It’s been seven years since the last Death In Vegas album ‘Satan’s Circus’. In that time Richard Fearless upped sticks to New York, formed raw-power rock ‘n roll band ‘Black Acid’ and went to back to college to study photography.
“I’d been doing Death In Vegas solidly since I was at art school,” says Richard.
“Because I was doing the artwork and the videos, it felt like it was taking over my life. I didn’t feel like there was anything else. Everything got a bit heavy. Our tour manager died while we were on the road. I just needed to step away from it, which was at least part of the reason I went to New York. When I got there, I went to college, to study large-format photography, which has been a big influence on this record.”
Some of Richard’s darkroom favourites include Alec Soth, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, Philip-Lorca deCorcia, William Eggleston, Larry Clark and Diane Arbus. He explains how studying influenced his music:
“Desolate Americana landscape work was mainly what I was taking and doing a lot of traveling on the road. This always has an effect on me musically as your traveling such long distances, thinking so much.
These huge panoramic views go on forever, Long songs which are not over-crowded with music that it giveS you space for visual thought. I think there’s always been that sense of space in my music, like that open expanse of light you don’t get anywhere else but in those wide open spaces. I think it’s in all the music I like, and those great American photographers I like.”
However Richard believes you have to go way back to the 60‘s to find examples of bands that mix music with stunning visuals to produce exciting live shows. “I think you’d have to go back to Grateful Dead and early Pink Floyd. [I] can’t think of anyone who’s blown me away with a visual performance. Lots of people spending shit loads of money but the visuals are just crap.
But as for record covers I think it would have to be Robert Frank’s cover for Exile on Mainstreet. I would spend hours looking at it when I was a kid, the edgy Americana photography interspersed with band imagery; it just looked so fucking cool. In fact the photo that I shot inside the cover of Scorpio Rising was a direct homage to that sleeve.”
Having worked with a host of guest vocalists on earlier albums Fearless was keen that the new release wouldn’t be bogged down by the cult of celebrity. “I was sick of getting questions about what it was like to work with Iggy (Pop) and Liam (Gallagher) and felt like that overshadowed Scorpio Rising. Obviously it was fantastic to work with such people but it wasn’t all the records were about. So yes I decided to hand in an instrumental record and it be purely about the music. Then I did Black Acid, started to sing myself, and made a conscious decision not to work with a load of guest vocalists on this album.”
So, why the decision to make a new Death In Vegas album now? “I have amassed so much material over the last seven years it seemed the right time to gather it all up and start putting out some records. While I was living in NYC I was putting stuff into two camps; Black Acid and Death in Vegas. As soon as I moved back to London from New York, where I’d been living over the last six years or so, I realized I wanted to release again as D.I.V.”
Trans-Love Energies is out now
