Dead Letter Circus - The Circus is in Town

Having burst onto the live scene since only October last year, Dead Letter Circus has developed a cult following, and are definitely shaping up to be one of Australia’s hottest live alternative rock acts. Dead Letter Circus has already joined heavyweights such as Karnivool, Sleight of Hand, and Mammal on tour, and are currently touring with fellow Brisbane rockers The Butterfly Effect and US band Chevelle. Word of mouth has spread round the country, and this proves to be a pivotal factor for the bands rapid success on the live scene, as vocalist Kim Benzie discusses.

“Word of mouth and MySpace are the reason we are in the position we are. The genre of people that seem to like our tunes are those "real" music fans - the ones who look hard for new tunes, and when they find something they like, they really champion it and fly a flag for a band on their own personal reputation. I am personally one of these people with music and it is a really f*cking awesome moment every time we return to a place we have previously played, and you see that the same guy/girl music-guru/ninja you chatted to after the last show has brought or dragged another 5 friends along.”

“Some of the best days of my life have been at music festivals.” Kim states, regarding the huge Come Together festival Dead Letter Circus recently played, alongside friends such as Cog, Karnivool and Shihad. “I love them - A variety of the best musicians in the world at the time in one place and 1000’s of people all beaming for an event they have been waiting for all year… good times!”

Dead Letter Circus has recently released their self-titled debut EP, and as a band trying to generate a new sound, evidently the writing and recording process was challenging. Benzie talks us through it.

“It was all very intense and long. With writing we were really aiming at a new sound so we were kinda walking blind with a concept of "what we wanted to sound like". In the studio Forrester (Savell) pushed us really hard to get the best out of us. His attention to detail made us all step up as musicians, as he wouldn’t take a “nearly there” part as good enough even if it was 99% of what he wanted. He is also a really creative guy and made us do a lot of improvisation to chase ideas he had during the process.”

Although they are still rookies of the road, the ‘Circus have some interesting stories to tell. Kim speaks of the highlight of their short career, the recent EP launch at Melbourne’s Ding Dong Lounge.

“While we were loading the van to get to the show, an old man who was passing by stopped for a chat. This man spoke to us for maybe a minute. Then for some reason we will never know, he walked out in front of a train 5 metres from where we were standing and was killed in front of our eyes. We drove straight to the show in total shock - the last thing we felt like doing was playing, but Melbourne really stepped up for us. We expected maybe 100 people to turn up but were stunned as the place filled up and then sold out. The crowd was mind blowing. The highlight in this sad day was that music and being in the band really gave something back to us that night… we were all sad, shocked, really homesick, miles away from our loved ones and a crowd of strangers lifted us all up from a heavy emotional low to an amazing high where the hair was standing up on our arms in between songs from the cheers. It was one of the most intense days of my life.”

Dead Letter Circus plans to write “THE rock album of 2008”, and will spend the rest of the year writing, and “touring our under-fed asses off!”

Catch the ‘Circus supporting Chevelle and The Butterfly Effect, see www.myspace.com/deadlettercircus for locations and tickets.

Dead Letter Circus debut EP out now through Green MGM and Waterfront Records.

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