THE HIGHWIRE DAZE INTERVIEWS

The Dillinger Escape Plan is adventurous music that demands a reaction. It’s loud and pounding and filled with aggression! With the release of their debut full lengther CALCULATING INFINITY, The Dillinger Escape Plan is beginning to get themselves quite known for their wild music. Even Mike Patton was impressed with the guys and offered them a supporting slot on a recent Mr. Bungle tour. Read on for an interview with one of the masterminds of The Dillinger Escape Plan…

Highwire Daze: Introduce yourself, tell me what you do in The Dillinger Escape Plan, and how long the band has been together.

Ben: I’m Ben, I’m the guitar player and one of the original dudes. Basically, myself and our singer and our drummer have been in it from the start. We'’e gone through a couple of guitar and bass changes. The band’s been together for about 3 and a half years – and we’re just rollin’ it.

HD: Where are you guys from and is there a music scene there?

Ben: We’re from New Jersey. And I’d say that the music scene definitely isn’t what it was when we started going to shows and see a lot of bands play. But I think that the New Jersey scene has inspired a lot of bands and a lot of music out there. While the scene isn’t thriving that great right now, but there have been quite a few bands from this area that have done some cool things. Bands like Dead Guy, Human Remains, and even The Misfits…

HD: If you had to describe the music of Dillinger Escape Plan to your granny, what would you say?

Ben: To my granny? (laughs) I usually tell my grandma that we play a mix between jazz and classical.

HD: Does she believe you?

Ben: I don’t think she cares. But that’s obviously not what we are. Whenever someone I know doesn’t care asks, I just make something up like that.

HD: Where did you come up with the name Dillinger Escape Plan and does it have any significance?

Ben: Actually, it doesn’t have any significance to be honest. It’s just a name that we thought sounded kind of cool. The name itself refers to a bank robber from the 1930’s name John Dillinger. But the truth is that we don’t have any special interest in bank robbers or gangsters or anything like that. We just kind of had a bunch of names strung together and that’s one of them. I don’t even remember who came up with it. It was a bunch of random names, that one was the one that sounded the most awkward and hard to remember – it’s really not catchy – so we went with it kind of as a fluke because we felt it was kind of obnoxious and long and kind of weird – kind of like our music, I guess. So we went with it. We wanted something that would take up a lot of space on flyers and kind of be a nuicense. And that was the most nuisence of all of the names we had. But it’s kind of grown on us now, and we think it’s a decent name.

HD: Where do you get the ideas for the lyrics?

Ben: Most of the lyrics, especially on our new album, are kind of relationship related, and kind of rooted in the fact that a bunch of us were having relationship problems at the time we were doing the new album. It’s kind of an untypical kind of subject for a heavy band. But we write about what’s real, what’s on our minds. It’s not necessarily a complete picture or story or message that we’re trying to give anyone. It’s just kind of personal. It’s something that we don’t necessarily write with the intent of everyone knowing what we’re thinking. We kind of describe in graphic detail certain emotions or situations that we’re going through without telling the complete picture all the time because we feel that’s much more real to us and much more strong. It’s kind of vaguely telling a complete story.

HD: What’s the strangest reaction someone has had towards your music?

Ben: Someone threw a garbage can at us once at the Bungle tour. That was kind of an interesting reaction. It’s interesting – we don’t really claim to be anything. We just do our thing and it for purely selfish reasons – for our own enjoyment and self-satisfaction. People tend to read us in different ways and they’re all a surprise to us. They’re all interesting to us because most of them are not necessarily what’s on our minds when we’re doing it. We’ve played everything from complete black metal shows with people wearing corpse make-up spitting blood everywhere to like art parties with fashion designers and these people who think we’re some kind of performance art. It’s pretty interesting and we’re really lucky that we’ve had the opportunity to play in so many different forums. But we’ve had all kinds of reactions – from people being totally disgusted with us to people being over-dramatic about what we are to people kind of digging it.

HD: How did you wind up on the Mr. Bungle tour?

Ben: To make a long story short, Mike Patton had received a bunch of CD’s from Relapse. For some reason they were talking about doing something with his label and in the process he got a package of CD’s. He just kind of took a liking to our CD. And right around that time they needed someone to open up for the Bungle tour, so he gave us a call and asked us if we’d be interested. That was really great, because we happened to be big Bungle fans for a really long time. So that was definitely a great opportunity and a great phone call to get.

HD: What kind of jobs do you guys have when your not touring?

Ben: I do corporate web design for a company. One dude is a manager of J Crew.

HD: Did you design the Dillinger web page?

Ben: I did, yeah, but I don’t really like to admit it – because I think it’s pretty bad, to be honest with you. I just don’t have time to work on it. Actually, it’s going to be updated soon – a brand new design. It’s just that I’m working on so many things that I have to do, that I can’t really do anything with that. But it will be updated soon.

HD: What CD’s do you have in your collection that might surprise people?

Ben: It’s kind of weird that people would be surprised, but people are because of the music we play – the stuff we’ve all been listening to lately is the new Fiona Apple, we also like Sting and Aphex Twin and other electronic stuff.

HD: If there was one thing you’d like to leave a listener with after hearing your CD, what would it be?

Ben: It’s kind of a real interesting question because we never really think about the listener when we write music or when we’re playing. We’re thinking about what we want to hear and what’s going to make us excited. I don’t know – I’m always surprised by any reaction. We’ve always been like "Wow! Someone really gives a crap about this?" We’re just totally surprised if anybody really acknowledges it – because it’s definitely not music for the masses. It’s not written with the intent for a lot of people to like it. I think just the fact that people have been pretty open to it is pretty amazing to us. The most important thing is that I’m playing music I love.

The Dillinger Escape Plan have a new album called Calculating Infinity, out now from Relapse Records.