More about: Gang of Youths

It’s 24 February 2022. For the past 48 hours, radio waves have been full of news that Russian president Vladimir Putin looks set to attempt to invade Ukraine and take the European capital of Kyiv by force. Ukrainians have begun fleeing their homes, making their way towards the Polish border, in the hopes of safety amid the uncertainty of what’s to come. Mere minutes before this writer's phone rings, Putin has threatened any nation that stands in its way with consequences that “you have never seen in your entire history”. It’s a difficult moment for the world to take, but when the phone does ring, it’s nice to know that others feel the same way. “It feels weird to care about the release of a piece of music when the people in Ukraine and broader Eastern Europe are struggling so much,” says Max Dunn, drummer with Australian alt-rock band Gang of Youths. “It’s perspective isn’t it; we’re not out here saving lives, we’re not doctors, we’re just a band”.

It’s that honesty, however—and the band’s willingness to admit to their own fallibility and foibles—that makes them so relatable. No band can save the world, but one that is as open about its uncertainties, life's difficulties and fear of what’s to come makes the world even a little easier to take in. They are one of us: they feel, they hurt, they get angry and they get sad. But through it all, they have each other, just as they always have done. 

Max is chatting from his London home ahead of the release of his band's highly-anticipated third album angel in realtime., their most personal and experimental album to date. He’s got the day off from rehearsals, as the band gears up for a mega EU/US tour which will take them from March to November with little reprieve in between. “We’ve been unusually busy as a band,” Dunn admits of their hectic schedule, “We’re normally bad rehearsers, we just love making new shit and we’re bad at doing the stuff we’re meant to, but I think it’s because we know that this new stuff is so complicated that we’d look like absolute tits if we weren’t super across it”.

“It’s nerve-wracking,” he admits of his feelings towards the album's impending release. “You pretend it’s not but then the day before you’re worrying and just hoping people like it”. “When you’re making music, it’s about making stuff as a group of guys that you think is amazing and fits the vision” he adds, “and then you’ve got to let go of it a little bit”.

Gang of Youths were originally founded in Sydney in 2011. The band consists of founding members Dunn (bass guitar), David Le'aupepe (lead vocals, guitar), Jung Kim (lead guitar, keyboards),  and newer additions Donnie Borzestowski (drums), and Tom Hobden (violin, keyboards, guitar). Le'aupepe and Chung are childhood friends, first meeting when they were introduced attending Hillsong, an evangelical church in Northern Sydney. When Dunn was 17, he moved to Australia and met Le'aupepe in highschool. Upon hearing Dunn was a musician, Le'aupepe invited him to join a band he was forming with friends from church. “We all played together and it just made sense” Dunn recalls of the early days, “then Donnie joined and we got even better”. “Donnie is the best drummer I’ve ever seen” Dunn adds, “he has a way of pulling things together and it pushed us in a whole new level”.

In 2012, the band performed their first gig as a support band for local outfit Tigertown, who’s drummer was so impressed he became their manager. After a year of practising, recording demos and playing support slots across some of Sydney's smaller venues, the band released their debut single ‘Evangelist’ in 2013. It was around this time that work began on their debut album The Positions, an album which found Le'aupepe grappling with his demons as he navigated the breakdown of his relationship with his former wife, her cancer diagnosis and treatment and his own attempts to take his own life. The album was released in 2015, and its success saw the band bring their frantic riffs and gut-wrenching vocals across the world. An album two years in the making, it marked Gangs of Youth out as a band on the rise and catapulted them to the fore of the music industry in Australia.

Following the release of The Positions, the band relocated to London, following issues with keyboard player Jung Kim’s Australian Visa. Within a year, they had released their second album Go Farther In Lightness and had toured both the UK and EU. The album’s success opened them up to a world of opportunity and in 2018 and 2019 they supported both Foo Fighters and Mumford and Sons in the US and Mexico. By the time their tour with Mumford came to end, they knew they needed to get to work on their third album. With nothing but a few demos and some ideas etched on notepads scattered across suitcases, the band decided to start from scratch. They hoped to have an album within 18 months. Little did they know what was to come. 

“I don’t know what it is about us but we tend to just make crazy albums,” Dunn replies when asked what took the album two-and-a-half years to complete, “it’s never just get in and record an album, Dave gives a lot of himself to each project and he’s not just a seal we can club when it’s time to make a new record”. “It’s an extremely inefficient album, it took us two and a half years” he adds, “A lot of devotion went into the emotion on the record”.

angels in realtime. finds David Le'aupepe exploring his relationship with his family history and heritage, and in particular his relationship with his father, Teleso "Tattersall" Le'aupepe, who passed away in 2018. David’s research into his family heritage uncovered secrets he could never have expected, including the fact that his father was ten years older than he had expected, had been born in Samoa rather than New Zealand, and that he had two other sons, whom had thought their father had died years previously. These revelations caused Le'aupepe to explore his own relationship with family, what he truly knew about those around him and what it meant to be a Le'aupepe, and across angel in realtime.’s 13 tracks, the band take elements of their hard rock history, contemporary electronics and traditional pacifica gospel (recorded as part of a pre-pandemic trip to Aotearoa to work with Pasifika and Māori instrumentalists the Anuanua Drummers from the Cook Islands and the Auckland Gospel Choir) to create something truly spellbinding; a thesis on self and the impact of family across an entire generation.

“I’ve worked with Dave almost a decade and we’ve never released anything as a band that’s not quite personal,” Dunn says of giving Le'aupepe the space to create, “If you’re good at your job as a musician you know when to shut up”.

“This record is about Pacifica identity, coming to terms with who you are, London, friends getting you through and a lot of things but predominantly it’s a story of a boy and a dad,” he adds, “It’s an incredibly random album, there was a lot of risks and ideas we’d always dreaming of doing and this was our moment; it stretched the boundaries of who we are and trying to do something new”.

The band have previously described themselves as ‘lucky’: the album’s influences meshed together so seamlessly and Dunn is quick to point out that on paper, UK Garage and Pacifica history have very rarely been uttered in the same sentence, nevermind entwined within the same song. “I almost feel like we’re not trying to strike a balance; contrast is everything to us” Dunn explains of the process, “‘The Kingdom is Within You’ is a house tune about the exploitation of Pacifica people in New Zealand. It was a great honour to work on that as a New Zealander, as a person who wants to own some of that shit. On the face of it its UK garage track with classical minimalism with indigenous samples. It shouldn’t work, it’s a lot, but it works”. “I guess there is a balance in that it has to make sense,” he notes, “but we don’t try to make the mood suit the tune at the time”.

A similar story can be told of ‘Goal of The Century’, one of Dunn’s favourite tracks on the album, which features the vocals Aukland Gospel choir which gives it a unique Polynesian feel”. “If you just took the verses and choruses it’d be a radio banger,” he explains, “but it’s filled with samples of Pacifica from the late 1970’s”. “There are a lot of things at play throughout the record but I never doubted it would because Dave’s voice is so infectious that it pulls things together," he admits, before laughing: “I don’t think anyone’s every tried to blend those things before, I feel like we did something that was a risk and challenged who you are”.

Despite its heavy themes and its blend of influences, angle in realtime. is an album full of love, ambition, and hope for all that is to come. It’s the perfect album for an unbalanced time, when as we watch our evening news all we may have is a bit of hope. Maybe a band can’t save the world, but one that can save your day is something worth celebrating indeed.

angel in realtime. Is out now on Warner.

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More about: Gang of Youths