Music > Interviews

Dingus Khan

26/02/20

Looking forwad to having you back in Norwich.  What are your memoires of your early vists to this Fine City?

In the early stages of our ‘career’, Dingus Khan would regularly travel the long slim road from Manningtree to Norwich.

Upon arrival we would check that our instruments worked, some didn’t, then sit about waiting to entertain the masses. After entertaining said masses with our Esturary-Heartland Rock we would sell the masses odd-merch - Rebranded street lights, hastily screen printed tshirts in obscene sizes, knock off bootlegs of our own albums.
Then, we’d purchase bags of exotic Polish lager on the Prince of Wales Road and head back to some fetid living room to babble gibberish at one another until the early hours.

Upon stirring from our exotic euro-booze slumber an oddly concocted feeling of triumph, confusion, dehydration and hunger would lead us into town. In search of mushy peas.

What do you hope for this weekend? 

This weekend, I expect to be a fairly similar experience.  Although ...I hoping to rent an air bnb.

So where does the name come from? 

The ever-reliable Urban Dictionary defines a “dingus khan” as a person whose actions call into question their mental capacity and/or a monstrously large penis… A description so apt, it almost renders obsolete any need for a press release.

And your roots?

Dingus Khan are sweaty, swan-bothering border folk from the Stour, who play the kind of inbred, Neanderthal indie rock that could only evolve in the cultural isolation of Britain’s undisputed smallest town – Manningtree in Essex.

The band rocketed from obscurity in to less obscurity in 2012, when they signed to Fierce Panda Records, who saw the opportunity to repeat their international success with Keane and Coldplay.

Steve Lamacq immediately endorsed their debut single Knifey Spoony and invited the band to Maida Vale to record a session for his 6 Music show. Their radio-friendly combination of grinding dissonance and murderous revenge fantasies earned them further sessions with BBC Introducing and Mary Anne Hobbs, who declared second single Made a List one of her all-time favourite songs.

Fierce Panda released the band’s debut album Support Mistley Swans in 2012. The record drew national attention to the plight of wildfowl in the small Essex village bordering their hometown and became an instant hit with fans, but divided critics. 

The band toured extensively to promote the album, with festival appearances at Leeds, Reading, Bestival and Latitude, where their performance was described by BBC Introducing as “a master class in how to perform at a festival.”

So a soundstart, no doubt some bumps in the road?

The band’s history has not been without controversy. In 2014, they were banned from Latitude, after vocalist Mick Squalor’s arrest and expulsion from the festival for a series of alleged misdemeanours (inciting a stage invasion during their set, invading the stage during a set by Parquet Courts, impersonating a security guard, swimming across the lake in Henham Park to avoid arrest). To add insult to injury, the singer found himself fat-shamed in Mojo after the festival: “A roly-poly ginger man in a blue velvet robe invades the stage, provides the bassist with a folding chair, frots himself suggestively and goads the audience into paroxysms of frenzy. For the first time this weekend, primal rock’n’roll chaos reigns.”

And Now ?

In 2015, Mick Squalor and Ben Ward took time out from Dingus Khan to focus on their musical careers and formed SuperGlu.

But now, the Stour valley reverberates once more with the distant sound of a mongrel horde…

Enjoy Norwich and the mushy peas.