Richard HolmesNewcastle’s Dunes have opened a new chapter in their desert rock journey, a voyage that began back in 2016. Recently signed to Californian label Ripple Music, they stormed into 2025 with a new album, Land of the Blind, plus a string of headline tour dates.
Rich Holmes caught up with vocalist/guitarist John Davies and bassist Ade Huggins to talk hooks, scars and holy ground…
Rushonrock: Your last album, Gargoyle, came out in 2022. Did you take a different approach when writing Land of the Blind? What changed?
John Davies: We definitely took more time with the songwriting. We wanted to take a little bit of time for our ideas to breathe and to really think about what we wanted to sound like. We’ve all got different ideas about what we should sound like, as all bands do. If it was down to Jim Martin, Faith No More would have been a metal band, but I think if it was down to Roddy Bottum, they would be a synth band. I think the cool bit is when you get all people’s different influences together and what comes out the end is exciting.
With Land of the Blind, we tried more things out, we chucked a lot more songs in the bin. When we were working on new songs, there was a lot more of us thinking, ‘right, shit, what’s missing from that?’.
Rushonrock: What are you most proud of?
JD: The hooks! I’m a really big fan of hooks in music and it doesn’t matter what type music it is, whether it’s metal, dance, or whatever. I’m all about the hooks and I think every song on Land of the Blind has got lots of hooks, which keeps me happy!
Ade Huggins: Going back to the origins of the band, we always wanted choruses. It could be the heaviest thing ever, but it would still need to have a chorus. We’re very conscious of that.
Rushonrock: Where does your lyrical inspiration stem from?
JD: A lot of the lyrics are open to interpretation, you get what you want from them, but a lot of it is influenced by the mindset you can get with psychedelics or the mindset of alternative ways of thinking, whether that comes from meditation or dreams.
I also like the Mike Patton way of writing lyrics, which is writing the lyrics to a beat or a riff to punctuate something. But I also like the Tom Waits way of creating scenes and stories. There’s a bit of everything. Sometimes something sticks and sometimes it doesn’t.
Rushonrock: Northern Scars, which features a dramatic spoken word passage from Crane’s Nick Carter, makes a very deep impression. Tell us about that song…
JD: It’s about that classic North East mentality of not getting ideas above your station and not wanting to do something that no one from your family has done before. My family doesn’t think like that, and I don’t think Ade’s does, but it’s ingrained.
We’ve had the riff kicking around for quite a while. We used to end the set with that riff all the time. But it never sat in a song, it was just a cool, doomy riff. Then we thought it would sit well with spoken word. Ade had seen something Nick had done and thought, ‘this guy would be perfect’. We gave Nick the idea of what the song was about, and just said, ‘go for it’.
AH: (Nick’s part) was pretty amazing. When we first heard the proper mix of the song, it was like, ‘shit, that’s, really special’. I think it’s something that will resonate with people. You shouldn’t feel restrained by what’s gone before you, there’s a big world out there, and there’s nothing wrong with putting yourself out there.
Rushonrock: This time around, you recorded the album in Old Church Studios, a former church in Thropton, Northumberland. What difference did that make?
JD: Previously, when we’ve recorded, it’s always been in quite a small room; there’s not really much room for the sounds to spread and grow. If you’ve got quite a compact room, everything seems quite tight. In the music we play, there’s quite a lot of bottom end. You don’t really get that much bottom end in tight rooms. You can put it on afterwards, but it’s always going to sound better if it’s recorded in a church…
Rushonrock: And you have a producer in the band too, in the form of drummer Nikky Watson…
AH: He’s always been great with production, but he’s had more experience now and because he’s been working with a few other bands as well, he really knows what he’s doing. I think that helped the overall production and with being able to look at the album as a whole, rather than seeing it as just a bunch of songs. We’ve always tried to write in terms of an ‘album’, but I think we’ve done that better this time.
Rushonrock: After releasing both your debut Take Me To The Nasties and Gargoyle and Sapien Records, you signed to Ripple Music for Land of the Blind – a label now synonymous with stoner, psych and doom metal. How did that come about?
AH: I think what we found on the last album – and from gigging and playing festivals – we definitely streamlined into the stoner rock realm more, and I think we were always heading that way. It got to the point where we figured we might benefit from a label that’s more exclusively involved in that scene, whereas Sapien is a lot broader.
Sapien was great and it was really good for us in getting established. But it felt that as we were doing more specific festivals and gigs, and getting picked up by certain podcasts and websites, it made sense to find someone like Ripple.
JD: Signing to Ripple gave us a kick up the arse as well. Once we’d had the discussions with them, it was a bit like, ‘we’ve got to write some really good songs now’, whereas previously, it was a bit more relaxed. So far, it’s been great. They’re very plugged into that whole (stoner rock) scene, so there’s a quicker route to market, to use a business term.
Rushonrock: You were due to play the label’s Ripplefest Texas weekend in 2023, and play Desertfest New York too. It didn’t work out. What happened?
AH: We had a full US tour lined up, but the problem was just getting visas. We made the call to cancel it with the idea of possibly rearranging it in the future. We’re definitely up for it, but the visa situation was a big wake up call, in terms of how difficult it was and how costly it was. It was going to cost us about £4000 before we had even bought a flight.
JD: We weren’t doing it for the money but when you’ve already paid four grand to get over there, it really starts adding up.
Rushonrock: You seem to be having better luck in Europe though…
AH: We’re playing Esbjerg Fuzztival in Denmark in June and we’re booking some dates around that.
We went over to Belgium and Holland last year and we’ve been to Sweden a few times, and it’s always been really good. We’ve always gone down well over there and we try to make friends with the bands we play with, and keep in touch. So, for example in June, when we go over, we’re going to do a gig with Cranium, who are from Finland – we met them when we first played in Sweden.
Rushonrock: Your roots are in the North East scene, but you quickly branched out further. When did you decide that Dunes wasn’t just going to be a ‘local’ band?
JD: It was the first time we did something through (London promoters) Desertscene, when we played the Dev in Camden. We went down really well in a busy room. I think at that point, I thought, ‘Okay, this might not be shit!’. That was a little bit of a kick up the arse. It rolled out from there.
AH: I think once we got the core of the band together I got the impression everyone was up for doing it. We weren’t saying, ‘we’ll tour Europe, we’ll go to the States straight away’. But it was definitely ‘we want to get out there’.
I have no expectations of us ever doing this full time because that’s another realm. We’re probably too old. It’s really difficult to do that. But we never just wanted to just stay local… and it’s great to see it getting bigger. We are pushing ourselves as far as we can go.
Land of the Blind is out now on Ripple Music. Check our review of the album here.
You can catch Dunes headlining at Outpost, Liverpool (February 7), Zerox, Newcastle (February 8) and Bannermans, Edinburgh (February 9). Dunes are also supporting Hippie Death Cult at Ye Olde Salutation Inn, Nottingham on May 20.