Getting to Know… Dan Heathcote | Interview 🎤

Prepare to be awestruck on our 196^th interview as gifted musician Dan Heathcote masterfully provides insight regarding his craft. 

🎙Dan Heathcote is a beast.  No, not literally, but from a musical standpoint, this singer/songwriter is impressive to the nth degree.  “[My songs are] inspired by sci-fi, horror, philosophy as well as personal experience. I write abstract stream of consciousness lyrics,” he asserts, when asked what makes him distinct or unique.  He doesn’t stop there either, getting specific about what he seeks to construct lyrically and musically.  On our 196^th interview in our Getting to Know… series, Heathcote provides intriguing, in-depth details regarding his and his band’s craft. 🎤 Getting to Know… Dan Heathcote: Interview No. 196 will definitely leave you awestruck regarding this gifted artist. 

Starting things off, for those who may not be familiar with you, what makes you/your band distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off? 

🎤 My band 🎙 Zadkiel are a 4 piece from Nottingham. I write most of the songs. I sing in falsetto and have a tenor vocal range. We are an alternative rock /modern prog band, and the song lyrics are pretty original. Inspired by sci-fi, horror, philosophy as well as personal experience. I write abstract stream of consciousness lyrics. I am well read and have worked on developing a unique turn of phrase. I use symbolism and metaphor mainly, coming from myths and the subconscious. In terms of the music the chords can be dark with happier sounding lyrics or vice versa… harmonic sounding music with darker lyrics. Darkly euphoric blissed out alt. rock. The vibe is atmospheric and ethereal channeling the otherworldly twisted work of 🎨 H.R. Giger mixed with William Blake’s searing spiritual symbolism. We are named after an Archangel. We use a lot of alternative tunings and different time signatures.

Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did your Zadkiel form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on? 

🎤 The band line up has changed a lot since the beginning, There’s myself, 🎙 Dan Heathcote (on vocals/ guitar) I am the original founder. The new line up mainly got together in 2016, 🎙 George Beedle on lead guitar and 🎙 Josh Marsh on bass. However, we have a new drummer since then called 🎙 Michael Bawldry. The idea was to keep the core elements of the original sound which was kind of grungy and pretty psychedelic and add a more modern progressive feel. One of the new tracks written was called 🎵 “Behemoth”, a 10-minute heavy track that builds, influenced by Tool, the music for that was written by George. We recorded a new EP, 💿 Transient Resurrection which we have finished but have yet to release. We’re waiting for the right time when we are up and running again after the coronavirus enforced hiatus. We are currently on to the next stage of writing for album number two, which will be the follow up to the debut album, 💿 The Saturn Return, which was released about a decade ago.

Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now? 

🎤 The goal is to make great music. That hasn’t changed. It’s harder to get somewhere in the industry right now. It was a saturated market at one point for bands, and now they are dying out. The main aim is to keep going, gigging, and recording and see where we land and what we win. Nobody in the band is obsessed about making it, we just want to keep making music and find our audience and grow organically. Making money isn’t the aim, making a comfortable living would be nice, making a statement on the state of things is the mission. If we do that, we do that our own way with our own kind of language about that.

Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential? 

🎤 Radiohead are obviously an influence if you hear us play, or me sing. They are a great band that pushed the envelope and developed their sound. People tend to get a bit elitist about bands who are influenced by them, like how dare you sound like that. Muse succeeded in being influenced by them and then branched out a bit more as time went on. I think Radiohead are one of the few bands really trying to do something ethereal and intelligent using music theory. Falsetto vocals are becoming less common, and a lot of the newer bands are metal bands doing screamo vocals. That’s not my thing, I like singers who can sing rather than sounding like they are gargling with razors or grunting, for me that makes the lyrics less intelligible.

Jeff Buckley is also a big influence on my vocals. He has a stellar voice and more importantly, something to say. He was a rebel against the system. As was Kurt Cobain who’s screaming sounded more musical than many of the metal bands that followed. If you ask yourself what was “Smells Like Teen Spirit” all about? It was about rebellion. Conformity is more omnipresent now than in the 90’s. We are all hooked on social media and bombarded with disinformation. Radiohead’s OK Computer kind of predicted the future would be like this and it is. We have immersed ourselves in technology and isolated ourselves from each other. The pandemic hasn’t help either. Empty slogans all round, no escape. Yes, I am influenced by Radiohead, this is not a bad thing. They are the thinking man’s opiate of the masses.

Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative. 

🎤 No wacky stuff. Wakey wakey… It’s not about putting on a show and being a clown. Music is there to entertain us yes, however, I bare my soul every time I play. I have fun doing that in some ways and love to play music, but the idea of an emotional track that is trying to reach someone being fun, sort of defeats the object. I guess artists like Beck and Pavement had a sense of humour and were doing interesting alternative stuff. And Riffs are kind of fun. The fun stuff for me is the exploring of new sonic worlds, in a different tuning or time signature. Maybe you’re asking the wrong person about having fun at gigs. Catharsis, yes, you might feel something, if you still feel something at this point and are not cynical about modern music in general.

Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special? 

🎤 Feeling like I am having to do the unique selling point thing here… My favourite song recorded by Zadkiel is 🎵 “Dragons”. It was on our first EP, 💿 Inverted Heaven, it was the first song recorded for that and it opened up the Zadkiel dimension in terms of what the band could sound like. It was dreamy and heavy. My favourite track to play live is either 🎵 “Mindslayer” or 🎵 “Ghost In The Machine”. “Mindslayer” has a 12/8 to 5/4 switch in time signature and is a faster version live than the recording on our debut album The Saturn Return.  We have to be on it to play that well. It also has over 80,000 plays and 30,000 downloads on a free music site called Jamendo.com, so that one really reached people online, which is good to know. “Ghost In The Machine” is a love song that builds and builds from mellow to rocking out. It uses DAD GAD tuning and is droney and epic. It has some nice lines in it, “You are regeneration, and you know I’ve been aching for you,” which are pretty heartfelt at the time and now – in terms of being in a relationship with another person.

Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits? 

🎤 Secret talent. I am writing my own prescient lyrics that predict the possible future. Not to be judged on how true the events turn out to be. It’s more about how vivid my mind’s eye is and whether it is nightmarish or beautiful in the eye of the beholder. I write poetry every day. I am a bit obsessed with stream of consciousness writing. Trying to explore untapped worlds of imagination and potential. It’s not boy meets girl or A to B. It’s more of a psychological labyrinth, getting lost and then finding yourself, asking why are we here? In lots of different ways over and over. The path ahead will unfold.

Closing this thing out, what is you/your band currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.  

🎤 I am just about to release a solo acoustic album on CD called 💿 Limbic System. It’s named after the part of the brain that processes emotions. It’s a chilled-out version of late-night terrors. We made a music video for the first single, 🎵 “Hive Mind,” using images of insects, crowds, and CCTV camera footage to give it a paranoid feel. It was initially inspired by Darren Aronofsky film Pi. You can watch the video on the Zadkiel UK Youtube channel.

Limbic System is also available to stream or purchase digitally on my Bandcamp page.

🎤 Getting to Know… Dan Heathcote: Interview [📷: Brent Faulkner, Dan Heathcote, The Musical Hype, OpenClipart-Vectors, Pixabay]