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The Dark Clan

Clark: The number one thing that's changed for this record, The Vampire Wore White, is my recording budget, my promo budget, and I've got a lot better gear. With the past records, Vampires Dance! and Oh, But the Stars Still Shine..., those were done on an ancient PC with a hacked copy of Vegas. I wasn't using any MIDI; it was really, really low-budget, and I got a lot of really great sounds out of it just by sheer will. For this record, though, I had upgraded everything to Logic Pro, so I've got all these great synths and somewhat better drum machines now, and access to a lot better sounds and high-quality stuff. Also, because of all the work I've been doing with guys like Andrew Sega from Iris and being in Stromkern and being around those guys and doing a lot of the touring that I've been doing, I was exposed to a wider array of electronic music than I had been before. I started listening to the coldwave guys like Chemlab, 16volt, and Acumen, but now I'm starting hear all of these European EBM bands. It really expanded my palette of what I could do, so I expanded what I could hear and what I could do with this project, and what kind of sounds I could work with and the palette I could have. I took the project more seriously and put a lot more of my time and effort into it, to just widen the palette of what I was doing and to take the record super seriously, and really try to give people the best product that I can and show them that I can generate a super high quality product.

You've mentioned your work in Stromkern and with Andrew Sega. Since the album is self-produced, did you work with anybody in the studio?

Clark: I do everything. The original meaning of this project...originally, I was just going to do all the music and then hire a different singer every time. I still have a lot of friends from when I was in music school who are out and about and working with all of these different singers. But that proved to be impractical for a lot of different reasons. Logistically, it's a nightmare. So I started to do it more and more, but I still liked to stay true to that mission of getting other people involved. For example, our live keyboard player Erin Brennan, she plays the piano on "Look to the Night." My live backup vocalist Amanda Poulson does vocals all over the record, and my bass player Luke Michalowski is also on the record. Sometimes I'm a competent bassist because I'm a guitarist and I play bass like I play guitar, but there are guys like Luke, and he is just a monster! With a guy like him in, it can really change the flavor of an arrangement and really flesh things out, so I like to do that where appropriate. But otherwise, all of the engineering and production is all mine, and I've learned stuff from—I hate to namedrop—but all the guys that I'm around all the time, talking to your friends, learning things that way. I try to keep it mine, because I'm in so many other bands, so The Dark Clan is where I can do what I want!

There is the note on the MySpace about the band being whatever you 'damn well please,' so what kind of new tricks did you try musically? What did you start listening to that inspired you with this new record?

Clark: That's an awesome question. The first track on the record, 'Alles Ist Schön,' was inspired directly from the European leg of the Front Line Assembly tour, because I heard a lot of bands doing that sort of rapping vocals. And that's also from working with Ned, because he's so famous for doing that blend of hip-hop, rock, and electro, so I thought to myself, 'I wonder if I can do something like that.' And it doesn't sound anything like a Stromkern track, but I just wanted to try that style. The second track, 'Love in the Dark,' I wanted to make a club song. I don't have a song—particularly with a four-on-the-floor beat—that you can play on your club night. I wanted to make a track that was specifically for that. When I was writing that song, I was picturing hordes of beautiful gay men dancing with glowsticks. That's all I wanted out of that track; that was my specific goal for that. I've played in a lot of places where Voltaire was playing, because he plays everywhere in the universe, and I wanted to write a kind of hokey story song, so that's the last song on the record, 'The Poisoner's Apprentice.' There are actually a few different visions that I had, and there were two that were purely Dan Clark songs that I would've written no matter what, but half of the songs on the record came from things that I experienced either on tour or from all the new bands I've been exposed to, like hanging out with the guys I was around.

You are associated with bands like The Gothsicles, Caustic, Stromkern, etc. Since all of your songs have different influences and styles, how difficult is it for you to establish a coherent flow to the album?

