DIIV Thinks Remixes Are Fucking Cool 

DIIV, the renowned four-piece shoegaze band from Brooklyn, has delved into themes of interpersonal turmoil and societal shortcomings for over a decade. Their latest release, Frog in Boiling Water, extends this exploration into the dark and intricate realities often overlooked in daily life. With profound lyrical compositions, the band intertwines incredible melodies, creating a multidisciplinary experience marked by their signature reverbs and innovative visual elements.

Ahead of their Salt Lake City performance at Metro Music Hall on Friday, June 14, all four members—Andrew Bailey (guitar), Ben Newman (drums), Colin Caulfield (bass, keyboard, guitar, vocals) and Zachary Cole Smith (vocals, guitar)—chatted with SLUG, offering insights into their creative process and the inspiration behind their music.

SLUG: It’s been a few years since the release of Deceiver. What would you say inspired or even pushed you to create a new album?

Newman: We kind of had to and we wanted to. It’s interesting—we love making records, and I think if it was possible to make money off of making records we’d probably do that more more than all the touring that we do. But because of that, it takes us a while [to create a new album]. And then that affects the touring—you get better offers if you have an album out, so it’s just a cycle that you have to do. It’s kind of the best part of what we do, but it’s also pretty difficult.

Caulfield: There’s definitely a compulsive aspect to making music. We are musicians and we are artists or whatever, so after a certain point, it starts to feel like you have to do it.  I think with us, it requires a build-up of inspiration and new ideas and reimagining how we can approach making a new record.

Bailey: You know, I would say that even though it is imperative that we keep making records for our livelihood, it’s what we wanted to do. We never reluctantly started making the album. It was just like, you know, ‘The new album could sound like this,’ ‘Maybe this is what we should do on the next album. Cole especially is always thinking like that. Just yesterday we were fucking around with a new effects pedal we’re using and he’s like, “Bro, this should be the next record, like, let’s just write it on this pedal” and it’s just, like, naturally how his brain works by default.

SLUG: In your recent CLASH Magazine interview, you expanded more on the metaphor that inspired the name of the album, Frog in Boiling Water. Considering the album’s deep philosophical influences, how do you balance personal storytelling with more universal themes in your songwriting? 

Smith: Well, I think they’re tied together. Artists can only write from their own perspective and it’s valuable to try to incorporate things that might be more universal to people. I think our previous records were more personal, about us or me or my experience or whatever, and we tried to make some connections to something more universal—but it feels like, with some of that stuff out of the way, we can get back to what the band was supposed to be from the beginning and discuss big questions and then just try to give context.

SLUG: Is there a track on Frog in Boiling Water that you feel best represents this balance?

Smith: I think that the two that are most about a more individualized type feeling or experience are “Brown Paper Bag,” which is capturing a micro-feeling of existing in this world, and then “Fender on a Freeway,” which is kind of a zoomed-out, macro view. Both are more personal and looking at the bigger picture of existing in the world. The other ones talk about or try to deal with that too, but through a lens with a bit more context … Talking about the world and then that character’s place in it or how they experience it, whereas I feel like “Brown Paper Bag” and “Fender on a Freeway” are a bit more universal.

SLUG: Leading up to Frog’s release, you also launched soul-net.co,  making the album more of a multidisciplinary project. Can you expand on what inspired you to add an interactive component to the album and talk more about the website?

Smith: I mean, we have to promote the music; we can’t just make the music and just hope it exists. I think the way people experience music and artists is so unique right now to our specific time, where there’s all these avenues like social media promotion, traditional press,there’s all these different ways that we interact with with our audience. We tried to use those avenues as places to be creative, so soul-net.co was us wanting to leak our own song and not go through traditional channels, [to] not use streaming. It wasn’t like, ‘Please listen to our song, click to pre-save our single,’ but more to create just a tiny barrier. Like, ‘This link looks sketchy, maybe I’m gonna get hacked,’ and then you click on it and there’s just noise and these weird words and images and you have to push through that to experience a song. But it’s like you said—a multidisciplinary thing that has been fun to do in terms of building a world around the record. They kind of go hand-in-hand a bit.

SLUG: And what was the thought of specifically uploading stems from the record versus just populating it with random things that you associate with it?

