The Dunies Are All About Having Fun When Making A Record

The music of Brisbane band Dune Rats could certainly be described as punk rock. However, it's a fun, funny, happy style of punk, rather than the angsty, vicious, inner city style that most associate with the term. According to bassist Brett Jansch, their second album The Kids Will Know It's Bullshit was just as much fun to make as it is to listen to.

"We wrote it in a bunch of different spots," he recalls, "which was just a cool time. We were kinda just spending day to day doing what we wanted, not necessarily locking in to write. I think from doing that and having fun during the days, come the evenings we'd just be in the right headspace to nut out something that we were all really happy with. We just had bucketloads of laughter with it. It's all about having a good time, otherwise it's just not enjoyable to do."

"I don't really think when I play, I just get out and give it a crack and hopefully it goes all right!"

The band are about to head off on a very extensive tour of the nation in support of the album, and apparently that sense of fun and frivolity extends to their live show as well. "We all feel that to play Dunies music it has to be played with the right amount of conviction. I don't really think when I play, I just get out and give it a crack and hopefully it goes all right!" he laughs. "In order to make it fun and make it what it needs to be, I need to do what my body says I have to."

That vibe even pervades their music videos. The clip they made for single Scott Green is an interactive, choose your own adventure affair; the viewer can control the action and where the characters go. It's a ball to watch and involve yourself in, and Jansch is happy to explain how it came about.

"Originally it was Tony from Warner's idea," he explains. "There's a couple of other videos out there that he linked me to a couple of months ago, saying, 'Man, we should try and do something like this'. There was a Wiz Khalifa video and a Coldplay one, I think. So I clicked on them, and they were interesting, but it was like, you can do so much with that technology. You can go anywhere, as long as you've filmed the stuff for it. It was just a matter of filming the amount of content to make the technology work. The first time I watched it I was like, 'Fuck yeah! It's like an actual game!"

After their Australian tour the band have some major plans forming in the back of their minds regarding their activities for the rest of 2017. "We're just going to smash this album tour as much as we can, while in the background figure out other places to go. We'll probably go to Europe. And our other idea was to do a video for each of the songs on the album, so watch out for that."