A Chat With : Filmspeed

We had a chat with Oliver Dobrian drummer and backing vocalist for power trio Filmspeed to talk about their music, touring and how they form their tasty tunes.

Tell us about Filmspeed and how the band came about?

Nick and Craig have actually been playing music together for over a decade under various names and projects. Through the magic of the Internet, I joined the band about 2 and a half years ago and we haven’t looked back since! We are a rock n’ roll band based in Southern California, trying to keep the dying art alive.

Your tunes are so slick and very rock n’ roll with a nice dash of indie, pop-punk and hard rock thrown in. How do you keep coming up with these hook filled tunes?

Wow, that’s nice to hear, thanks! We are always striving to write catchy earworms that get stuck in your head. I think it just comes from our collective love of music and our various influences manifesting in whatever we play. By listening to as much different stuff as possible, it gives us a large pool to draw from when we’re making our own stuff.

You recently released ‘Bless My Soul’ and ‘Shakey Love’ two kick-ass swagger drenched catchy tracks. Tell us about the writing process for these tunes?

The two processes couldn’t be more different! For “Bless My Soul,” we wrote the tune and showed the demo to Jason Hollis from Punk Aristocrats, who gave us a few rounds of notes and we hammered it into what you hear on the record. We recorded it with him up in LA. For “Shakey Love,” we knew we needed a B-side for the single, but didn’t really have any ideas, so the song more or less got written on the drive up to the studio! We recorded it in Santa Monica at Manifest Music, and I believe the take we used on the record is maybe the fourth or fifth time we had ever played the entire song through, since it had been “finished” just minutes before.

Do you follow a certain format when writing your tracks or does it just flow organically?

We don’t technically follow a format, but it does generally follow the trend of Craig bringing in a riff or an idea, and Nick and me working around it from there. We’re all good enough friends to critique and suggest ideas to each other without our egos getting in the way, so we just strive to serve the song rather than ourselves, and make it as best as possible.

There are many shredding, gritty riffs throughout your tracks tell us how you come up with these?

You’d have to ask Craig, haha! He’s just an endless fountain of cool riffs and melodies. I think he just is constantly making memos to himself and humming into his phone whenever he gets an idea. He’s got quite the database by now.

Your songs are full of swagger and confidence does this reflect on your personality?

We like to think so, but probably not as much in actuality as we give ourselves credit for. We try to stay humble and silly for the most part.

Which of your songs are you most proud of?

I try not to play favorites in order to give each song its due when performing it. If I play a song, I love it! I think the same goes for Nick and Craig too, we don’t tend to do anything we don’t like to do, musically speaking.

You guys embarked on your first West Coast tour, kicking off in Los Angeles and made notable stops in Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco before wrapping up in Anaheim. How did the tour go?

It was amazing! We had such a great time, met such great people, played some really fun shows. It was everything we hoped it would be and more.

Do you have a favourite memory or pinnacle high moment from the tour?

It’s impossible to pick just one! From me getting sick and my face swelling up at our last show, to Craig’s backpack getting stolen by junkies in Vancouver, to the transmission leaking on our van. Oh wait, did you say HIGH point? Just kidding, while all those things did indeed happen, we were laughing the whole way through and had the time of our lives. We didn’t call it the “Consistently Off” tour for no reason! We’re pretty good at taking everything in stride and staying content in the moment. Honestly the high points are always gonna be the shows. That’s the reason we even do the thing.

From listening to your tunes there is an energetic vibe and high intensity, I get a sense that these songs would be epic performed live, what is a live show with you guys like?

Thanks! We actually like to consider ourselves more of a live band anyway. Our constant goal is to get people to support live music and just get out of the house to come see a show. All three of us feel most at home onstage when we’re sharing music with people. So if you come to a Filmspeed show, you’ll see three guys leaving it all out on the stage and having the time of our lives every time. It doesn’t matter if we’re playing to 1 person or 100,000, we aim to entertain.

What is your Favourite song to perform live and why?

Personally, I like to treat each time I play a song like the first time I’m playing it. It helps me keep things fresh and allows me to elaborate on songs I’ve played hundreds of times. I’m just so happy and grateful to be onstage whenever I am, it doesn’t matter what I’m playing. So I guess they’re all my favorite!

Will you guys ever venture over here to Ireland for a show?

Of course! When’s the show? We’re there! We’re aiming to conquer the world, and Ireland’s in the world, right?

Stream ‘Bless My Soul’ below