Warriors of the Dystotheque release new album

Warriors of the Dystotheque’s latest album ‘Anthropause’ was released on Friday, May 27.

Jonny Mac, who hails from Seacourt, spoke to the Larne Times about how the Covid pandemic impacted on his career and how the band members were able to be productive at the height of lockdown restrictions.

Commenting on the new album, Jonny said: “The word Anthropause has only just came about during this pandemic, I saw it on the ITN News about two months into lockdown. It was especially prevalent during the lockdowns across the globe.

“It pretty much translates as the decline in human activity that has allowed nature to flourish in some places.

“We’ve put our spin on it and the whole worldwide standstill has allowed us to get into the studio and let the beauty of music flourish once again.

“It features 13 tracks and in true WotD fashion it’s a multi-genre trip through jazzy broken beats with electronic twists, dark turns, splashes of spoken word, and as always we’ve enlisted guest singers who deliver amazing vocals, and for the first time I’ve co-written the lyrics and pushed the direction on several tracks which has been quite cathartic.

“Finally, to cap it off, it’s been co-produced by Howie B on an island off the coast of France and mastered by Robin Schmidt of 2496 Mastering who has recently worked with Elton John, Dua Lipa, Liam Gallagher, The Pixies, Rag and Bone Man and many more of the world’s top artists.”

Explaining what it meant to work with Howie B, Jonny stated: “It’s truly amazing. I’ve been a fan of Howie since the Trip Hop material on his on pioneering label Pussyfoot in the mid 90s and was lucky enough to share a platform with him back in 2017 when we both remixed for Lisbon Kid Ft Sarah Cracknell of Saint Etienne. We got chatting after that and became good friends. He’s originally from Glasgow so we can relate to each other and have a laugh.

“Just as Brexit came in and things became tricky for musicians to travel and perform in Europe without work permits, we decided to do a collaboration. It was called No Borders, our direct answer to Brexit and the hurdles it was throwing up.

“So when the whole lockdown kicked in I had just began to demo some tracks for this new album and let Howie hear a few bits and he was totally into the direction it was heading and we decided to work together, so you can imagine how blown away I was at this especially as he’s responsible for some of the most seminal albums of the last 30 years from starting out as a tape op and assistant engineer in Hanns Zimmer’s studio to producing Bjork’s debut, Soul II Soul’s - Club Classic’s Vol 1, he also worked on Massive Attack and Goldie albums and least not U2’s Pop album.

“He actually played a few of our tracks to Bono who emailed to say he loved Pop Cult and Smash the Stigma saying the later was our breakthrough cross over track, so that was pretty cool.”

Now that Coronavirus restrictions have eased, Jonny is looking forward to performing in front of audiences again.

He added: “I have a week-long showcase exhibition at Southbank Centre in London coming up and gigs in Ibiza next month at the legendary Pikes and Sunset at Cafe del Mar and and I’m headlining the Sunflower Festival in July.

“It’s been something we have been praying for to be honest, although the shows in Ibiza at Pikes and Cafe del mar are DJ sets as is the Sunflower Festival with other festivals starting to make enquiries for WotD DJ sets as well as we speak.”

Detailing the impact the last two years has had on his career, Jonny said: “I’d honestly be lying if I said It was a major obstruction because yes we didn’t get to DJ or play live, but we did get to dedicate 18 months to the studio,

“The band is made up of members from New York, Coventry and myself here as well as all the guest vocalists and Howie B on an island off the coast of France, so with that set up and time zones, it’s really hard and time consuming to write a track let alone an album but it’s how we have worked since 2016, so while all the artists out there were getting to grips with this new way of working, we had it in the bag and knew how to make it work.

“It was our anthropause moment where the decline in human activity allowed us to get into the studio and create and let the beauty of the music flourish.

“Mentally I know so many people that struggled in lockdown, but as musicians and I know plenty of others out there and artists, poets, authors and script writers who totally shone in this time as they could dedicate it all to their art form.”

Anthropause is available via Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer and Tidal, as well as directly through the band’s Bandcamp page Warriors of the Dystotheque. It is due to be available on vinyl at the end of the year.

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