More about: DSND

DSND’s expansive electro-pop sensibilities have a carefully considered air to them, from the visuals to the emotionally charged sonics and lyrical content. We meet the duo on a mission to create forward-facing pop music; one half of the musical pairing, Josh West, takes us through their EP Eremocene, touching on contemporary themes of mental health and social media, track by track.

‘Collide’

Josh West: It’s about accepting your own sadness. The idea lyrically was to touch on the theme of mental health without being specific, playing with a lot of imagery that was inspired by J.G Ballard’s ‘Crash’. The heavy use of vocoder on it removes all of my vocal identity and creates this cold tone, which then creates this amazing contrast of warmth when my unaltered vocals come in alongside the strings at the end. 

‘Colour’

JW: ‘Colour' is made up of fragments of several naive breakup songs I wrote when I was 16. I collaged the best lines and arranged them to reflect the harsh back and forth of the song musically. Then wrote the chorus that summed up the combined feeling. The lyrical naivety creates a simplicity that all great pop songs have. 

‘Who Are You To Say’ 

JW: We wanted to build a song up from a vocal loop, I also wanted to use my falsetto to vary against the rest of the songs. It’s about dependancy in a relationship, the negative effects and that weird still silence after an argument.

‘VGR'

JW: I am probably most proud of this song lyrically. Particularly the spoken word part at the end. Its about the restlessness of social media, the endless discover page scrolling and the eventual anxiety it causes. When the drums kick in at the end it’s imitating a meltdown, a “can’t take it anymore” kind of moment. I still use social media a lot, and don’t want to seem like I’m condemning it at all. But speaking for myself I am searching for that validation constantly.

More about: DSND