The original interview can be found here at The AU Review
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The day after their performance at the Sydney leg of Harvest, Larry Heath caught up with Richard Fearless, the frontman of iconic UK electronic outfit Death in Vegas, to talk about the show, the new record Trans-Love Energies, living in New York, mixing in Detroit and much more.

How long do you get to spend in Sydney this time?

We have like 5 days off now which is cool, but not as cool as I’d rather be playing shows every night.

There’s a show in Perth, but that’s not happening anymore?

No that’s cancelled.

Tickets were selling well …

It’s sold out

Do you know what happened?

Yeah, I don’t know if I can really get into it without getting really f**ked off, but it seems like it’s not the first band that it’s happened to

The fun of touring the country…

Yeah it’s really frustrating when you come over here… we had a really great time yesterday, but with loads of sound and technical problems on stage, it was a nightmare. It just knocked the wind out of our sails… we had such a good show in Melbourne… it was just a really good show. The last 5 shows have been a turning point because of this new band so it’s kind of like, we aren’t really ready for 5 days off we just wanted to do more of our own shows, where you can have good control over the sounds… we had so much going on stage it’s quite hard to do it, like a half hour line check.

Well it was the first time I’d seen you so I certainly didn’t notice. You know it was high energy and the sound was loud, it was great.

Well Shaun, our sound man, is notoriously one of the loudest guys in the business. He does like Chemicals and New Order, Joy Division back in the days so…

Well, it sounded great, I’m sorry there were tech problems but the Melbourne show went really well…

Yeah it was really good.

Do you get chance at those sort of festivals to run around and go see other bands?

Yesterday we just wanted to commit suicide so we came back here but the night before, we only really got to see Portishead because they were on after us. But we were more freaking out about our location in Melbourne, cos it’s an amazing place. I’ve been working on a film at the moment, so I went from this crazy week… between this French tour, I had a week off and I worked on this film. I went straight from the studio to a 36hr flight, got to Melbourne, so I was just fucked. It was kind of really nice to be in a fantastic location, smoking really good weed and chill out all day.

Sounds lovely!

Yeah it’s good.

A good re-introduction into Australia, as I’m sure Byron was many years ago. That was the only other time you’ve been to Australia?

Yeah, nine years ago

Lots have changed since then. You’ve got a new band. You said its been a turning points in the last few days, the last few shows rather, how has that band come together and how long did it take to get to this point?

Well, I started doing this record about a year and a half ago, I moved back to England from America. And thought I was in the right head frame, I had another band which I started in the States called Black Acid and I thought like I was in the right head frame to do Death In Vegas again. And I didn’t get a band together until I finished the record, which is always kind of the case. But I moved into a studio, where Andrew Weatherall, the DJ producer who did Screamadelica and all that… so Andy had a spare room, so I moved in there. And I had some sketch songs and I started writing the record. During that period, there had been a couple of bands I had been producing, Von Haze from NY and Dark Horses from Brighton. Anyway, Travis from Von Haze, I got him involved, and I got Dom the bass player from Dark Horses who happened to leave them, and I really liked his playing. I cherry picked these musicians these last few years and when the record was ready, it was like ‘shit how are we going to do Trans-Love Energies, it’s a really studio based record how are we going to do this live and make it work’. So that was a challenge but I felt like we just nailed it

I haven’t had a chance to listen to the second instrumental disc …

It’s my favourite actually.

I was going to ask, I think a lot of people who have been listening to you from the beginning, they felt more comfortable with the second disc, while in the first disc it felt like you were pushing it in a new direction. I’m enjoying it thoroughly though, it’s a grower…

That seems to be the general kind of feeling, where everyone’s like not quite sure and then it’s like actually this is getting under my skin. And that the secret of making an album with longevity, as all the albums I love instantly they kind of wear off at the end. Its really hard to make a electronic record that has a sense of longevity, as most stuff, like the Chemical Brother’s records have that kind of sound.

Maybe that’s not the right reference but you know it’s like, electronic music is just moving so like now, like a James Blake backing track will sound of a Dub step influence at this particular moment, and in 4 years time there’s going to be something else coming along, something out dated. You listen to an album like The Man-Machine by Kraftwerk is organic and fresh and there’s a lot of machines they’re using but it’s still got a sense of longevity and that was kind of what I was trying to do with this record.

And that equates to both the record and the second disc as well? Or is the second disc flying in a different direction?

With all of it, as far of the sounds went I think. I think the second disc was just me letting rip a bit more in the studio and taking stuff in a more directional way … I guess its more of a reflection of my DJ style I guess , I wanted to make records I wanted to play out. I wanted to do an album of remixes and I didn’t want anyone touching my baby. So weird, double the amount of work. Double the album. The first album I was trying to, I wouldn’t say make it a bit more pop but … the last few years I was writing songs differently because I didn’t have a studio to access, all I had was a guitar so I was writing songs on a guitar. If you’re writing songs on a 303 or a AOA drum machine you’re gonna write songs differently with an acoustic guitar. I guess I was writing softer structures and getting more into that, getting off on that I guess. I’m really pleased with the record, I really like it

And you went back to the US to mix the record, you did it in Michigan. Is that when you decided on the name of the record?