Clark: That's another really awesome question. In 2004, after my first record came out independently, Eric from Null Device gave a copy to Kristy Venrick of Nilaihah Records, and she said, 'Well, the songwriting is great, but it's kind of all over the place,' which is a perfectly fair thing to say. She wasn't being mean, but I did just hop around a lot. I cover a lot of genres unapologetically. The live show is very coherent because it's the same four players with no backing tracks, so everything is very much done for a rock band kind of show. We do guitar solos and keyboard solos and a full drum set. On record, the main thing that stays coherent, I'm hoping, are compositional techniques. I tend to use similar rhythmic phrases a lot. There are certain chord changes that keep reappearing. My number one goal, and I hope this comes through, is that there should be a pervasive sense of fun to the whole thing, because that's what it's all about. I describe it online as 'Andrew W.K. trying to stop the Dragonforce guys from stealing The Postal Service's lunch money.' I can see where some people would feel like, 'Damn, I don't know what genre to put this under,' but I couldn't write a whole record of one genre. I like to cover different genres and play with stuff, so we'll see what happens stylistically. I've already started the next record, so we'll see what happens.

Let's talk more about your live show and how it's affected your outlook on your music.

Clark: It's affected it a lot, because I started as a live player. The first time I saw a laptop band play, I was almost offended, and I was being a total snob, saying 'What the fuck is this? This is bullshit!' I've lightened up a lot, because regardless of what I think of two guys on stage where one guy is singing and the other is on the laptop, people are having fun, so who gives a shit? That's what it's all about, people enjoying themselves, so who the hell am I to say that one person's way of performing is better than another? I personally place more value on full live performances, because that's where I come from. The live show has only affected me in that now I have to make sure if there's a song I really want to do live, I really have to think about the arrangement. There's a cover of a punk song on the record called 'Brick Wall Views,' and I'd love to do it live, but it's impossible because it's eight million synths and at the end of it are like 18 voices doing a four-part harmony, so to do that would require a lot of careful arrangement. In general, my belief is to do live what you can't do in the studio, and do in the studio what you can't do live. I try to always keep that mindset when I'm doing everything. Knowing the live band that I have, and I've had the same three players for a little while now, and they're a pretty tight-knit group, I see a lot of potential in that group and they're all pros, so they can play pretty much anything I throw at them. The only time I'm really limited is like in the case of 'Love in the Dark.' It would lose something in the translation to a live show. The song has to have that drum machine, or else it would blow up. But for the rockier stuff, we're set.

On the subject of rockier stuff, The Dark Clan does use guitars and you have a rock vibe to your shows, and for a long time, guitars were considered 'uncool' in industrial music. Being a guitarist, what are your thoughts on guitar's place in industrial music now?

Clark: I've thought about this a lot, actually. I've heard both sides of the argument, and I place tremendous value on the guitar, and I think it's relevant. But because of what I do and all the bands that I play with, I've been to shows and I've had people come up straight-up hating on me, saying, 'Why are you playing that Van Halen bullshit? That's crap! Who do you think you are?' and I've also had people come up and say, 'Man, that was the shit!' For me, the way I see it, there seems to be a real division of people who are still living in the days of New Order, when it was like, 'Fuck this guitar bullshit,' and then there are other people who say, 'Two guys on stage with laptops does not equal a show.' And then there's the cluster of people who say, ‘If what you're doing is cool, have at it.' For me, the relevance really depends on what you're looking for on that night. Some nights, people just want to dance and not really give a crap about watching the show. In that case, it can be just you and a laptop and it doesn't matter. But what I've found is that during the shows, especially during the Front Line shows, people really dig it, and if they came to watch the show, then they want to see a show! They want to see people playing and doing tricks, and I really think that it's a pendulum that swings. Ned once said in an interview, and he was pointing at me, 'I started doing this music to get away from assholes just like him.' And it was totally funny, and I understand exactly what he means because back then, think about the '80s. It was full of bullshit hair metal and guitar gods and such. Now I think people are being more accepting about whether you're going to have a laptop or a full band, and let's face it, how many millions of rock bands are now using laptops? So I think guitars are becoming more relevant now, and I'm sure in five years, it'll go back to being about synths.