Fodor Dávid | Interview
Fodor Dávid is a young singer and bass player for The nobody elses and Giliszta. He recently released a very good lo-fi garage psych album, ‘Final Love Songs’.
“I guess I try to have as many influences as possible, keeping an open mind”
How would you describe your sound?
Fodor Dávid: At the time I worked on ‘Final Love Songs’, I listened to many different kinds of music. I really liked the early 70s funk sound of Sly Stone for example, but then also different songwriters from that era like Lou Reed, Shuggie Otis, Syd Barrett. And yeah, Paul McCartney too who I also thank for the album cover. The ‘McCartney’ album, his debut solo record was a huge influence in recording everything by myself. I guess I’d call it Psychedelic Soft/Folk Rock?
Would you like to talk a bit about your background?
I started to play guitar when I was 12, and I immediately had the intention to write my own stuff, and with two good friends we started making music as “The nobody elses” not much later. We released an EP and an album titled ‘Soul Piper And The Mischievous Spirit‘ in 2016. With this band we tried to follow the traditions of late 60s-early 70s prog and psych rock while mixing it with more recent garage sounds.
“I always made music on my own”
When did you decide that you wanted to start writing and performing your own music? What brought that about for you?
I always made music on my own, even when I was only learning how to play guitar. I always had some ideas, and I did bunch of demos on my own when I was 13-14 (some of those were reworked and used for the album, such as ‘Looking For Something’ or ‘Augustus’), but then The nobody elses came into the picture and most of my work was dedicated to the band. Meanwhile I continued to work on songs on my own, and as years passed by I suddenly had like 20 good-enough ideas. Then comes summer of 2018 and I started recording my first album, ‘Final Love Songs’ all by myself.
How do you usually approach music making?
For me music can be done in many ways. I really like working in and with bands. I currently play the bass in an alt-psych-punk band called Giliszta, but I also enjoy the freedom of working songs out all by myself, recording and mixing included. I mainly write on one instrument, the rest of the tracks are mostly improvised as I go along the recording, the bass line for example is always something I (sadly, haha) never think about too much. I try to keep the sound simple, as I really like the natural sound of the 60s and 70s so I always try to do a nice take of every instruments and keep the editing minimal. Another important aspect, at least for me, is listening to and learning how to play a lot of music I love. It’s really amazing how easy it is nowadays to access basically unlimited music on streaming services and also their chords on sites and sometimes finding a song with an amazing chord structure. Then learning it really makes you think you need to work harder on your own stuff, so then you try to outdo your previously written songs. Works for me most of the time.
Can you share some further details how your latest album ‘Fodor Dávid Sings His Final Love Songs With the “Doom Blues” was recorded?
The album was recorded in the small Romanian village, Lázárfalva (Lazaresti). I went there at the beginning of August 2018 for two weeks with almost all of my instruments, my recording gear which was not too much at the time: I used a 2-channel soundcard with two microphones, one was used for the bass drum, the other was for, well, everything else. I was basically a beginner at recording stuff. But after the fist day I started to figure out lots of stuff, and the different song ideas really started to come together as nice album material.
After these two weeks, I was ready with most of the instrumentals, and came back to Budapest, Hungary where I currently live, here I turned to focus on lyrics and working out the vocals. I also did some overdubbing, and re-recorded two tracks from scratch, and on the 3rd of December, at like 5 in the morning uploaded the whole thing on Soundcloud.
It’s available on vinyl via DraZe Records. What can you tell us about the label and its concept?
József, the head of the label was at first interested in releasing the music of my previously mentioned band, The nobody elses, however when he first reached out our album was already released online about a year ago, and to be honest we were sure we could make something more vinyl-worthy, as we were not really satisfied with our debut at that time. Sadly, this second album for the band never realised, but when I finished and released ‘Final Love Songs’, he immediately showed interest in releasing it, so after a half year, we did the release show for the LP at Budapest record store Kalóz Records. Even on Soundcloud I had the track list separated as A and B side, so I guess it was part of my concept from the beginning, but I didn’t really think this would ever make in on vinyl, and I’m very grateful for DraZe Records for this release. The label has been putting out some of the finest music on vinyl that’s been recently coming from Hungary, with some of my personal local favorites such as The Keeymen, a great classic instrumental surf band; Dope Calypso, crazy garage-power pop and Mordái, a really nice psych-folk fusion band, whose guitarist, Ferenc Vértesi also plays a solo on a ‘Final Love Song’,’ Inside Your Heart Again (Funky Man)’, and who is also a bandmate in both of my current projects, Giliszta and Doom Blues. You can check them on label’s Bandcamp site.
