Post-punk shoegaze group Dangerfields were put through the wringer as they conceptualised their debut album, Echoes & Pulses. Halfway through its creation, lead singer and guitarist Lucas Swart was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure and told he needed an emergency kidney transplant. His journey through illness, operation and recovery was emotionally taxing. As a result, the band’s record is a self-reflexive ode to the fragility of relationships and the complexity of mortality, and Swart was keen to talk about its insights with Apple Music.
“Prisoner” “Prisoner was one of the earliest tracks we started working on for the album. I had been feeling physically awful for months and didn’t know why yet, and I was also going through emotional issues that were making me behave self-destructively, which was probably making the physical situation worse, like a vicious cycle. The song is about being trapped in a bad situation and feeling like there is no escape. It’s probably the most hopeless thing we’ve ever written, but it is cathartic to play live.”
“Jet Lag” “This one started as an early guitar demo from our guitarist Joshua Van Zyl, when he had been listening to a lot of Deerhunter and Pink Floyd. An interest in the art of repetition and dissonance was taken quite highly into consideration. The verse and choruses are essentially the same thing played differently, with the chorus losing two of the four chords played in the verse. It’s supposed to feel like a wave taking you under, where the break towards the end of the song is like a sweet relief, breaking out onto the other side.”
“Machine” “‘Machine’ also started as an instrumental guitar demo from Josh. The music was inspired by a lot of trip-hop stuff that had been floating around his music library. The idea was to have a song which was predominantly based around a groove and the space between notes—which can be heard predominantly in the verses where the guitar is rather sparse and atmospheric. The song has a climax, but one that is aimed at taking you on a trip, as opposed to something that just grew and got louder, noisier and messier. The lyrics are inspired by insecurities that I felt at times within my personal relationships when I was sick. I was spending a lot of nights literally hooked up to a machine and felt pretty far away from the people I wanted to be around, and there was a part of me that felt like a bit of a lost cause sometimes so I wasn’t always sure if they would stick around for ever. They did though.”
“Mocking Moon” “For this song we tried to channel the sheer terror of The Cure’s 1982 album Pornography, which I believe is one of the most perfect gothic post-punk albums ever made. I was going through another low point and used it as inspiration to create this noisy, driving track that I knew would be really cathartic to perform. This is the only track for which I created a pretty complete demo with a version of all the instruments on it before bringing it to the band for everyone to bring their own flavour to it. Ironically, I didn’t play guitar (or any other instruments) on the album recording in the end, though.”
“No Sunlight” “‘No Sunlight’ was inspired by the first few weeks that I spent in a room on the sixth floor at Tygerberg Hospital when I was first diagnosed, and I was delirious and very much alone. I regularly had to get out of bed to get sick in the basin, which was in front of a window overlooking what looked to me like a post-apocalyptic dystopia at the time, probably due to dehydration and all the meds I was on. The air conditioner in the room was broken in such a way that it could not be turned off or adjusted, and it was right above my bed blowing down on me and basically making me feel like I was already in a morgue. The song was written later between hospital stays, but it still feels to me like it was actually written in that dark cold room. I think it has a pretty romantic, positive message behind it, though, about spending time with the people you love while you can.
“Fragile” “This was written in the time when I was recovering from my op and I was in a much better state of mind. I was still under quarantine but feeling much better than I had in years, and I just couldn’t wait to get home to my girlfriend who had just moved in with me. It is supposed to sound triumphant and joyful, which are not feelings that people would normally associate with our band, but I think it came through well enough.”
“Now And Then” “This is actually one of our oldest songs in that Calvin Siderfin and I wrote it back in early 2015 before the rest of the band members had even joined yet. A close friend had just lost a family member and I was trying to be as supportive as I could and it was on my mind a lot. At the time Calvin and I were playing around with a lot of ideas and we tracked a demo of this track. We then forgot about it for a few years until one day in 2018, Mia—my now-fiancée—discovered it by accident and brought it back to my attention. I played it for the rest of the band and we all agreed that it would be a good fit for the album, with its themes of grief and moving on.”
“Storms” “On 7 June 2017, Cape Town experienced its worst storm in 30 years, and Calvin and I had a songwriting session that night. I was going through some pretty turbulent times myself so it felt appropriate to create something that sounded like a collaboration with the storm we could hear outside. The only instrument we had access to was his bass, so the initial demo was just a bass line with a layer of harmonics played on the same guitar. The harmonics later became Josh’s ethereal guitar part and the drums followed the bass closely. Personally the lyrics of this one are tough to talk about, that was probably the worst I have ever felt. This song is also very cathartic to play live though, and playing it at Endless Daze 2017 is still one of my favourite moments I have ever experienced as a musician. The electric-piano part at the end is supposed to evoke a particularly isolated-sounding church piano, like what you might hear faintly in the background at a funeral reception.”