands on? How about a UK tour? We want!! (and please
come to Carlisle!)
We do have plans for a physical release and coming to the UK, both this spring(ish??). We can only come where we are invited. So if this is an invitation to Carlisle we will find our way there :). (If you have any venues or promoters who might book us, please share their names so we can look into it!)
If you come to the UK and you make a video can I be in it? Maybe I
could be an old man in a rocking chair in a corner of a room, smoking a
pipe, reading a book, washed down with a brandy?
Absolutely. In fact we would plan the shoot around you because that sounds great. We will make sure you’re backlit so you can be very dramatically silhouetted in the pipe smoke. For real though!
Have you any talents apart from music? For example, I sometimes go
outside at night and speak with the Tawny owls in Tawny owl language.
Regrettably none so impressive as that. Adam is very good at shooing raccoons, which is something that comes in handy in Toronto. He’s also great at making new meals out of leftovers. I am pretty good with computers (hence I could come back from such a terrible computer explosion…) and have recently really improved my reverse parking game. Together, we are really good at moving! Ask us to help you move. Or maybe don’t, my bones are starting to feel it.
Anything else that you would like to add?
We will probably have an EP to share by the end of the year! Adam has already started writing some absolute bangers.
Many thanks for taking the time for DeClunk. We hope to see you soon.
Thanks for taking the time for us, and for your patience 🙂 Cheers!
The Dermabrasion album Pain Behaviour is out now.
DeClunk 