Los Angeles’ finest noise pop band, Dummy, have quickly become one of the few shinning moments of 2020. The band (which features several former members of Wildhoney) released their triumphant self-titled debut back in May, an introduction that we consider among the year’s best. Five months later and not a lot has changed in the world, but the band return with their sophomore EP, cleverly titled EP2, which is out today via the excellent Born Yesterday Records (Stuck, Landowner, Cafe Racer). Dummy further explore the sound of their debut, dipping into swirls of krautrock, ambient, psych, and that retro-futuristic dream pop aura that made us all swoon for their music in the first place.
To celebrate the release, the band made us a playlist and discussed the influences behind each of the album’s tracks. Check out EP2 below, and the playlist following their writing.
1. Thursday Morning
An early version of this song was written months before the rest of the EP came together. Originally, we wanted to release “Thursday Morning” as a single, with the idea of a more abstract B-Side to accompany it. As we started to work on it, we were inspired to do more and more, eventually landing on an EP with this song as the opening track. We wanted to do something along the lines of the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning", a gentle opener to set the mood. Lyrically, the song is about feeling trapped by time, having all of it in the world, but being unable to use it constructively.
2. Pool Dizzy
Over the last year we've made a lot of home demos for our first LP. We had a very basic demo of this song, but we felt it didn't really fit with the rest, it had more of a New Zealand vibe, so the idea came to add it to this EP. We recorded drums and bass in the studio with our friend Joo-Joo [Ashworth], and that's where it really took shape, layering multiple drum tracks to create a more interesting rhythm for the vocals to play off of. This is the only song that wasn't recorded entirely at home on the iPhone, and the only "rock" song on EP2. Often our song titles aren't related to the lyrical content - the title is an inside joke, and the lyrics are about how all cops are bastards.
3. Nuages
This song is actually cut from a longer practice space jam recorded way back when the band first started. We were messing around with a borrowed Seeburg Select-A-Rhythm (used by Suicide). Alex turned it into a loop, then we dubbed it out in the studio by "playing" a knob on a space echo. Sonically, we were heavily inspired by a record called Disco Mantras on the house label Mood Hut which uses tons of dubby psychedelic effects.
4. Mediocre Garden
This track was completely improvised one afternoon after creating the strange strummy guitar sounding synth patch on my Arturia Microfreak. It reminded me of the synths on the 90's Portugese experimental album Mr. Wollogallu by Carlos Maria Trindade and Nuno Canavarro. The mix of very playful compositions performed on acoustic-modeling electronics was the inspiration.
5. Second Contact
Nathan was abducted by aliens, this track is what he sent back.
6. Prime Mover Unmoved
I had recorded two demos which had a similar sound and structure, but different tonal moods. After working on both for a while, we dropped the phone off to Emma to demo some vocal ideas. Once we heard her vocals on this version, the decision to use it was clear. The song is very influenced by the Harald Grosskopf LP, Synthesist, which I had recently discovered early in the year. We wanted to write a "new age pop" song, taking textures of stuff like Ashra, Iasos, Pauline Anna Strom. The lyrics are about anxiety, and the way it creeps in and colors even happy times.