Darlia Interview

Darlia’s Nathan Day talks to us honestly about his cultivated passion for music and the relationship between himself, Dave and Jack, as they prepare to head to Australia for Splendour in the Grass in July 2014.

Hi Nathan, how are you?
Yeah, good.

You’ve recently covered Lorde’s song ‘Team’ on Radio 1’s Live Lounge. Tell us a bit about why you chose that particular song?
When we had the opportunity to play and do Live Lounge, I knew it was really important, and yes I didn’t really want to do a cover, but at the same time it’s such a good opportunity. I really wanted to have a massive think about which song to actually do and it had to be a contemporary Pop song, and I thought one woman in particular that I have a lot of respect for in relevant Pop culture is Lorde. I wanted to slightly do a tribute to her by doing her song.

With regards to your music, do you ever feel as if you’re taking a risk by using religious imagery in lyrics? Where do you think this stems from?
I don’t know about it as taking a risk, because if it offends people or if it’s offensive to someone, to me it’s purely just straight up what I’m saying. It’s never intended to be offensive so there’s no reason why I’d ever stop or change it. I think where it comes from is basically the way I was raised; my immediate family and my ancestors were very religious but my mum and dad stopped being religious when we were born. I still had all the repercussions of being religious so I didn’t celebrate Christmas or birthdays, didn’t celebrate Easter, didn’t celebrate Halloween until I was 13 or so. I think it was just pent up ideas from all that time
and suddenly I was aged 13 and my family were like “right, we’re going to start doing Christmas.”

You have an incredible relationship with music where you say nothing has the same effect on you. Has this been a constant feeling throughout your life or did you realise it from a young age?
It was literally just a fact of life for me. Have you ever heard of something called Synesthesia? Not to sound really weird, but there’s something called Synesthesia which I only found out was an actual condition when I was about 17. I started talking to my mum about it and she told me there’s something wrong and I need to find out what it is. Basically, my whole life I’ve seen music and seen sounds. I thought everyone could see music, visually see the music. I was on a bus and I was trying to explain
something to my mum, but the bus made a really funny noise. I was 15 at the time and I was going, “Mum, did you hear that grey noise that the bus is making?”. She replied, “What’re you talking about?”, then I was like, “You know, when you see the sounds of things, like this one’s grey,” and she said, “There’s something wrong with you.” I looked it up and it’s a condition. It’s not bad – people think it’s good. It’s like a blessing and a curse at the same time.

Since you, Dave and Jack were fired from your cleaning jobs because of your focus on music, did you ever think Darlia would become what it has and you’d be touring as much as you are?
I don’t feel satisfied in any way shape or form that Darlia is anything like what I want it to be yet. To me, all we’ve done is release a few things and I’m so grateful that a lot of people loved it and a lot of people are getting it – that’s what we want. I would never sit back in this position and decide, “Yes, we’ve made it.” I wouldn’t ever think that because that ambition is too high. My whole life I’ve waited to do this and I feel like it’s only just started. It was just perfect timing when we got fired.

In your opinion what do the three of you bring to the group, personally and professionally?
Professionally, Jack is a powerhouse drummer who just hits them so hard and he has an understanding of music, he understands what will work and what won’t work. Dave has a massive appreciation for music and he loves all types of music, from anything to Slipknot. He’s really open-minded with the things I’m suggesting and he’s an interesting bass player; I just love the way he plays bass. Personally, I don’t think this has anything to do with the question, but as a side note, they both sleep-talk to each other at
night. I can’t sleep sometimes and I’m just awake doing something and I’ll hear one of them grumble a word and the other one will reply, they’ll be talking absolute shit to each other all night.

How did you come up with the name ‘Darlia’?
This is the truth behind that; we were debating over words and nothing was sticking, obviously the word has to be something that overhangs what you’re doing. I didn’t want something sounding like it was trying to be cool, I wanted it to be a utopian word that attributes its own meaning to the word. What Darlia specifically came from was when I was really interested in flowers at the time. I kept seeing the Darlia flower everywhere. Also a bit of trivia, when we did our first gig in Blackpool when we had no name and were just doing it to test out the sets, as I walked off the stage this girl handed me a plastic flower. I didn’t know what was going on but I took it and kept it in my pocket for months and then three months ago I found the flower again. It turns out that it’s the Darlia flower and that’s just a pure coincidence.

Was it pure coincidence or was it fate?
I think nature is fate, I could say it’s fate the sun’s going to come up and the sun’s going to go down. I could plant a seed and say that it is fate it’s going to grow and it will grow. Nature is what pulls things together. The spiral of nature is fate. Anything that’s natural is fate because it’s happening naturally and anything that’s fate is going to happen. A bit like how we got Jack back and how Dave was working as a cleaner at the same place as me, and even though I’d known him for eight years I’d never spoken to
him and the week we started talking, we started Darlia.

By Arti Rajput