“AMNPLIFY VIDEO PREMIERE”

THE PARADISE RIFLEBIRDS
release video for
“DEHAVILLAND DREAMSTATE”

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“AMNPLIFY VIDEO PREMIERE”

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Influenced by the likes of the Afghan Whigs and Nick Cave, The Paradise Riflebirds are set to release their first body of work since The Riflebird’s EP in 2009. Following up from previous singles “This One Goes To Those Who Never Had A Chance To Leave” and “Concrete Bones”, “deHavilland Dreamstate” is the third single taken from the band’s forthcoming album Victorian Evening.

Main songwriter for the band, Simon John, explains the inspiration behind the new track, “The deHavilland Dreamstate is that half-asleep relief that FIFO workers have going home in the plane after 2-3 weeks of work in the bush. The name refers to the deHavilland Dash 8’s that carry people between Cairns and various outback towns. If they are in a job they don’t like and have a stressful home life, the deHavilland plane home is their favourite 2-4 hours of their month, where their senses get a rest.  Sometimes the land below is on fire for miles and miles, which to me was a metaphor for floating above the dumpster fire of our lives/careers!”

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The lyrics of the track are concerned with poverty, nostalgia, violence, corruption, isolation, and informed by Simon’s experiences of living and working in remote areas of Australia. Protagonists toil in factories, daydream on planes, exhort distant lovers, leave families suddenly, collapse in exhaustion, and warn of impending violence. Simon explains, “I wrote the first draft on a deHavilland from Weipa to Cairns.  I picked up the in flight magazine and there was an interview with Pete Murray saying he had a two hour flight and challenged himself to write a song before it landed.  I thought ‘okay, I’ll do that too’.  The contrast of Murray flying to Portugal or Sardinia or something and me flying from a mining town coated in orange dust and coated in smoke also appealed to me.”

Produced by Lee Cardan at Sunshine Recorder Studios in Melbourne and Konstatin Kersting at Airlock Studios in Brisbane, the band wanted the single to reflect the tension and relentlessness of Northern Australia to sound “hot” and  lonely.  Guest bassist Tom Fraser was given free reign, and coloured in between the hazy drone of the guitars.  Guest drummer Toby Bender nailed the flowing but tense waltz that the band was aiming for.

Emerging in Brisbane in the late 2000s as “The Riflebirds” on LoFly Records, the band played at iconic Australian venues such as the Zoo and the Hangar in Brisbane and the Esplanade Hotel in Melbourne before serious illness and unchecked perfectionism cruelled their momentum. The band is now excited to release their third single from the upcoming album due later in 2020!

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AMNPLIFY – DB