“It was awesome, probably our biggest show ever. Just a super fun night of sweaty dancing and reggae and crowdsurfing and all that stuff we’ve been known for,” Dub Kartel’s Richard McNeil is talking about last weekend’s album release at the Seahorse, and if you missed it and you’re a fan, then I’m sorry. That said, the whole point of the party was that the band has a new full length album, and the good news is that you can buy an album and have a mini Dub Kartel party in your living room whenever the mood strikes. Crowdsurf your cat.
It’s an album they’ve been working on for the past two years, which they completely produced themselves, without a red cent of grant money. Throwing everything they earned from shows and merch into the record, McNeil calls it a “unique type of crowdfunding.”
Dub Kartel has been a band for five years, and in that time they’ve had the loyal love of their fans, but have remained without label representation. That’s the next goal, and a theme that’s covered on the album. “The songs were written over along period of time, mostly about the highs and lows of being a band in existence in Canada,” McNeil says. “Control and losing control is a big theme, that’s something we’ve all experienced. We’ve gone on trips and let stuff get out of hand before.”
“We spent a lot of time partying! We’re trying to find a balance and take next step as a group, become a more professional act and take it as seriously as we can.”
See Dub Kartel live Wednesday, September 28 at the Seahorse at Sickboy Podcast’s charity event for the Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia and listen to McNeil’s favourite track off of the new album in the meantime:
Says McNeil of the track: "It’s one of our oldest songs, people who have seen us will recognize it immediately. It’s our signature sound—really positive. It’s special because we wrote it when we started to write the record and it’s one that we were all really positive about and the recording really translated that. The message is same as we always try to get across: be positive and be nice to people."
