On Their Second Album, DJDS Find Hope in the Coming Apocalypse

This past Friday, November 20, I found myself in hell—or, Midtown in New York City—weaving through rolling suitcases and panicked Midwestern moms amidst the rush-hour train traffic and raised terror alert. My destination: the Opening Ceremony store at the Ace Hotel, where Sam Griesemer and Jerome Potter of DJDS (the LA duo formerly known as DJ Dodger Stadium) were launching a line of merchandise in conjunction with their upcoming second LP, Stand Up and Speak, out January 29 on Body High and Loma Vista.

The first time I heard Stand Up and Speak, I thought I'd finally gotten the upbeat, sing-a-long dance album I never received this past summer. It sounded far less melancholy than their debut album, Friend of Mine, which came out in 2014; later, their pair tells me that if Friend of Mine was about capturing the "hypnotic lonely feel of Los Angeles," then Stand Up and Speak was an attempt to "break free from that feeling."

Fast forward to a few listens later, however, I discovered an emotional weight buried under the catchy melodies. I found myself paralyzed by the intensity of lyrics: "good days are coming to an end," sings Potter on the title track. It sounded like someone's diary entry written at the end of the world.

The album's bluesy melodies piped in through the speakers as I entered the store. The scent of DJDS-branded eucalyptus candles wafted through the air, as friends and fans sat on a colossal pepperoni pizza-shaped bench sipping champagne. On the racks, bleach-splattered DJDS hoodies hung next to graphic shirts scrawled with illustrations of huskies and song lyrics. The shirts were designed by Sonya Sombreuil, the silkscreen renegade behind the LA label Come Tees.

In the crowd of black coats, Potter and Griesemer stood out in their blue denim jackets; Potter's was a custom number, with DJDS' symbolic crown hand-painted above the breast pockets by Sombreuil, who will be outfitting the pair on their upcoming tour.

While we sat in a little gallery vestibule that separated the store and the hotel lobby—appropriately showcasing exuberant photos of New York nightlife in the 1970s—I talked to the guys about the irony of tapping into their community to produce a record about loneliness, cinema as a source of creative inspiration, and how incorporating fashion into their music went from a business decision to a necessity.

THUMP: How does your Stand Up and Speak compare to your debut album, Friend of Mine?

Samo Sound Boy: We wanted to pick up where we left off. Friend of Mine was like being in a tunnel—in the way it sounded, everything was loops over and over, and [it] builds up and down gradually. It was a very dark, narrow album. With this one, we thought, "Where do we pick up?"

Jerome LOL: What's the reaction to that tunnel and where does it go next? In January of this year, we talked about that a lot—what we wanted the narrative of that story to be. We spent a lot of time walking around our neighborhood, Westlake [in California], which was really influential in our first album.

Sam came up with this really cool idea: the first album encapsulated the hypnotic lonely feel of Los Angeles, and how to break free from that feeling is what we're telling with the new album. So before we even started writing or recording any of the music, we went in knowing what story we wanted to tell, which was cool.

You guys took a hands on personal approach in finding the vocalists and musicians who contributed to Stand Up and Speak, is that right?

SSB: That happened out of necessity. How can we expand on this sound beyond what we have accessible to us–this room with just synths and drum machines? And that was through our friends, our scene, and our network. We recorded a lot of musicians, singers that we knew, ourselves, or friends of friends. We also recorded lots of found sounds, field recordings, and embedded all of that in there, just gathered everything around us. For the first LP we were sampling records from the dollar bin at Amoeba, and for this one we sampled our whole city, kept it personal.

The album seems to drift from light-hearted melodies to melancholy musings towards the end. What prompted this emotional shift?

SSB: This album was like an exorcism, a meeting, or a service. The way it opens and closes, we felt as if those were the bookends. In the middle, you're getting the individual stories that are woven together.

