Dougal Interview | Dr. Sure's Unusual Practice
Connecting with people, being part of something bigger and how DIT is the new DIY
Dougal from Dr. Sure’s Unusual Practice joins Noah to reflect on their recent tour and massive 2025 as well as covering all the inner workings of their forthcoming album which is the closest they have got to capturing the live energy.
Hi Dougal, 2025 was a ripper year for the band with heaps of touring, international festivals and ending with an appearance at the all-important Meredith. You seem like someone who has a hell of a lot of energy for your creativity. Can you tell us what drives you in this wild pursuit of art (music) making?
I’ve always been a bit of a solitary operator creatively, I still make a lot of art and music that’s just for me, helps me hack living on earth. But I’m getting better at bringing people in and doing it together.
Yeah, we were lucky last year to see a different side of the coin, some big fuck-off stages. It was amazing, don’t get me wrong, but it gave me a nice bit of perspective — made me realise that playing little packed rooms is just as good. Properly connecting with people, sharing ideas, being a part of something bigger than us.
Both are great experiences, but they are quite disparate. Our reaction to the big stages was to book a run of DIY spaces around oz.
Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice has been around now for seven years, with three LP’s, loads of EP’s and now working towards the next full length. It sounds like you had the perfect vision with it being created in a big warehouse recorded live with no click tracks or fuss. How’s it all sounding and is it feeling like it will be the best representation of you?
We call the last LP [Total Reality] the ‘collage album’ because it’s pretty dense, lots of separate ideas and layers cut and pasted together in the box over a long period. For this one we went the opposite way, tried to just capture what 5 sets of hands can do live in the room with limited time. If you haven’t spotted the pattern, we seem to do things in extremes. Action / reaction.
But yeah, it’s exciting mate, it’s the first time we’ve done a fully collaborative record with the band. It’s definitely the closest we’ve been to capturing the live energy.
You have got some big guns on board for it with Dan Luscombe (The Drones) producing and Michael Badger (King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard) mixing, with the simple brief of capturing the band as you are. Was it as simple as that? and what was it like working with those guys to bring something more to what you already know and do?
Yeah, it’s been an ongoing exercise in letting go haha and I guess an extension of this more collaborative headspace. Working with Dan was great, a lot of us are Drones fans so I guess there’s a level of respect and trust, knowing your tastes align — if he’s throwing ideas out, we should run it.
And yeah, Badger’s a wizard on the mix, super easy to work with and bounce ideas off, been fun seeing how someone else approaches it and how differently the end result can turn out with a different set of ears. As someone who usually works intimately on all those processes, I’ve had to continually remind myself to relinquish control.
I would love to talk more about your idea of the DIT - Do It Together, which I’m sure is an extension of DIY but sounding much more community minded and perhaps asking each of us the question of how can we help each other? Can you fill us in on this idea of DIT?
That’s funny, hadn’t seen this question but I guess it’s a lot of what I’ve been talking about. Since I was a kid in Central Queensland, we didn’t have access to a lot so always just made stuff, and then finding the hardcore punk scene as a teen on the Gold Coast, and the music community in Naarm — I guess I’ve gravitated towards spaces with that DIY ethos.
DIT for me is the same principles just reframed to centre community, collaboration, empathy, shared humanity, whatever other nice things you can think of. Less me, more we. I think modern society’s hyper-individualism is a big barrier to empathy. That lack of empathy can probably be attributed to a lot of the problems we face.
The tour that you have put together is quite reflective of the DIT idea and your band name funnily enough being a run of shows in unusual spaces: a warehouse, a bowlo, a DIY loft and a secret rooftop, which I’m sure you would be roping in various people to help run and arrange. How hard has it been to put together compared to a tour that centres around the usual pubs and band rooms?
It’s been super fun, a little more work but easy enough. There’s heaps of people making cool stuff happen in their zone. It demands a bit more coordination, logistics, organising PA’s or gear or whatever else, but it’s all fun stuff to do if you’ve got good people to do it with. It’s honestly the most fun we’ve had touring oz in years.
You ended up doing two Melb/Naarm shows with the first one at a secret rooftop location on the afternoon of Feb 28 and the second one was later that night at Bell City Takeaway. I could be way off here but was the secret location also the place where you recorded?
Hahah good guess but nah the studio is in Fairfield, and the rooftop is in Fitzroy. It was only ‘secret’ cos it wasn’t necessarily legal and we didn’t wana make trouble for the lovely folks allowing us to use their space. I’ve been wanting to do something up there for years and the stars finally aligned on this one.
Finally, who are your favourite local Melb/Naarm bands at the moment and who would you like to see interviewed for Tempo?
Tongue Dissolver is my top rn, super fresh inventive take on punk and electronic music, they straddle that line like no other. I’m a big fan of their approach, the way they are navigating music ‘industry’, their politics. And also, outside of using your brain, it’s just fun music to dance to in a live setting. Don’t see many crossed-arm observers at a Tung Dizzy show, it’s all in babyyyy.