Hailing from Brisbane’s underground psychedelic rock scene, Dreamtime members Zac Anderson (guitar) Catherine Maddin (bass) and Tara Wardrop (drums) aim to create personal journeys to help draw listeners out of their frontal lobe consciousness and into sonic fantasies. Drifting off during extended meditative jams, the music plays through Dreamtime, while drawing inspiration from psychedelic bands from 1968-1971 among other places.
Keeping true to the 1970 psychedelic genre and maintaining a modern edge, all albums are released on vinyl with exquisite, mind-bending cover art. Their musical style sweeps from dense and heavy to sparkling and galactic in the blink of a third eye, and their dark, rich tones seem to reach deep into your soul and hypnotize through perfect balance of analogue and digital production. Following the release of their well-received second album SUN, this year, the group has tasted success having been invited to play Austin Psych Fest in April this year alongside the musical and psychedelic giants Warpaint, Roky Erickson and Acid Mothers Temple and recently supporting Philidelphian psychedelic wash legends Bardo Pond.
The name Dreamtime, a throwback to the aboriginal mystic history, also represents the subconscious mind-state of dreaming and the illusion of time. They refer to their music quite simply as Psych, but there’s only one way to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes…
We caught up with guitarist and vocalist Zac Anderson
You’ve not long returned from Austin Psych Fest. How was the festival and the shows you played overseas?
Austin Psych fest was incredible, a must go to event for psych fans and any music lovers. It was on this beautiful green pasture ranch circumvented by some of the best food trailers in the world. We played on one of the stages that was built at the bottom of a natural amphitheatre by a lush green river, it was perfect. Sparkling mirrors and swings hung from trees lit up in all different colours, homemade robot drone helicopters hovered overhead filming and freaking people out, there were no police, people were skinny dipping, animalistic jams and love-making ensued throughout the night in the camping grounds and I got my face melted by Acid Mothers Temple! The other shows were great too and it was strange people staring at us here and there, taking photos, having us signing things and stealing our records!?!
Any particularly interesting travel highlights you’d like to share?
Well I did get lost downtown in San Francisco while on shrooms and walked through what must have been the Tenderloin (ghetto), running away from homeless people and young shirtless guys on huffy’s patrolling their neighbourhoods and shouting at me at 3am in the morning, but that was terrifying, not a really a highlight. I ended up hiding behind a large pot plant on some front doorstep for a few hours. The cabs don’t pick anyone up at that hour, even if you’re in the middle of the road waving your arms and shouting help!!! But the food in the US was the best, crawfish, ground beef burger patties you can order rare, medium and well done, and fish taco’s…omg! At Austin Psych Fest from one of the food trailers I had waffles topped with fried chicken, bacon, icecream, whipped butter, maple syrup and chocolate fudge sauce for breakfast. They have bacon milkshakes over there!!! So yeah I was constipated a lot on that tour.
You also recently supported ’90s psych legends Bardo Pond. How was that?
That was literally a dream come true for us, we’ve been fans of their music for years, never thought we’d get to share the same stage. They were so jet lagged yet played a massive set which was hypnotizing from start to finish and were so calm and nice to talk to. It kind of sucks because we had to keep our composure when we just wanted to ask them a million questions. They told us we played a rad set too, I think we did, I was nervous before our slot so I went to the gay bar next door for a cheap drink but it was happy hour and I couldn’t walk past a good bargain, so I was a bit drunk and I think I hugged Bardo Pond like 5 times each as they were leaving.
You’re touring with Kikagaku Moyo around the country later this month. Are you excited to head out on the road with the Japanese five-piece?
Yes, we love psych, they love psych, we love their music…I hope they love ours, they’ll be hearing it a lot. It’s an honour to show them around Australia, and will be cool to have some jams with them. I busk, psych music on the street that no one else is really into haha. But they busk psych music on the street in Tokyo too, so that will be fun. Also, they’re from Japan, so we’ll be constantly learning about crazy stuff in Japan and they’ll be pissing themselves learning our slang. We’re going to teach them to surf and also shooting a short film involving both our bands while on tour.
You’re also playing Amamoor Festival in October With a few opportunities to experience Dreamtime coming up what should punters expect from your live set that they may not have gleaned from your recorded music?
Amamoor is a beautifully set outdoor festival with camping and streams running though the property, it will be awesome!! We played so quietly during album recordings for better production quality, but live it’s much more intense. The amps are loud and where time permits, the songs are extended for jams and improvisation. We like to use other bands amps so it’s different for us each live set, but often the amps don’t go loud enough on the clean channel alone, so that means we have to crank the gain on the amps too. When you add gain on the amp, it goes up in volume but also starts making all the effects in your pedal chain bleed together and start creating their own sounds and cycles that seem to be self-sustaining. Basically our pedals go out of control and that’s great because we have a new medium to work and improvise with, so it’s new and we’re interested in what we’re doing and people respond to that, they sense something new is being created, and the sounds can get so wild.
Your latest LP, Sun, was released last year. Reflecting on what’s happened since, has the album had the impact you thought it would? What did you or didn’t envisage would happen since its release?
I just realised that we used to have expectations of some kind of success, but you do it for a few years and that wears off. You get so busy jamming, writing, booking, promoting, recording, artwork, organising that you forget about success without realising it and suddenly you’re operating like an experimental program on auto-pilot. And you just keep going… until you die or something. Sun has been really well received, but we didn’t have any plans other than “let’s put another album on vinyl and someone will probably buy it”. I think it’s done well because it appropriates well from classic genres but doesn’t replicate them, George Bennett of Unicorn Planet is a recording and mixing genius, and it’s unavoidable for us to get better and better at all aspects of being in a band. I also think we all contributed parts of our being to the songs in Sun, that are almost like secrets we wanted to let out but were too afraid. We travelled to new dimensions together and it’s changed us.
Have you been working on any new material over the past few months? If so what is it sounding like so far?
Yeah of course, we have a heavy stoner doom trip hop song called Serpent’s Tongue, it’s like Wu-Tang Clan crossed with Black Sabbath with Japanese garage/Elvis/Jim Morrison style vocals. And also working on some appropriation of African blues, like Tinariwen, like slow Afro-beat, and adding delay and fuzz of course.
What are your plans for the rest of the year and early 2014?
To release a psychedelic short film and accompanying cult collectors 7” or maybe 10” vinyl and continue another tour beginning 2014.
Where we can see you play next, what releases do you have available and where can we get them?
East Coast Australian Tour with Kikagaku Moyo started in Melbourne with Beaches on the 12th September and continues this week.
We have our self titled EP/LP and Sun available for streaming, digital download and vinyl and merch HERE: dreamtime.bandcamp.com/
Dreamtime Tour Dates:
NEWCASTLE ~ MONDAY 16th
Whites Record Store
w/ Daisies
BYRON BAY ~ THURSDAY 19th
Double Basement
w/ Tsun and Babe Rainbow
BRISBANE ~ SATURDAY 21st
Eucalyptic Echoes Psych Fest @ Beetle Bar
W/ Dead Radio (Syd), Spirit Valley (Syd), Cobwebbs, Moses Gunn Collective, Tsun, Morning Harvey, The M-Humm, Yada, Aquatic Lifeforms
Listen to Dreamtime’s ‘Sun’ here