Do you have any other recordings available?
Last March, at the last day before the first lockdown in Hungary, we played a concert at a small Budapest pub Kisüzem, and luckily for us, it was professionally recorded by the organiser of the gig, Pap Dávid Tamás of PrePost Records. After few months of mixing, this recording was released as ‘Kisüzem’ and it’s available on every streaming channels, including on one of my favorite music themed YouTube channels, Terminal Passage. I also have a 3 song EP titled ‘Jolly Good Times‘ available on my Bandcamp and SounCloud profile. And lots of other random stuff on my SoundCloud, from more recent demos to some of my first songs written back in 2011-12, in case anyone is interested.
What are some bands/musicians that have a big influence on you?
There are so many! I’m hugely influenced by many things made between 1965-1975, I obviously love The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead, and many-many other psychedelic bands, I’ve been actually working on a Spotify playlist called “A Psychedelic Party” which I try to edit as a kind of psychedelic history book, it currently has 400 bands in it, all music from ’65-’73. But I also listen to lots of funk and soul music, like Sly Stone, Parliament, War, really just naming few of the more widely known. And I really enjoy the jazz of this era, especially Japanese jazz artists like Jiro Inagaki & Soul Media, Hiroshi Suzuki or Masaru Imada for example. I guess I try to have as many influences as possible, keeping an open mind.
What are some future plans?
This year I plan to record and release my second solo album! I can already share the most important info that I’m gonna be using more channels and more microphones. Also, we will soon release our first LP with Giliszta which was engineered and mixed by me. And, when it’s possible it would be nice to have a few concerts. But who knows when that will be.
How are you coping with the current pandemic?
I have most of my instruments around, so sitting at home more really got me into writing more music again, so it was not that bad. I just wish we could play concerts, it would be nice to show the stuff we’ve been working on with both bands, but I can only hope that by the summer, it’ll be possible to have at least smaller gigs.
Let’s end this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?
My favorite album right now is Earth Opera’s 1968 self-titled album, it’s a really amazing mix of psychedelia with folk, bluegrass vibes, all of its songs are just excellent. Some more recent stuff I liked were the album ‘III’ by Fuzz, John McKiel’s ‘Bobby Joe Hope’ , the amazing Ghost Funk Orchestra LP ‘An Ode To Escapism’ and my favorite I think was Mildlife’s new album, ‘Automatic’ which to me sounds like Pink Floyd mixed with space disco.
How about locally?
2020 was a surprisingly great year for Hungarian music, I’ll just name some of my favorites here:
Nagy Emma Quintet – ‘Low Frequency Oscillator’
Decolonize Your Mind Society - ‘A Courteous Invitation To An Uninhabited Anabatic Prism’
Middlemist Red – ‘The Other Side Of Nowhere’
The Mabon Dawud Republic – ‘The Mabon Dawud Republic’
Agavoid – ‘STRATUM’
Gustave Tiger – ‘I’ & ‘II’
Mordái – ‘Mordái’
Thank you. Last word is yours.
This is a message for everyone who enjoys non-English music: once again I recommend Giliszta, especially our new album which is to be released very soon (perhaps already released by the time of publishing this interview)! It is titled ‘Nagyonsüt a nap’, and it’s gonna be an epic, somewhat concept album about the big problems of humans got ourselves into, hugely influenced I guess by last year’s sad happenings. Thank you. Fodor Dávid
Klemen Breznikar
Fodor Dávid Facebook / Instagram / YouTube / Bandcamp / SoundCloud / Spotify
Giliszta Facebook / Instagram / YouTube / Bandcamp / Spotify
The nobody elses Facebook / Instagram
DraZe Records Official Website / Facebook / Bandcamp
