November 22, 2019– Nashville natives, The Dune Flowers released their highly anticipated sophomore album today, and we couldn’t be more excited. We first met The Dune Flowers when they played our music festival, Hyp-Fest, in September. We had the chance to interview Oscar Lars and Tyler Drager of The Dune Flowers, and discuss everything about their newest self-titled album, The Dune Flowers.
How is this album different from anything else that you have released?
Oscar: We could focus on it as an album, a collection. It also sounds more alive, which I think is cool.
Tyler: In the studio, it was really fun. We were able to record to just play drums and bass at the same time. We were able to feel it out more, which was way different from what we did before.
Oscar: The old songs were written just for the album, with these we kind of just came up with them, because we liked them, not just for an album.
Tyler: We also sound more ourselves in this. In the one before, we were trying to sound like something we didn’t really know what it was. We honed in a little bit more and we sound like how we would play like in a living room.
What was the process of making this album?
Oscar: Over the last year, we started piecing together, starting with the demos, putting those together and then slowly layering them until the last two months, when we got a lot of the final tracks finished.
Tyler: I definitely feel like all the songs grew over the past year and a half. The song “She’s Wild” was written two years ago and we didn’t have time to put it on the first album, so know it’s on the second one and it’s grown over time. We start writing songs and they coincidentally fit together, rather than the first one [album]. We had them [songs] and we started to record them how we play them live.
Oscar: It gave us time to practice them. We would play the first album, play the songs for a little bit, kept putting in the new ones, we just got the chance to play them a bunch.
Tyler: We went into it as “Alright, we have these cords, let’s try to figure out how to make the rest of the song.” but with these we went in and recorded the entire song in one day. The process was a little weird because we recorded the drums, guitar, bass, and vocals in the studio and then we would come back to my house and record stuff there, and then we would go back to the studio and mix it. It was a lot of back and forth between the studio and our house.
Oscar: It felt like there was always a different spot.
Where did you find inspiration when writing these songs?
Tyler: Everyone always says that it [inspiration] comes from your daily life and I feel that that is true but also there’s love, there’s hate, there’s feelings like that in songs. Oscar would write a really crazy song and I would be like “Oh man, I got to write a really crazy song too, because Oscar’s song rips! I’ve got to write one just as good as that!” I feel like there was a lot of balancing off each other too to write songs.
Tyler: With a couple of them [songs] too, we would just be jamming and practicing for a show and warming up and we would come up with songs. It just came out of nowhere. We weren’t setting out to write a bunch of songs for an album, it was like they came over time and I feel that that helped a lot because we got to pick and choose what songs we wanted and didn’t want on the album.
Oscar: I feel like we beat around the bush with that, but I feel that”s the best way to do it.
Tyler: My musical inspirations for the first couple of songs that we wrote, were the Southern California rock bands like, The Growlers, Allah-Las, and Mystic Braves. I was really into Twin Peaks and the “garage sound”. That influenced me a lot as far as how everything sounds. Oscar has been playing a lot of piano, there are two new tracks where he plays the piano.
Oscar: Playing the piano has definitely been a big inspiration of mine. Writing on the piano is a whole different story.
How would you describe your music/this album to someone who has never listened to you before?
Oscar: Well there’s fourteen [songs] to pick from so if you don’t like one, you’ve got thirteen others to choose from.
Tyler: I feel like all the songs are different from each other, they’re a little Western, they’re a little psychedelic, they’re a little rock and roll, and they’re a little garage-y. We wanted to make a rock and roll album, but there are influences from all the other music we listen to. It’s a new rock and roll.
What message do you want to convey to our readers about this new album?
Oscar: I’m not trying to say that there’s this big sound change or anything like that, but take the album for the songs, not the genre.
Tyler: I feel like there’s so much clutter in the music world, like people wanting to be on the radio. There’s nothing wrong with that, but on this [the album], we set out to make something we hope to be listened to in 10, 15 years. I don’t know if that sounds pretentious, but I want it to stick around. We just want to do our own thing and we hope the people really like it.
Oscar: I want them to know that we appreciate the beauty in simplicity.
Final Thoughts
We highly recommend turning this album on full blast and dancing around to it in your kitchen. The Dune Flowers’ rock-and-roll tunes will have you jumping out of your seat and dancing all night long. We’re so glad that we had the chance to get some insight on the process of this ‘new age’ rock album.
You can now stream the album on all music platforms, and follow their Instagram account (@theduneflowers) to stay up to date on all their releases and upcoming shows.
Hypnotic Bolt 