One of South Africa’s top music artists, Tamara Dey from Flash Republic, has joined forced with her partner, Shadowclub’s Isaac Klawansky, to form Death By Misadventure, a new electro outfit that is all about having fun and meeting new people. ZAlebs chatted to Tamara about the new band, the weird name and how you can be part of the action.

Where did the name Death By Misadventure come from?

I was obsessed with the whole concept. When Amy Winehouse passed away, the coroner’s report labelled it ‘death by misadventure’. I became fascinated with how all human beings are inclined to push things straight over the edge. Human nature takes things to the extreme and often to our detriment. The whole concept of the album and name were inspired by that: the obsessiveness of human beings. All the material on the album touches on that theme. It’s quite a dark subject matter, but we’ve all experienced it and see it around us.

Is this a concept album?

Maybe. It’s really just a commentary on the excess of human nature in all its form.

The electro sound is both dark and poppy - is this why you chose for Death by Misadventure?

The reason we ended up making this music is because Isaac and I love it. It’s the music we party to and the style we obsess about. We love that sound. But there was no plan with this album. Everything that happened came organically and by chance. You have to understand the setup we have at home - we are both in other bands and we both work from home, where we have a little home studio. So Isaac is often working in there while I work in the next room. Now and then he would lay down an interesting beat - I’d hear that and go over and “ooh, what’s that?” and want to get involved. Over a long period of time we were just making these beats together - often really self-indulgent stuff. Stuff that we enjoy and didn’t have a plan for. Then the next thing we were four tracks short of an album, so we thought maybe we should release this material.

Is it hard both living and working together? Don’t they say you shouldn’t work with people who are close to you?

I’ve never listened to that advice. I don’t think Isaac has either! Working together comes with its challenges. You have to know when to separate the relationship from work and nurture it. But at the same time we work well together and we worked together before we became a couple. At the end of the day it works so well because we love the same music and are on the same page. For that reason we really make great music together, so it was inevitable that this project would happen.

Death by Misadventure has a more stoic electro sound here than with, say, Flash Republic.

We listen to a lot of dark electro. We love the sound, bands like The Presets. That is why it was exciting to have Davie Cooley master the album - he mastered the last Presets album, which we are absolutely obsessed with.

Why did you choose Thrills to be the first video and single off the album?

Everything happened kind of randomly. We loved Thrills and we thought we’d be bold and go with one of the more alternative songs. So we stole a couple of camera from our record label’s offices and, following the spirit of the album, shot our own music video. We also have a video for Cold Hard Fact - not by us though - and the single has been submitted for radio play, so we hope that will happen soon. We’re just casually playing it by ear and taking a different approach to the project. It’s not like Flash Republic of Shadow Club - those are brands upon themselves. So there is a lot of thinking and planning in what goes on. Not so with DbyM. We’re also trying not to ride on the coattails of any of the other work we’ve done. We want the music to speak for itself. We want to give away a lot of music and get people to get involved.

Is this why you already have quite a few remixes?

Yeah, we want to get people involved. We’re not being precious about things or protecting a brand. So we really take liberties with this. Anyone we think is amazing, no matter what music they make, we want them to take a stab at this and we want to work with their sound as well. To date we have seven or eight remixes from other bands and we’re hoping to release a DbyM remix disc, kind of a mixtape vibe. We love that communication and freedom and openness around the material. Completely unbelievable but unknown guys have made contact with us. There is a producer in Durban called Sketchy Bongo - this guy is brilliant. He sent a tweet to me and I had a look at his stuff, which was amazing, so we got him to make a few remixes for us.

You are known as an artist who collaborates with many other people, so this must be a playground for you.

Exactly, and we are really having a lot of fun with it. We’re also taking the same approach with shooting music videos: working with different people, aligning ourselves with left-of-field groups - like fashion bloggers. Getting our videos used in fashion shows and push the real collaborative energy of this project. If you are doing amazing stuff visually, we want to be a part of that. We know that it will be an awesome marriage of two worlds, so we want to work with young designers and bloggers and so on - go beyond the music. I’m quite excited, because it means we discover new stuff and people who approach their art in the same way they are. Look, we’re still protective about what we have - it’s not a free-for all! But if you love what you are doing, we want to be there.

It also sounds like you are able to give back on all the success you have had. What are your plans for 2013?

At this point we are just popping up here and there for unannounced, unplanned shows. Just keeping it casual. We have a few bookings at festivals later this year and there are great plans for the launch party of the album. We are also at the Just Music showcase on 6 June - we’ll be giving away tickets on our Facebook page for fans. I can’t say too much, but if you want to get involved and be a part of that, you can go to our website - wearedbym.com - where we’ll be giving away free songs. There you can give your details, such as which city you live in, and once you are part of our little world, you are very likely to see more of us, like live shows.

Watch the music video for Thrills below: