Category: All Interviews

What do you mean, symbolically, by The Rule of Thirds, which is first of all a principle of photographic composition  ? It was the rule of photographic composition that I was initially thinking of as, being a photographer myself and designing most of the Death In June CD/LP sleeves and promo photos over the years, I have based many, many of my photos I’ve taken for Death In June and other projects on this but then it soon dawned on me that it had other connotations for me and others….

“The Rule of Thirds” seems to illustrate the most classic appearances of your songwriting, in relation with the vision you’ve put on folk music. Did you since the beginning wish to touch this very minimal ans acoustic aspect of the music ? You’re correct in respect that I think I’ve been gradually deconstructing Death In June over this 21st Century. Certainly, in the live arena and now, on record. But, also there appear to be so many groups now, either consciously or unconsciously, sounding like ‘classic’ Death In June that I…

Douglas, we would like to begin by heading back in time to the beginning of this long “journey”: what was the initial founding vision of Death In June? At the very creation, was it just a “extension” of Crisis experience? Or was it an important passage from politics to aesthetics? The only real thing that Tony Wakeford and I knew about forming a new group after Crisis was that it would be completely different in approach, style, attitude etc. And besides that we were both caught up in the Zeitgeist…

Hello Douglas With The Snow Bunker Tapes, you decided to release the original versions on the guitar of the songs that were to be interpreted on the piano for Peaceful Snow. Did this will to release these raw versions come from the last tour you made in Europe in which you played some of these songs accompanied with the guitar? Yes, absolutely. I was being asked by fans if they could listen to the entire album as it was originally conceived on guitar. As I was playing on guitar 3-5…

1.. Right from the start, Crisis seemed to be interested in shock tactics, of making things happen and getting up people’s noses. Is that a fair summary? No. The idea Tony and I had was that Crisis would be deadly serious and that our politics were to be taken seriously. That, in itself, turned out to be shocking enough for some people so inevitably we did get up some people’s noses – especially in the mass media. But, that wasn’t our raison d’etre. 2.. What was the Canio Club in…

1. Douglas, first of all a few words about your last release, the “Abandoned tracks”. How did you decide to release it right now? Basically the main motivation was that I was getting so many requests from people for the tracks that were featured on rare compilations or deleted singles etc. I realized I could combine those with some new/remixed material and it would provide almost a ‘new’ album. It certainly sounded like a whole concept after I listened back to the songs featured on AT despite a lot of…

Here is the English version of an interview I recently did for the German music magazine ‘Orkus’ #05 Mai edition. I was asked to list the 5 most important/influential albums in my Life which obviously led to some notable exclusions from the likes of Joe Meek, more Beatles, David Bowie, Sex Pistols/Clash, Kraftwerk etc. The feature was entitled ‘Soundtrack of My Life’; “I’m sure everyone says 5 all time great albums is far too few but I will attempt to explain why the following came to mind today – immediately:…