While I was in NY I had mixed everything I worked on the the same studio. First of all I loved the studio, my original reason why I went there was they had this slice console, and then I struck up a fantastic relationship with the studio owners and became really dear friends. And a big part of me about working is that I have to be really comfortable in the situation I’m in, I have to be want to be in the space. There’s nothing worse than being in some studios, some high end ones where you’re not particularly comfortable, and it’s very sterile.

This place was like, we can stop and go swim in the lake, and it had a real family vibe and that’s important to me. I am a bit of a hippy when it comes down to it. So while I was there I had done some mixes and got into the whole thing, it started with Black Acid Michigan Militia, that’s what we were calling ourselves, and obviously Ann Arbor was very near and that was kind of Trans-love Energies thing, but then the name to me started to represent, I had this vision of what I wanted to do with the artwork and I kind of wanted to show this … if you look at the CD it’s kind of a futuristic design and then this space travel in some of the lyrics.

On one of the versions of the album everything is quite desolate and abandoned, there’s two figures and they’ve got these two guitars and it symbolizes this love and music and it’s about when shit really hits the fan it’s really about love and trans-love energies. That was the kind of theme what I was going for in the artwork and name

And you’ve got Katie from Austra on the record as well. Looking at the back catalogue you’re quite well know to have strong vocalists on your records. How did Katie come about? She’s about to tour Australia as well.

I heard a record of hers a long time ago, I think it was prior to her getting signed to Domino on the Canadian label. I really like the first single I think, Beat Of the Pulse, and I really liked the track. There was one bit where the vocals did something, and it was like one of those magic moments. And so I contacted her and just so happened that she was a Death In Vegas fan. And I sent her some songs and she was like ‘yeah I’m on tour, I’ll stay a couple of days and we’ll nail it’ and she stayed over and we did nail it. But it was actually really hard to work on it, because Katie is a really phenomenal singer and I wanted it a bit looser and nonchalant. So we had to work on it a little bit so that took about 3 and a half week, it’s kind of very hard to get someone to under sing. It’s hard to get an amazing guitarist to play a single guitar part but it worked out fantastic in the end.

That’s probably why it’s the only one on the album

There’s two, she does Witchdance as well, which again I think worked out really good. But I didn’t wanted the vocalist to overshadow the music, which I think it did in the past. I didn’t want to be touring and then in like Provence and have someone shout “where’s Liam!?”. He’s not coming to the South of France with Death in Vegas… he’s doing his own shit! So I was getting a bit of sick of that.

With this record there was a lot of pressure on me, and most of it came from myself really because I was like, a 7 year break and I know there was going to be a lot of love out there and they’ll be wondering ‘what’s he doing’ , ‘who’s going to be on it’, and it’s going to be like , you’ve worked with some really fantastic singers and you put your voice on it and you’re doing it on your own without your engineers/partners, so no one is going to take the blame on this one apart from me. I guess the thing is record had a little trepidation about it but I’m really glad I can put my foot down on it and did what I did. What I have latched onto I have latched onto a lot more heartfelt side, I’m not working for other people, I can be a lot more honest about what’s coming from here and that’s music. I try to channel it…

You are holding it quite close to your chest at the moment in terms of just how you feel about it and you don’t want people remixing it. And you look back when you were signed to a label and they seemed to have a lot more control over what was happening, there were lots happening in the world of syncs and such… did you have any say in those times as to where your music would end up?

Yeah I mean most of the time we always get asked what stuff it. We always got a lot of stuff which they ask for, adverbs and stuff like that. Unfortunately, you can be really cool about things, and there were certainly quite a lot of things in the past that I’ve said no to, but I mean with this record, it was for free on the internet when it came out. What the fuck are you going to do? I don’t do anything other than make music, this is like, this is what I’ve got. To get told that the records don’t sell so you’ve got to tour, it’s quite tough to hear it when you’re 40. All I want to is be in the studio making music, so I guess nowadays you gotta think about business stuff that’s why more people are doing ridiculous things…

Selling USB sticks in jelly heads…

Exactly, USB joints with albums on them. I was thinking ‘wtf’?

You must smoke to enjoy…

No it was actually a Jamaican artist, it was in like a rubber joint and a USB stick. It was the only way you can get the album, it was depressing.

But you know over the years you seemed to be a perfect example of where things have worked well, where things have pushed forward so you don’t have to tour relentlessly, all the time anyway.

I mean I don’t mind touring, I really don’t, especially with this band. I really enjoyed touring , the way I’m doing it is a lot more live. When you’re taking out a studio outfit it’s quite easy to take a lot of the stuff of the studio. It is live but a lot of it comes from the studio, and with this band its really not like that. The other side is that a lot of stuff can go wrong but when everything’s lined up then magic’s in the air, it really is in the air.

Well hopefully it returns this weekend in Brisbane. It’s in the botanical gardens up there, it’s a stunning location.

Is it, well sweet. Hopefully we can redeem and pull off a really good show