06.13
Its a blistering Saturday lunch time, Dan Hagh has literally just stepped foot off the bus, been shown the backstage sites…….or the toilets in particular and whisked his way through the baying media to talk to us first about Download, Fightstar and his dodgy curry last night.So you’re on stage in about an hour?
Yeah about an hour, they’ve shown me where the toilets are. I had a curry last night and my stomach is a “bit pre download blues”
Nicely leads me into a randow question, what is your favourite curry?
I like to mix it up a bit. I’m a great fan of the Tikka Massala but sometimes they can be a bit mild so you can make the mistake of asking an Indian man to make your curry a little spicier but they tend to go a little over the top and last night was no exception. I had a Tikka which was Faal hot which was tasty but I’m paying the price this morning.
So onto the album and the latest single ‘Mercury Rising’ hows it going?
Its going really well thanks! The album was an ambitious design, we signed to our own label, we are self funded and were doing our own thing so we had to pay for it our self. Our ambitious design was to work with a full orchestra and writing music to integrate with an orchestra isn’t easy and so it requires you to up your game substantially. We had to do a lot of work to make these songs work and writing it was a whole new challenge. But compared to some bands our budget was meager and it was almost like guerrilla album making. We got to work with a great strings composer, Audrey Riley, who’s done Muse, Coldplay and Foo Fighters so she is fucking amazing! It was our dream to work with her but we couldn’t afford to work with her. So we found out who she was and we met her, played her our demos and asked her if she would consider working for us on our meager budget. Luckily for us she loved our stuff so she came on board. Then we thought ‘ we need a choir so where can we get one?’ so we asked our old school and asked to borrow their choir. We needed a flute player so we advertised on the internet and offered them a fish and chip meal and everything was done on this ‘Mates Rates’ kind of deal and to finish it and get a top 20 album against AAA artists who have millions of pounds to spend on making fantastic records and promote them it really feels like an underdog success.
It must have taken you back to the early days of starting out in bands and putting together demos etc?
We couldn’t have done it without our fans at the end of the day its a business and you have to do all that stuff and market it but without them we couldn’t have done it so a big thank you to them all.
That’s brilliant! so…….you here for the whole weekend?
I’m going to stay today, correct me if I’m wrong but DOWN are playing today right? and they have to be one of my all time favourites so I will be legging it off stage to see them as fast as my legs will take me or i may even steal one of those buggy things.
Who else are you looking forward to seeing?
Slipknot and Prodigy, but oh wait…. aren’t they on at the same time?
Yes
Oh man! what you gonna do? that is a tough call! I’ve never seen The Prodigy live so I am looking forward to it but Slipknot what can you say? It’s gonna be incredible! I might do half and half.
So what happens tomorrow onwards?
Tomorrow we have some time off! and we have a few other festivals coming up after that and Tour in September and we might (This is unconfirmed at the time of writing) have Dredge as a support so that will be wicked!
So what you looking forward to doing with your time off? anything planned?
Yeah man, I’m really busy at the moment. I’m making our first feature film which has all the members of Fightstar in it but it isn’t a Fightstar movie. It’s being directed by me Alex Westaway (Fightstar), Alex Gingell and Phillip Koch who have also written the film. It’s like the album its very guerrilla with no budget and a ‘Beg, borrow steal’ feel to it. It is almost a full length feature film with action horror etc in it. It’s like 24 meets the Omen or something like that. We are heavy into post production on this (titled Human Instrumentality) at the moment which will keep me busy for the next couple of months
So what are you going to do with it after that?
I think we’re just gonna put it out in short film festivals and stuff and show people what we made with no budget at all and see if we can get investers for next time to make something bigger and better.
So if all else fails you’ve got a career in media?
I have all types of creativity. I used to make video games before the band i dont distinguish between them all theyre all just creating things for other to enjoy. I started off in the MOD scene making stuff for games that existed. I did a full Quake 1 and 2 mission pack then worked on Quake 3 too. I did alot fo work with Counter Strike and worked a lot on Condition Zero until the beurocracy fucked it up in the end. I also did an IPhone App for Fightstar called ‘Spilt Milk’ on which if you beat the high score you can win a PRS guitar as well as get some Fightstar tracks.
So what did you want to be when you were little?
Thats a tough one, ive been in bands since i was 8 and i had a Death Metal band called ‘Infliction’
At the age of 8???
No that was about 12 lol imagine having a death metal voice at 8 scaring your parents? The new metal came along and i got into that and then more bands and more bands. Then I got to the point when i thought music might not pan out for me so got into video gaming. That was when i met that big idiot Chaz (Charlie) and we hooked up, started making music and it turned out great.
What would you say is the best moment so far?
The whole ‘make it’ terminology is lost on me, what i like is finishing the record, sitting back and thinking ‘That’s what we planned to do’ and likeing it. Wanting to go home and listen to it. If you’re in a band and cant make music you want to hear that isnt ou tthere all ready then why bother? There’s no pint thinking ‘I wish there was an album ou tthere that sounded like this…..’ just go out and make it!
Any future album plans?
We havent talked about it to be honest but im sure it will be something as equally as crazy as this one and equally ambitious.
Ok second random question, look at the clouds, what shapes doyou see?
Ok, this is good. That one of there looks like a pipe, maybe we could get some of the old scholl pipes going later in the dressing room and some fine Brandy if you would like to come?
Ive got some Mars Bar Vodka……
<confused> what the fuck is that?
<explination of making home made Mars Bar Vodka using 3 mars bars, 3/4 of a bottle of vodka and 2 cycles in the dishwasher>
Use the dishwasher? thats renegade man! bet it gets you destroyed! I’ll get on that in a minute see if i can find me some Mars Bars.
Any of your own recipes you want to share?
Not really I’m a white Russian man after watching the big Lebowski who wouldnt be a fan. Oh and Jagermeister who sponsor us so we get a lot of that! It was Chaz’s birthday last week and we got through 2 litres of the stuff!
Do you remember much about the evening?
I remember trying to play in Germany the next day and it not going too well!
And on that note we left him to go find some chocolate bars and play their set on the second stage, check out their website for details on the new IPhone App and their current album.
Words:David Massen