”If we figure it out how to do it ourselves then we should be able to do that for the rest of our lives.“ – An Interview with Test Plan
One of the best live sets I’ve seen in a long time was at NYC’s Parkside Lounge at this year’s New Colossus Festival. Despite not taking the stage until 1am and likely suffering some jet lag, UK dance-punk trio Test Plan blew the crowd away with a set of great tunes, incredible energy and instrumental prowess.
The band are made up of Michalis Fragkiadakis (Guitar / Vocals), Max Mason (Drums / Vocals) and Rory Dickinson (Bass / Vocals) and recently released their new single “My Teeth” (see our post for more info) to great acclaim. This follows a breakthrough 2024 which earned them a landmark support slot for cult-legends A Place To Bury Strangers, debut trips to EU for Paris’ Supersonic Block Party and Rotterdam’s Left Of The Dial (the latter inviting them back for their NYE celebrations), as well as the fulsome backing of Anthony Fantano (The Needle Drop), who placed spring single ‘Walking In A Vacuum’ in his top 50 tracks of 2024. This bolsters previous support from key UK tastemakers So Young, John Kennedy (Radio X) and Still Listening Magazine.
I was lucky enough to grab some of the band’s time in between shows in New York to have a chat about their music, being a diy band and the music that influenced their sound.
IDOV – How was your flight over?
Michalis – Everything went according to plan. Nice. Super long and super tiring.
Rory – When we got to Iceland and we came out of the plane, it was just snow everywhere, it was so cold. We got to see a bit of the nice landscape of the Icelandic airport.
IDOV – Is this your first time in the States?
Max – I was born in North Carolina actually. I lived in the US for a year and spent a bit of time here over the years
Rory – I came here on holiday in March 2020 – three days in, Covid hit. I actually had tickets for one of New Colossus shows as well and I went to LA two years ago.
Michalis – It’s my first time outside Europe, first time in the US so it is a big trip for me.
IDOV – I was going to ask how your show went last night (at Berlin as part of the New Colossus Festival), but I’ve already heard from Steven (Matrick, one of the organizers) that it was incredible.
Michalis – It was amazing. It was great vibes. The place was amazing. Sound was amazing. Full of people. Very good vibes. Everything was perfect.
Max – We’d been looking forward to this show for so long and just thinking about it. So, I think just getting over here, getting through all the customs and stuff. There’s so much like attention, and I finally got on stage and it was just like “Yes! Hello, New York!”
IDOV – I’ve seen a few clips and I can’t wait to catch your show tonight. So we ask everyone a few questions. First one is which classic album cover art is your current mood?
Rory – We were trying to think of this and I said Metallica’s Black Album. It’s like, you know, dark and bleak; you don’t know what it is.
Michalis – We could also say Dark Side of The Moon – all the energy we have accumulated all these years, it’s now just happening. We’ve all been through many bands and this is the most successful, it’s going great. So it’s like all the energy is now actually paying back.
Max – I’ll say In The Court of the Crimson King. Just that face
IDOV – You’ve just released you new single “My Teeth” which was fabulous. How’s the response been?
Max – It’s been good. Anthony Fantano’s been talking about our music online and I grew up watching his reviews so it’s really cool to see stuff like that.
Rory – Yeah, it’s been great, just to have people listen and watch the video. It was nice to finally get it out into the world. We’ve been sitting on that song for a while.
Michalis – We initially thought we were going to release it in November but we did the right thing. We said we’re gonna spend all the time we need to make it as good as we can.
Rory – Yeah, it really kind of represented the sound that we want to make and the stuff that we enjoy playing.
IDOV – So when and where did you record it? You said you’ve been sitting on it for a while.
Michalis – So, we recorded it during the summer and then we had a long, long time mixing it. Then we did more recordings changing some stuff.
Rory – All in our practice room as well which is where we record all our stuff.
Max – We work with Darren Jones who produces our music. He’s done some stuff with Gorillaz and he did some Stormzy songs and stuff, which is crazy. He saw us play at a show and Rory knows him through the scene and he came along and he was like “You guys are sick and I want to work with you.” But he’s the best. He’s so patient with us and he’s such a big component of our sound.
Michalis – And I guess the reason it took so long was because he sent us mix one and then we went mix two, four, five, six, seven, eight. And then the last one was pretty much the same as the first one with a couple of tweaks. We did a full circle. This has happened to us with him and the previous songs as well. It always seems like we do a full circle and go back to his first mix. He knows what he’s doing and he knows better than us!
IDOV – You put a video out as well for “My Teeth” which Max directed
Max – Yeah, I just had this idea for like a giant tooth having a bad time. I think we all like weird shit and there’s this manic kind of energy to it, and it’s just like, how do you translate that visually? At the moment, I’m quite into the very surrealistic, impressionistic approach to our visuals rather than just us in a room playing the song.
IDOV – A lot of people seem to be going away from doing music videos and just doing live clips or visualizers. How important is a video to you?
Max – There’s so much music that I love because I’ve seen a great music video. There’s so many songs where you may not care for it when you hear it. And the you see the video and your mind explodes. I love Bjork. Every song has a beautiful video to it, and I think it’s just so crucial; it’s like an art project being in a band.
