Project Description

Interview with

JJ Peters

from

DEEZ NUTS

Interviewer: Laura Hughes

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Deez Nuts is one of Australia’s legendary hardcore acts, let alone in the hardcore scene. With the incorporation of heaviness mixed with hip-hop lyrics and melodies which makes them stand out of the crowd. They quickly made a name for themselves from their debut release ‘Stay True‘, and here they are twelve years later still kicking it with their latest album ‘You Got Me Fucked Up‘.

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What was your first introduction to music?
My first introduction to music is had because I grew up in a super musical family, so I was always surrounded by that. Like my mum singing, also my mum was into drumming, so she was usually into playing music in bands a lot. I can’t really narrow it down to one initial instant, but some of my very earliest musical memories were my mum listening to Bob Marley whilst she was doing stuff around the house. I can vividly remember that as a very very young child.

What was the most revolutionary album to you growing up?
That is another really tough one because my taste is super eclectic, so discovery hip-hop, rap, R&B, and stuff like that at a young age is something I really identified with and the vibe of that music. But when I started high school I was a little bit more pissed off for the first time in my life, it was punk rock, hardcore, and metal really grabbed my attention. I feel like looking at a very young age, Coolio and shit like that opened new doors to me, and he’s earlier albums like ‘It Takes a Thief’, and when I got to high school shit like Hatebreed and Earth Crisis had something to say, and a whole lot more aggressive, kind of opened my mind to whole other side to world of music, so those were turning points for me.

You’ve just released a new album [You Got Me Fucked Up], how can you compare this album to your older albums?
I would say it’s got all the elements that people wanted to hear from earlier albums, but it has a lot more development, more inspired melody, a bit more woofiness, a bit more diversity. And I think that kind of scared people at first, because people are scared of change and they want you to write the same album that you wrote 12 years ago, but at the same time if you actually did that I’m sure if we’ve written ‘Stay True’ 12 times over we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. So it’s a bit of a catch 22, but I would say that this incorporates all the things people love about this band and introduced new things that make you fall in love with us all over again, and maybe get some new people on board.

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I heard that you changed recording location for this album, what made you want to make that change?
I inspire to evolve as much as possible with any given opportunity, and we had an ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it’ type of attitude about our recording process. It’s huge for us to work with friends, and we’ve been recording with a good friend of ours, who we did the last three albums with because it always sounded great, we always had a great time with him, someone who I’ve been touring with since I was a kid when we were in metal bands together, it was just a comfortable situation. But coming into this album knowing that I wanted to do something different, sonically and different vibe wise, I was like you know what we’ve got to change it up. So instead of writing in New York, which we always do just outside where all the boys live, and then recording in Boston; we decided to go with Andrew Neufeld from Comeback Kid, get a different set of inspiration, a different environment, and then we’ll go and record in California which couldn’t be any more different. It bought a whole new light and energy into the recording.

Did that change bring a different mindset into the recording process?
100%, I’m not a hugely spiritual person but I think that was a pretty rounded reality that your environment has a direct effect on how you feel, how you do your work, and how you live your life and etcetera. Cape Cod in the winter is like one of the coldest places on Earth, so you can completely step outside, roam to the bank, and have your space, the energy was just bitter winter energy, and the same as writing in New York. But this time around Toronto in the summer is fucking beautiful, so it put us in a really good headspace, then going down to California to record. Los Angeles in the summer is a warm, fun, good energy oppose to being in the bitter cold. There is no way you can’t think that those things won’t have an effect on you. From waking up every morning, and the trek from the hotel to the studio sets the mood for your day.

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What’s one thing that you have learned about the recording process along the way?
The measure twice, cut once mentality, being certain about what you’re doing. I’ve always been a spontaneous person with my writing and recording, not such my writing but more my recording. With the early DN albums I did everything myself, I played guitar, bass, drums, and I did the vocals, and I’m not typically proficient at those instruments, and I didn’t have a rehearsal space to sit down and play all the drum parts through and get them right. So the first couple of albums were very experimental for me, because when I was sitting down to record the drums for the first time, I was playing them for the very first time, so I was learning and working it out as I was going; where the further I’ve gone down that path, especially having a full lineup on the last few albums, I now prefer to be much more tight as possible, and get a good idea of how the finish product sound sonically. Over the years I’ve become more anal about how it sounds, rather than it being loosely.

Looking back at your career so far, what do you believe is your most pivotal point?
Writing the first EP that I ever put out for this band. I was in a strange place because I played drums in I Killed The Prom Queen from when I was a teenager, and then we had just disbanded at that point, not broken up, just going on an undetermined hiatus, because out guitarist had joined another band, and I was left not knowing what I was supposed to do with myself for the first time in 7 years, because I had just done I Killed The Prom Queen, that’s all I ever really knew, so I was in this strange position because I don’t have time to get a full band together of people who work full time and can only jam on the weekends, but I know that I had no other interest in doing anything other than music, so how can I make something that I can do by myself, and don’t have to rely on other people. I put together the two things that made sense to me, which were hardcore music that I could rap, and hip-hop lyrics. I put a demo together and put it up on MySpace, which was the medium at the time, and took off. I spent my last thousand dollars to live on the next few months on my studio time to go and record that demo, on a whim hoping that it would turn into something that I could do as a job, and here I am 12 years later talking to you, so I guess that I did the right thing.

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