New Release – Calling by Danswell and the Symptoms
Danswell and the Symptoms is a Cardiff (Wales) based band. Dan Tanswell is a 39 year old multi-instrumentalist behind it all.
“I’ve been releasing music for two years and this year this is the 8th single release. I’m making an album this year but it’s all being released as singles. I don’t like genres or models so I’m trying something else.”
Their new release is called ‘Calling’. It’s out on the 6th of October.
“It will probably arrive on my website and Bandcamp a little early. Keep an eye on my socials too for updates on that sort of thing, I try to give visitors to the website and Bandcamp things a little earlier.”
Is there a link to pre-save?
“There is a pre-save link but I would rather people visit my website. You can even stream tracks there free too.”
What’s the song about?
“It’s about the end of the world actually, which doesn’t make it sound upbeat and it is in a minor key, but it is about rescue. In a way it’s a sequel to my track from March called ‘The End’. ‘The End’ is the event, ‘Calling’ is the last minute rescue by an unexplained being.”
What inspired you to write this song?
“I actually wrote the piano part first, I’ve been trying to teach myself and was frustrated with the basic stuff I was playing and writing. I wanted to write something where the hands felt more independent.”
“I wrote it last autumn, about a week after I wrote ‘The End’, which is why it came out as part of the same story. But I built the song around the piano part, the lyrics came last. Because it is an autumn song and I wanted a gap between the two “parts”. I’ve had this recorded for almost a year now in one format or another.”
What are you hoping to achieve with this release?
“Well I just want people to hear it. We live in a time where you can make music and get it out, which is fantastic, but when you release it it’s being released alongside millions of other tracks. Not so great.”
“All I want for my music is for people to hear it and it mean something to them. It can be really inspiring hearing what something you created means to someone else. It’s often very different to what you had in mind or what it means to you. It takes on a life of its own.”
Where was it recorded and mixed?
“I record everything here at home. You might even catch the occasional meow caught on a vocal mic if you listen closely enough.”
“I learnt to record in a studio with a reel to reel tape when I was a teenager over 20 years ago. A lot of that doesn’t apply now but I think it’s a good set of principles.”
“All the drums are samples but everything else is played over the top and now things are so clean you have to add some tape hiss back on. I do things now with recordings that weren’t possible when I learnt, a lot has happened in the 15 years I wasn’t playing music.”
Is there a story behind the cover artwork? Did you make it yourself?
“I did do the artwork myself. I’ve spend some time in my life giving up on things because I’m not good at them. At one point it was music but much younger than that it was art. This February after two years of making music and seeing the impending doom of AI art I decided to pick up a pencil again.”
“For ‘Calling’ I had designed a weird space creature. But I was inspired closer to release to try the biblically accurate angel and I feel like it was one of the fist pieces I’ve done digitally to come out really well and at that point I knew that was the cover.”
“I also read a lot of of old science fiction books and I’ve been picking up some really old ones at Cardiff Market (shoutout to Bear Island Books) and the covers are amazing. Cheesy but great.”
https://danswellandthesymptoms.com/
