Bram Bancroft On the Making Of “amy g. dala”
What was the creative process like for this particular single?
This song had been something that had been in the pipeline for a fair few years now, it went through a phase of trial and error through different musical projects but had never come to fruition until I brought it to my friend, Sam Lindley. I showed him the foundation of the song and we ended up just having loads of fun with it in his studio, adding more and more layers with different instruments and adding as much melody as we could without it sounding too muddy and eventually it reached a point where we were happy with the final product.
What impact do you hope "amy g. dala" will have on your audience?
The amygdala is a part of the brain that processes our emotions, so in this song I wanted to try to personify this, hence 'amy g. dala'. I've struggled with mental health now for a while and this song was a way for me to express this internal battle that is constantly at conflict in your brain. The main hope I have for the impact on the audience is simply that they enjoy the song on surface value, as a song. But if the audience can take bits that they can relate to as well to help them in their processes, that's also a bonus.
What do you like the best about this track?
I think the thing I like best about the track is the finality of it all, I've had this song in my back pocket for so long now, both lyrically and instrumentally, and it's nice to finally have it out there. It feels like the itch at long last has been scratched.
Can you tell us more about you as an artist?
I've always been a creative individual, I've gone down musical pathways, visual art, poetry, I've even started writing a book. I don't really like to describe myself as an artist, I'm just doing the things I've always done, the things that I enjoy doing purely because I don't really know what else to do. And all I'm really doing is throwing all these ideas at a wall with the hopes that something will stick. But everything I've done has been solely off my own back, from the confides of my room with help and support from a couple friends and my girlfriend, but as a whole I'm quite a solitary creative (which I'm aware can be a little self-defeating).
Where do you find inspiration for your songs or musical ideas?
Lyrically, I find a lot of inspiration in literature, I'm a big fan of the Beat poets, Franz Kafka, as well as Leonard Cohen's poetry. There's also a book called White Nights by Urszula Honek which has had a profound effect on me and the way I write. As well as this, I've found inspiration from TV shows such as Adam Curtis documentaries, and even Bojack Horseman.
Musically it feels like a melting pot of a bit of everything, from the Velvet Underground to Mazzy Star to Duster to BADBADNOTGOOD to Goat Girl. We (me and Sam) would listen to a huge range of music in the studio so it's hard to tie down where exactly it comes from, it's just a bit of a fusion of everything we enjoy listening to.