Smith: Well, we did a tour with Depeche Mode and really dug into their back catalog, and a part of the way that they create a world around their band is through remixes and we just think remixes are so fucking cool! It just seemed like something really fun and participatory to allow people to make their own remixes and just democratize the information. Like, ‘Here’s the stuff, make whatever the fuck you want!’ I wish I had stems of records I liked so I could just hear what the individual tracks sound like, [to] play with them or sample them. I think it’s cool.

SLUG: The upcoming show is your second time in SLC! Would you say there’s a noticeable difference between the crowds here in Utah and the West Coast compared to the East Coast and even internationally?

Newman: It’s always a little bit different [in] different parts of the country and [the] world. Something really cool about being able to tour is seeing the alternative culture[s] in different places, and I feel like we’re just really lucky because we get to meet the coolest people in every town that we go to. Our experience is colored by the types of places that we’re invited to go.

Smith: I would say people in Salt Lake are the coolest fans and the best. It’s our favorite city, but it’s beautiful. 

Caulfield: There’s obviously differences between all the cities and states, but a lot of them blend together, [though] Salt Lake definitely has its own very alluring identity and there’s a lot of interesting peculiar things about the city in Utah in general. It feels, like, out of the ordinary.

Bailey: Also, Utah is by far the most beautiful state in the country. (Smith: What about Wyoming?) No, green is different in Utah. (Smith: And red!) What was the Mormon guy’s name? Joseph Smith? Yeah, I understand why he got that far on his trip and was like, ‘Oh, this is where God is.’

Smith: Also, shout out to the blue in Utah as well! Blue sky reflecting the snowy mountains. I mean—green, red, but also blue.

SLUG: I’ve read that some of your sounds are inspired by more obscure genres and world music. With such a diverse range of influences, which band or artist outside your genre would you like to collaborate with?

Smith: I’d love to collaborate with a electronic artists seminal artists like, Aphex Twin or Autechre or Boards of Canada.

Bailey: I’m a big fan of when a song is sampled in a way that you can’t recognize it. Like, taking the stems of a song and turning it into a completely different song with a completely different vibe and all that. I did that with our soul-net.co stems but it wasn’t very good. (Smith: I liked it!) Yeah, right.

Caulfield: That’s a good question. I feel like collaborating with a vocalist that has just a completely different singing style, like Robert Wyatt, would be really interesting. Like, us being someone else’s backing band. We’ve never done anything like that though. Also, it’d be cool to meet Robert Wyatt.  

(Smith does an impression of Kermit the Frog singing a Robert Wyatt song.)

Newman: Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never would be cool, and he has produced a couple of rock records I’d be interested. Similar to Cole, it’s interesting to think of artists that don’t have much relation to the rock world. It might be a difficult collaboration because we speak different languages, but it’d be interesting to see what happens.

SLUG: This time around, you’re touring with SASAMI and Glixen. What can you tell us about why you chose these artists for this tour?

Smith: Both of those bands I really love! I think Glixen is one of my favorite new shoegaze bands and SASAMI is a really cool, interesting artist who has so much diversity in the music that she makes and is really ahead of the curve. She’s an experimental artist, not in sense of genre, but she’s just trying shit and doing it different[ly]. It’s really fun when she puts out a new song and I have no clue what it will sound like. I love it!

Newman: Yeah, we tried to choose bands that we like, that we think are good and that also fit into our world. So that it’s kind of a thematic presentation over the course of the evening.

SLUG: If you had to describe your music in terms of a scent, what would it smell like? 

Smith: Sour.

Newman: Lavender … rose water. 

Bailey: I have no idea.

Caulfield: It’s funny, I feel like none of us are especially adept or think of the world in terms of scents necessarily.

Smith: Yeah, I feel like being in a band, you have to lose your sense of smell just to survive. 

Bailey: It’s kind of like weed smells. You go to buy weed and they open the jar and shove it in front of your nose so you can smell it, and you’re just like, ‘It smells like weed.’

Newman: I always think of that band Mayhem and their first singer Dead, who would bury his clothes in the yard for three days before they played so that he would smell like death.

Smith: Yeah, we should pump smells into the into the venue. Like, fog machines have such a specific smell and I think that’s the smell of going to a show. 

Don’t miss DIIV’s innovative performance on June 14 at Metro Music Hall as they continue to explore creative ways to connect with their audience and the world. Get your tickets here.

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