A big part of FPM’s revival stemmed from the large number of friends I had who were insanely creative people. Some of those ended up being contributors (and producing such gems as Exploding Kung-Fu Titties and The Iron, Unkind) and some of those have had their own projects covered. A bit incestuous, sure, but I’ve got much less issue putting some eyes on a new artist no one’s heard of than I do wasting a single breath on some over-exposed piece of shit like Tyler the Creator. Even if I have spent multiple drunken nights arguing music with that particular artist, as I did with Dre Perish. I spoke with him briefly about his new solo album Breathe Like a Dragon which is available for free at Bandcamp.
FPM When’d you get your start?
Well, Perish the Red Army was sort of an escapist project I started doing about 6 years ago.
FPM Escapist? how so?
I was working in the ruins of a couple of bands and had been jerked around by industry types. Worked with fair weather bandmates, that sort of thing. Just got worn out, so I decided to mess around on my own for a while. It was a kind of therapy.
FPM: what informed your sound initially and are you surprised at where it has ended up?
My writing style has always kind of evolved the more I press on. I think listening to a lot of no wave when I was a kid really got me playing music initially, but I don’t think that really shows in my songs. It was probably in college when I started listening to a combination of Frank Black and the Kinks that I began to understand the songwriter dynamic.
FPM: Nice. So this album… what was the process like, writing and recording it? What are the lyrical themes?
Well, this record was sort of a long labor of love, definitely a slow process. There were times where I was really depressed and would go months without writing a thing. I probably had a quarter of the record written and recorded by the beginning of last year. Then I hit a wall. It wasn’t until later in the year that the cloud finally lifted and I cranked out the rest of the record in less than 2 months. The record was kind of a coming of age thing for me, you know, a “dealing with your demons” sort of thing. So, I think there’s some of that on there, but mostly it deals with sex and love and the fine line of passion and pain between the two.
FPM: How about the actual writing/recording process itself? What’d you use? How’d you go about putting tracks together?
A good portion of the songs were written guerilla style. I kind of pieced them together as I was recording. Sometimes not even really sure where I was going. I recorded bits of the tracks on an old 4-track tape machine, but did most of the recording on my computer at home.
