Introducing Interview: The Cult of Dom Keller

With their third album Goodbye To The Light due for release next month, we sat down with Jason and Al of The Cult of Dom Keller for a cheery chat about albums, Brexit and the sad state of the world…

First of all, tell me a bit about The Cult of Dom Keller. Where does the name come from?

Al: What’s the current line on that one…?

Jason: It’s made in the same way that a lot of bands come up with a name. You try to come up with something that no one else has got, and it originated way back when – the band was called Dom Keller and it just seemed like it had a good ring to it. We looked into different translations and it means a different thing in every language. It means Cathedral cellar in one, it’s a pope’s glove maker in another and then over the years it turned into the Cult of Dom Keller.

And your sound, particularly on the upcoming album it’s quite dark. Is that something that came naturally to you and the sound you wanted to make or was it more calculated?

J: It wasn’t calculated as such, it’s just the music that comes out when we start writing and to be honest with the way things are going and have been going the past few years it’s been getting darker and darker.

A: Yeah, it’s definitely gravitated towards the climate that we’re living in at the minute, which all seemed so nice before we started the album and it seems to have got bitter and twisted since then. The whole world is going to pot…

Jason: Not to say it’s our fault, we just prophesised it.

And this is your third album… Have you noticed a change in the way you record at all?

J: Yeah every album’s been done really differently. In fact, this is the first album I’ll be on. I was in the band right at the start and then I left to do other stuff, and then I came back. But the first album is mainly demos that a really enthusiastic friend of ours formed a record label just to put out the release. It was released by the people who put on Austin Psych Fest in America on vinyl and then our friend put it out on CD because he really wanted to get the name around. The second album was basically a weekend long jam session that was edited down and made into songs. And then this one was writing songs, emailing it to somebody, somebody else would put a bit on it or chop a bit out…

A: You make it sound quite easy, but it’s actually been a really hard album to make. The whole process has taken about 2 years, it’s been in and out of different studios, the producer we ended up using was James Aparicio and he basically saved us out of the embers. But that was through emails, and I’ve ended up with about 1,000 copies of each track on my computer. But it’s good!

And are you feeling ready and excited for the release now?

A: I haven’t been album to listen to the album for a while…

J: I listened to it recently. We got 20 advance black versions of the album made up; they held onto 10 and gave us 10 so we got one each and we’re selling the others. But I listened to it on vinyl and I got goosebumps. I’m really excited.

That’s what you want! You don’t want to be bored of your own music.

A: Don’t get me wrong! I’m definitely not bored I think I just have a bit of PTSD, but I’ll love it again in 4 months’ time.

J: At the same time, we’re ready for the next one already. We’ve almost got enough songs to do it.

Fuzz Club (who are releasing Goodbye to the Light) have a point about making the vinyl version of the album something special and creative, is that something you were looking for?

A: Yeah, that’s what drew us to use them. Their end product – the way it feels, the way it smells – has such an attention to detail that replicates the time and effort put into the music. So many artists put so much passion into something that just kind of gets tossed out by record labels. But Fuzz Club is more than that. It’s a ‘thing’.

It’s important to have a product after the time you’ve put into something.

A: We haven’t seen the gatefold yet but we’re pretty sure it’s going to be a fully immersive experience.

And what about your live experience? Is that immersive in the same way?

J: Live, the songs take on a different kind of thing. Obviously with an album you’ve got overdubs and you might have ten guitar parts on one track so we have to condense it down and change a few things to make it work live. But the live shows have been getting better and better this year. We recently got our own soundman who’s a god-send and he knows how to make us sound.

A: We’re not very good at talking to the crowd, so we’ve made it more of a piece now. It’s like an hour long piece.

J: As soon as we get off stage you can’t shut us up… Some people take it the wrong way, though, and we got a couple of recent reviews of London shows calling us ‘disconnected’. We had the added hurdle as well of following this amazing Japanese band, and they couldn’t be more connected. It was so loud you couldn’t get away from them.

A: It’s good in a way, though, because it gives you an opportunity to step up. No one knows it all and it allows us to build on it and take the show to another level. Which I think we have done on this tour. It’s become loud.

J: The most dangerous thing is to become comfortable.

Unfortunately, we should probably talk about results of the EU referendum. As a band, how are you feeling?

A: It’s going to screw us. No two ways about it. In 2 ½ years’ time we’re going to have to get visas to go on European tour and that’s where a lot of our fan-base is. It’s going to squash creativity and make it localised, where we’ve been really benefitting from a worldwide perspective of creativity. There’s a constant battle with touring bands getting visas for America and England, so apparently the answer to that is to make it difficult to get to Europe as well.

J: That’s only one side of it too. There’s so many different points of this being such a bad move. It’s been led by propaganda and fear. I just don’t understand the rationale. And now we’re out or will be soon enough and we can’t go back. The European Union (if it stays going) are already saying there’s going to be hell to pay for it.

A: If there’s the faintest glimmer, it’s that hopefully it gives people a kick up the arse to make good music. We haven’t had that sort of figure of hate since the Thatcherite era and that’s when so much amazing music came out.

And straying slightly from that, how did the fan-base in Europe come about?

J: Social media, really. The internet’s been the reason this band can exist on certain levels. As much as downloading music for free is a negative etc., the internet gets it to more people and no one should ever get into being a musician for money because chances are you won’t make any – but the more ears you can reach, the better. And that’s what the internet did.

A: Europe feels like England about 20 years ago to, there’s such a passion for music. Also in the UK the hire a band to pull in a crowd, whereas in Europe they hire the bands to please the crowd that will come regardless. It really makes a difference.

J: Also they work a lot harder to make the bands’ experiences more enjoyable. Here you get a crate of Stella and a sandwich, and you’ll go to France and all sit down and eat together and you get a hotel room each to get a bit of time away from each other.

And being in a band, how do you deal with not having much time away from each other?

A: It’s insanity. We’re playing in Portugal and we’ve got a few gigs on the way but on the way back it’s a 27-hour drive…

J: One of us will die… But touring and gigging aside we talk to each other 24/7 anyway, discussing things. A lot of it is random nonsense, some of it’s how pissed off somebody is about something else. We’re like a married quadrangle.

A: A bit like a cult!

Have you ever thought of doing anything to make the band more cult-like, through merch or however it could be done?

J: I think in a way a lot of what this band stands for is the opposite of a cult. It’s cult in that you’d be a part of it just to not be a part of anything else. By the same token we’ve always been part of the psychedelic scene but I don’t even know how psychedelic our music is. It’s so dark…

A: It’s not psychedelic to have a tambourine. Psychedelic as a movement is about pushing boundaries and that’s not what the scene nowadays is. That’s just throwing back to where it’s been for so many years.

J: If you’ve got a fuzz pedal and a reverb pedal you’re a psych band… Especially if you’ve got a couple of random members playing cowbells.

What are your plans for the rest of the year then? Is it straight in with the next album or are you going to gig as much as possible?

J: It never really stops. We’re having a couple of months of not doing much, because I also play with Sonic Boom in Spectrum so we’re doing some dates. And then when I get back from that we’ll be working on stuff for the new album. The downtime up until August is going to be focused on honing all that stuff. We’ve got some dates in Autumn and then October will hopefully be focused on recording. Hopefully a live session to and Al’s got a friend in a studio in Manchester who may film us…

A: Nothing to do with the music, just film us.

J: Yeah, it’s going to be a silent movie

Ha, I look forward to it! Thanks a lot for chatting to me.