Salmonella Dub: Inside Information.

Salmonella Dub play The Great Northern Hotel in Byron Bay on Thursday and The Zoo on Friday.

Kiwi act Salmonella Dub didn’t play the Big Day Out in Australia this year. We’re lucky enough to see them at their own shows over here, nice and sweaty and intimate. They did, however, put in a set at the Auckland Big Day Out, and at the time of this interview were busy driving backwards and forwards from gate to gate trying to locate the entrance for their stage.

“We’ve been driving around for about fifteen minutes,” guitarist Andrew explains. “We’ve finally found the right gate.”

“We’re in the Boiler Room this year, rather than one of the main stages. We’re been on the main stage for the last couple of years. I much prefer the Boiler Room. You get a bit lost on the big stages. Our bass player ends up fifty metres away or something. We tend to feed off each other live a bit, so it’s definitely better working in a tighter environment.”

“It’s going to be a hot one. I can remember the last time we did the Gold Coast one. We spent most of our time jumping in and out of our ice bucket. There were all these big ice trays. They proved really handy late in the afternoon.”

“This year we’re playing at 5.30 in the afternoon. Before people start to really loose the plot. You can take the music in rather than just survive.”

While not busy on the road or in the studio themselves, Salmonella Dub have taken the time to remix a couple of tracks for the single release of The Porkers Too Big For Your Boots.

“Their management approached us, and they’ve been really keen for us to do a tour with them at some stage, which still hasn’t eventuated. So as a second prize we ended up doing a remix with them. It’s quite an eclectic album from The Porkers. I hadn’t really heard much of them (before the remix session). They came to our hometown of Christchurch about six or seven years ago and I hadn’t heard anything from them since them. I hear they’ve got quite a following.”

Is reworking someone else’s material something the band enjoys on a whole?

“We’ve been doing quite a bit of it. It’s a lot of fun in that you’ve got full licence to go to town and do what you want. The Porkers track we tamed down quite a bit, so it’s not the full dub kind of thing, it’s more radio friendly. We gave them our best shot there.”

It’s a very different kettle of fish to Salmonella Dub’s own current single, the massive Bromley East Roller from their most recent, and highly recommended, album Inside The Dub Plates.

“It’s full steam ahead live drum and bass. Believe it or not, our drummer can do it all live without any sequencing. 180 bpm live drums. We’re very close to what we want to sound like this time. We were particularly keen to capture some of the bands live energy. We’ve been experimenting with different ways to record the drums and actually found a lot of the more live or hard sound were just done with a mic down one end of the room running through an old guitar compressor, and we basically built it from the rhythm section up.”

How is Inside The Dub Plates being received? Here in Australia most people would have been introduced to the band with your last record Killervision.

“It’s been a bit of a slow build since the last record. He new album’s already done more than Killervision. We’ve had more singles from it, so there’s more airplay and a couple of videos.”

Your first record came out eight years ago now. Do you see the progression that the band has made when you listen back through your discography?

“We’ve slowly been honing our studio styles. We’re far more confident now that we were three or four albums back when we were still trying to work out how to play to click tracks and what have you. Now we’re more hands on and it’s much more helpful. Rather than telling someone what to do you can get in and muck around with it.”