JL: The first track "You Don't Have to be Alone" is about waiting on one good thing—it's this uplifting moment. That track set the theme for the album. It's like someone telling you things are going to be okay. But with everything, even with the positive things people do, there are always dark undercurrents because you have to have been through dark things to want to improve yourself. So those moments come through later in the album as the personal stories begin. We wanted to set the stage and have this album be more hopeful, but also not one note. The human experience is a complex thing, so it's more interesting to us to show all sides of that.

There were three especially unique tracks that acted as keystones, being that they are ballads: "One Good Thing," "No Guarantees," and "Found." How did you guys make the decision to incorporate these into a dance music album?

SSB: It's the beginning ("One Good Thing"), the end ("Found"), and the intermission ("No Guarantees"). "No Guarantees" is a pause—a gasp for breath—in the middle.

JL: Eulogies, hymns, and procession-type drums influence the opening and closing tracks. That connected to us emotionally, and fit in perfectly to start and close the record.

What were your primary influences for this album, both musically and visually?

SSB: A huge influence for this album was film. The mindset was more that we were co-directing a movie, as well as writing the script. We brought in people to play and sing, which was like bringing in the whole crew for the film. Some of the biggest influences for this were actual directors and movies.

We really wanted to break out of our mold and be more ambitious, the key to that was to not compare it to other music. A conscious effort was made to make sure that other music wasn't the chief inspiration as it was in the first album.

The music videos for several tracks on the album—"You Don't Have to Be Alone," "In the Flames," and the title track, "Stand Up and Speak"—all have a strong dystopian, post-apocalyptic vibe. Can you tell me about your art direction choices for these, and how they are an interpretation the tracks?

SSB: "You Don't Have to be Alone" is definitely the keynote track for the whole album. It was the first piece of music we wrote, and the whole record came from that track. That video shows a group of dogs breaking out of the normality of the Valley or the suburbs, and running towards the ocean.

The "Stand Up and Speak" video was very similar, with this post-apocalyptic groups of survivors banding together in adverse circumstances. They have a gang that's moving forward despite everything else.

SSB: Both were really cool to make. With "Stand Up and Speak," a lot of the shots when they're in the water, we're a little out of frame making sure the kids aren't swept out to sea while they're getting tangled up in the boogie boards. It was funny.

Speaking of your visuals, your label Body High, is known for its bold aesthetic and merchandise. Can you explain how the merch for DJDS conceptually plays into this album?

SSB: The merch really came out of necessity for Body High. When we first started the label we needed money to have tracks mastered and pay for certain production costs. Making a T-shirt was just a way to supplement that when we didn't have anything to run the label on. Over time, the clothes took on just as much importance for us as the music. Now we're getting more into film, so maybe we could add that aspect to Body High and have a whole aesthetic.

Collaborating with Opening Ceremony and Come Tees is a pretty huge deal. What has it been like integrating electronic music into the fashion world?

SSB: It all feels pretty natural. We were connected with Opening Ceremony through someone who worked there and had been coming to our shows. It was a pretty natural thing. The collaboration with Come Tees was introduced because Sonya, the designer, was a friend of a friend. The first time I saw her work was last spring; I was blown away immediately. I proposed that she could make stuff we could wear on tour, [as well as] T-shirts for our audience. It was funny, because she was like, "I've always wanted to make stage clothes for a metal band, but you guys will work." So we took it and ran with it. She's the most inspiring artist we've met all year.

The DJDS symbol is seamlessly incorporated into nearly everything you guys do. It appears to be used as a symbol of rebellion and a beacon of hope in your imagery, is that part of the mission of your music?

SSB: Yeah, definitely. It's like the rebel flag.

JL: Not to look into it too much, but the crown is a royal [symbol] and not for the masses. To take that back—"the crown is ours—is to give hope to the people. We did the label ourselves, the clothing ourselves, we're hands-on with the music videos—we like to be a part of everything. Our hope is that inspires other people to do the same thing. It takes work and effort, but it's possible for anybody.

Stand Up and Speak is out January 29 on Body High and Loma Vista

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