New York, NY (Top40 Charts) North London punk rock powerhouse DISSOCIATES are delighted to share their debut album 'A Capital Idea' out today through Safety Second Records.
Recorded at Middle Farm Studios, Devon with
James Bragg (Cock Sparrer, Solemn Sun, Woahnows) the 10-track album contains 5 brand new songs and 5 tracks from their previous EP - 'After Hours At The Violet Club'.
The album is streaming now on Spotify and available through all good digital outlets. It has also been given a limited pressing of 300 vinyl copies forged at legendary cutting rooms The Carvery who are in possession of the original Neumann Motown mastering lathe from Detroit.
To celebrate the release, the team at Punktastic.co.uk are throwing a record release party tomorrow night at The Finsbury, Harringay, London. Joining the Dissociates will be Brighton punk bands River Jumpers & Harker as well as hardcore punk band Sweet
Empire from the Netherlands.
'A Capital Idea' is out today on Safety Second Records.
Click here to watch the official music video for 'Useless Wooden Toys': https://youtu.be/XLC-V9Em8QM
About 'A Capital Idea':
"We were there with the Pearly King of Peckham," laughs Dissociates frontman Dan Stevens. "He's 86-years- old, and we had him wearing a radiation mask."
That absurd but definitive shot of an "an old London boy" on the sleeve perfectly encapsulates what's going on inside Dissociates' bold and brave debut album 'A Capital Idea'. Head of the Cockney Museum, he's a man who's seen it all. His main role is to be fully for the people, but he's also full of filthy stories about Princess Margaret. Dressed as symbolic tribute to the past, but defaced by a damning indictment of the future.
Dissociates met as teenagers. After being in several bands through university, fate then took control when a "shit party" reunited them in their mid-20s. Rather than endure a "whack club", they went for a drink and Dissociates were born.
Now 10 years and one new bassist later, the band have released acclaimed EPs through punk stalwart labels like Household Name, Disorder and Safety Second Records, they've won fans at home, and terrified audiences from old opera houses in Ukraine to abandoned Luftwaffe bunkers in Berlin. They've progressed from a "shouty skate-punk band" to a genre-crossing blast that's considered and adventurous, but still driven by pure punk adrenaline. "We've outgrown our sloppy reputation, but we still wanna have fun," as Dan puts it bluntly.
"We've always had an aversion to just doing formulaic stuff," admits guitarist Ned Mendez. "You've got to mix it up a bit. The people who like us are the people who can appreciate that you can have some aggression as well as melody to get your head into. "Punk Rock" is a broad church. We're not NOFX - we're more down the
Fugazi dial."
Lyrically too, the band follow that post-hardcore spirit of taking what they know and taking it to new territories. In the case of Dissociates, the continuing decay of their native London is their biggest muse - but they also look further afield with a global lens. 'A Capital Idea' is equally as concerned with nuclear waste passing through the local London streets and their studio being sold off to build unaffordable flats, as it is with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in Mexico.
"There's a nuclear waste train which goes through my station every week," says Dan of the track 'Sweet 16'. "We could talk about nuclear war and dirty bombs but we're not so far removed from that. Here's a city of millions of people, all that waste has got to go somewhere and we're all swimming in someone's shit to a certain degree. It's part and parcel of living here."
Put that and the image of oil workers watching strippers dance at the weekend aside. If the record is in any way political, it's not with a capital P - this is an album about real life.
"We could be banging on about Theresa May and all that but it dates it quite quickly," admits Dan. "This is more personal-political, whatever that means. I try not to write too many songs about everything being fine and everyone getting together. It's a great scene and city, but my experience has often been as an outsider."
Ned adds: "We play a lot of benefits for homeless charities and leftwing causes, that's definitely in our wheelhouse and where we come from - but musically we don't want to ever be too preachy. Nobody wants to be lectured."
Success, they admit comes simply being allowed to continue being Dissociates, getting from one gig to the next, playing punk and pushing things forward. 'A Capital Idea' is the perfect place to start. What does it say about the band? Just like when they put that gas mask on the Pearly King, it "disconnects the old from the new."
It's in that space frozen in time you'll find Dissociates. It's loud, and only now matters.
https://www.dissociates.co.uk/
