Freshly Pressed – Danny Miles “Not Gonna Fit In”

Following his evolution from a creative force as drummer of July Talk, through to releasing new music as a solo artist, Danny Miles has firmly established himself as an eclectic and collaboration-focused musician who exists beyond traditional genres. He has just released his latest single, “Not Gonna Fit In,” ahead of his upcoming album. We caught up with Danny to chat about the new music, his songwriting process, what he’s listening to most these days, and his passion for bird photography.

From The Strait: Tell us about the new single, “Not Gonna Fit In”.

Danny Miles: It’s a genre bending, party song!!! It’s super fun but lyrically I may be a bit annoyed with people following trends and not thinking for themselves or a lack of trying to discover new less obvious art.

From The Strait: Every artist has their own way of creating songs – what does your songwriting process usually look like?

Danny Miles: I record everything at my home studio. Often I start with drums and then start building a beat on them. Once I feel like I am inspired to start writing lyrics and hooks I start recording vocals and then when they are recorded I usually go back and add more to the beat or arrange it differently to fit the lyrics. I have been working with one of my best friends in the world on a lot of these new songs so once I’ve got a song to a close to finished place or so I think, Ben Rispin will come over and we start picking apart the tune or adding or taking away stuff to make the song as catchy and tight as possible! That’s always our goal to try to make a catchy and creative song!

From The Strait: What bands/artists are you listening to most these days? And do you have any under-the-radar acts that you want to share with our readers?

Danny Miles: My favourite band at the moment is Viagara Boys and they have been for years, I think that band is an incredibly smart band. They write weird catchy music and I love it!

I also love Amyl and The Sniffers, Amy is the best front person in the world right now in my opinion.

I have also been revisiting a lot of Jay Reatard’s catalogue while working on this album. He is still one of my favourite artists.

From The Strait: What are some of your non-musical hobbies?

Danny Miles: I do bird photography and I just put out a published book called ‘The Beauty of Vultures’ on Newest Press. It’s a poetry/ photography book and I collaborated with this amazing writer from Edmonton named Wendy McGrath. We are very proud of this book, it was really well done!

From The Strait: What is one other artist that you’d love to collaborate with?

Danny Miles: I’ve had the chance to collaborate with so many amazing artists on my last album ‘Beautiful Music: The Ruined Version’ artists like Shad, Saukrates, Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene, Moka Only, Aquakultre etc.. that album has so many cool collaborations on it.
But who I would dream to work with? well the surviving members of the Beastie Boys have to be my top choice!!!!

From The Strait: What’s coming up next for you?

Danny Miles: The next single for this album ‘All We Do Is Party’ will be out August 26th. I am super excited for all the songs on this album. I’m very proud of it!!!!

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Check out “Not Gonna Fit In,” the latest single from Danny Miles!

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