Talking Shop
Sheep, Dog & Wolf
Auckland-based multiinstrumentalist Daniel McBride broke through with his debut album Egospect in 2013 at the age of just 17. Combining influences from pop, rock, R&B and electronics, it won him acclaim in his native New Zealand and beyond. He now returns with his long-awaited second album, Two Minds, a reflection on a period of mental illness and physical pain that temporarily halted his creative output. We caught up with McBride to find out more about his creative process.
When did you start making music?
“I first started writing my own music when I was 16. The band I’d been drumming in, an extremely fun, bratty punk thing called Bandicoot, had just broken up and I felt like I had a whole lot of ideas swimming around that didn’t fit the mold of that group. So I bought some truly awful off-brand mics and a small mixer on TradeMe (NZ’s eBay) and started recording tracks in my room after school. They were kinda folky, kinda math-rocky, kinda jazzy – just a weird collision of all the things I was listening to and loving most at the time: Mouse on the Keys, Hella, Joanna Newsom, Grizzly Bear, Active Child, and heaps more. Those tracks eventually became my first EP as Sheep, Dog & Wolf, Ablutophobia.”