DON BROCO are days out from dropping their new album Nightmare Tripping on Friday (March 27th), and if the band’s track record is anything to go by, it won’t land quietly.
Frontman Rob Damiani has never been one to keep things polished and distant, the band’s records always feel lived in, a bit chaotic, and shaped by whatever’s happening around them at the time. This one’s no different, from last minute hotel room sessions in Australia to recording inside a Muse member’s studio, Nightmare Tripping carries the fingerprints of everything that nearly derailed it.
Here, Damiani walks through some of the stranger, messier, and unexpectedly human moments that went into making the record.
Fact 1 – Recording at Chris Wolstenholme’s home studio
This first fact isn’t really unknown, but it’s something we haven’t really talked about loads: we recorded a lot of Nightmare Tripping at Chris [Wolstenholme] from Muse’s home studio. Which was really cool because, firstly, it saved us a load of money because studios are expensive these days. But also, Dan [Lancaster], our producer, has recently become Muse’s keyboard player. Well not recently actually, I think he’s done at least a whole album cycle with them touring. So for the last few years, Dan’s been in Muse’s live band. And Chris is incredible, he plays bass, he’s an incredible engineer and has engineered a lot of Muse’s stuff, but he doesn’t often have other bands into his own studio. Dan said to him, “how do you feel about engineering DON BROCO’s album?”. So all of the live drums and some of the guitars and bass on the album, we did them at Chris’s studio. It’s all Twin Peaks themed, there’s a really sick vibe down there. That was a cool little extra thing that we didn’t know going into the album we were going to be doing. But it was really sick and he’s a really lovely dude.
Don Broco ‘Disappear’
Fact 2 – Recording at the Ibis in Adelaide
This is the opposite of fun, but the deadline for finishing the record was when we were on our last Australian tour. We recorded the last ever guitars and vocals that made the record in a hotel, it was a hotel room in Adelaide, the ibis in Adelaide. We had some sick hotel rooms on that tour, but that was the one hotel where we didn’t have a sick one. We were sharing two to a room in the ibis, and it was the smallest hotel room we had on the entire tour. It was so last minute, we were like, “shit, this needs something, this part isn’t right”. So we had to re-record guitar parts and add some vocal harmonies. And it turns out we missed the deadline anyway, but at the time that was the deadline. So our one day off on our Australian tour, literally the only day off we had on the tour: we were just in the hotel room all day recording parts. So that’s kind of interesting for an Australian angle. And in fact, the album was meant to be finished before we got to Australia. The final, final deadline was before we got there. And then the final, final, final deadline was the last day of the Australian tour…and we still missed it. We got it all out, but it couldn’t get mixed in time.
Fact 3 – Recording with two dogs
This was also the first time we had two dogs with us in the studio the whole time, we had Dan’s dog Marlee, and Tom [Doyle] would bring his dog Clover to the studio too because she’s a new rescue dog and he couldn’t leave her at home. Clover and Marlee would sometimes fight and have little scuffles in the background, so there’s a few dog barks very deep in the record. You can’t really hear them, but we can hear them, we know where they are. I can’t even remember what songs they’re on now off the top of my head, and honestly I don’t think you’d even really hear it because once you’ve mixed it in, they’re random vocal takes and you can just hear it really quietly in the background. But they were takes that we were like, “well, they’re the best takes!”. You’d hear it and it would just sound like a bit of percussion or something. But when you isolate it, you can hear it in the background. So there’s a few secret dog barks, one or two moments on the record where we were like, “we’ll just leave them in”.
Don Broco ‘Cellophane’ video
Fact 4 – Viking vibes
When we recorded Swimming Pools, the synth line in it was giving us real Techno Viking vibes. And when we synced up the track to Techno Viking’s walk, when he’s walking through Berlin. For the whole recording process for that song, we just decided we couldn’t record that song unless we had a Techno Viking video playing as we were recording it, and you could say that song was very much inspired by Techno Viking. For every vocal take, we’d just have Techno Viking playing in the background. And then we’d have little breaks, watch the Techno Viking video, get back into it. He was just getting us hyped for the vocal takes in that song. There is a video of that somewhere, but I don’t know if we’ll ever put it out!
Don Broco ‘Nightmare Tripping’ ft. Nickelback
Fact 5 – Fueled by Turkish and Lebanese food
Lastly, we ate Turkish and a lot of Lebanese food the entire time we were making the album, we varied between the two of them. It wasn’t every day, it was probably more like every other day. But it was those two that we just kept going back to, they’re so delicious and it’s so yummy, but you don’t feel terrible afterwards. It’s definitely two of the cuisines I could just eat every day. Italian food’s delicious, but if you eat Italian food every day, even if you’re having the healthy stuff with it, it can get heavy. So there you go, Nightmare Tripping was fueled by Turkish and Lebanese food.
Don Broco ‘Nightmare Tripping‘ March 27th
Pre Order/Save “Nightmare Tripping” here.
If there’s a thread running through all of this, it’s that Nightmare Tripping wasn’t built in perfect conditions, it was pieced together between deadlines, long haul tours, cramped rooms, and whatever energy the band could hold onto in the moment.
That tension tends to bleed into DON BROCO’s music. It’s why their records don’t feel overly calculated, even when they’re tight, there’s always something slightly off centre, something unpredictable.
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