Michalis – We had great luck that Max is a videographer so of course we’re gonna make this. And honestly, it was the best experience, it was so fun making this video.
IDOV – You describe yourselves as a DIY band. Does that ever get overwhelming?
Rory – It depends on exactly what we’re doing. For example, when we put out a single, you send a billion emails to everyone you know and it’s just kind of boring and a lot of admin but it’s just part of it because we don’t have a manager or a label or anything. We have to bring the opportunities ourselves and we just try and kind of do whatever we can to make stuff happen.
Max – I would say it’s just like the punk ethos to do shit by yourself and figure it out. Making songs and videos and doing tours, it just gets stressful, but if we figure it out how to do it ourselves, then we should be able to do that for the rest of our lives.
IDOV – If you could only listen to one record, what would it be?
Rory – That’s a hard one. Um, Unknown Pleasures – Joy Division. I listen to that over and over again. And A Place To Bury Stranger’s first two albums, which I probably listened to about a thousand times.
Michalis – I don’t think I’d be able to answer that.
Max – Maybe a Brian Eno album, something with some ambience. Another Green World is one of my favourite albums ever. I feel like I could listen to that endlessly. I could pick a metal record but I feel like, if that’s all you can listen to, you just lose your mind.
IDOV – Your songs have been described as “the state between moshing and dancing”. Do you ever feel you’re going too far to one side and have to bring yourselves in?
Max – Oh, I feel like we have to grapple with that. We’ll have a song that’s like “it’s not quite groovy enough” so then we’ll try to squeeze it to be more dancey but then we’ll be like “now it doesn’t feel disgusting enough”
Rory – it was actually a term that sort of came up with ourselves because the audience are kind of moshing, and they’re kind of dancing, So, dance music with distortion.
Michalis – We put in a lot of effort so it makes sense for the listener. Many of the songs end up with too much noise and we have to really put effort in to bring it back down and keep it a bit quiet at times.
IDOV – How did the band meet? I noticed you’re all from very different backgrounds.
Michalis – Yeah, we are all from different places. Max came from Dubai, but moved back in London. Rory is from Bournemouth and moved to London 12 years ago and I am from Greece and moved to London six years ago. We’d all been in various bands and then Rory started to pull another band together.
Rory – I posted an ad on a website that Mike replied to and I knew Max through a mutual friend and we’d jammed together once before. The first time me and Mike met in person, we went to the practice room to jam and just caught Max coming out of a different rehearsal. So, I grabbed him and went, “Max, come on! Ten minutes, please.”
Max – It was a very serendipitous encounter. We practiced in this industrial warehouse and there’s loads of bands around so I just happened to be there the same day
Michalis – It was a couple of hours of non-stop jam and then at the end we’re like, “okay, see you next week” and it was pretty obvious from the first shot that “okay, we are doing this!”
Rory – Yeah, I’ve been in so many bands and tried to form bands and sometimes it doesn’t really click or maybe it’s not the kind of music I’d want to do but this kind of just clicked from the get-go.
Michalis – For me, it was actually a turning point because I had been in London for three or four years and I had moved a year before COVID. I had been with a couple of different sets of bands but I was actually reaching to the point where I was like, “I might go back to Greece because this is not working”And then I met these guys so now I have a reason to stay.
IDOV – What did you listen to growing up and how do you think that influences Test Plan’s sound?
Max – Rory and I are hardcore kids, like hardcore punk. We love mathcore and really crazy metal. The Dillinger Escape Plan are one of my favourite bands ever, just chaotic guitars and insane drums.
Rory – Yeah, I was a proper metalhead when I was a teenager. Slipknot were one of my favourite bands. Then I discovered post-punk and shoegaze and that kind of opened my eyes.
Michalis – I was also into metalcore and deathcore until my twenties and then I dived more into garage, punk, rock and roll and I think all of these have combined. You say you’re a metalhead but you also like so much experimental and electronic music.
Max – Yeah. I love loads of stuff. I think all the weird 20th century avant-garde shit really influences a lot of our approach to making stuff, especially with a lot of the elements of performance art we’re slowly incorporating.
Michalis – But at the same time I think we have kept some of the psychedelic elements. We try to keep the song just floating and repetitive to get in the zone, so it is a mix, it’s a craft.
IDOV – You mentioned earlier on that Anthony Fantano really liked “Walking in a Vacuum” which I totally get. How has that changed your profile?
Max – I think he’s got such a big reach and he’s such a tastemaker, people really care about his opinion and will change their music taste, which is a bit weird but it’s obviously not bad for us.
Rory – It was great because it’s kind of pushed our music to a larger audience. We started seeing that we had fans in America and we were getting plays from all these different countries.
Michalis – Maybe even the remix suggestion we got must have something to do with that. So, after releasing “Vacuum”, we actually got the suggestion from an EDM music producer to remix it. It is not still not out so maybe we will not share the name until they publish but reaching through a broader audience definitely helps.
IDOV – I can’t wait to see the show tonight. Describe your live shows in three words
Michalis – Loud
Max – Euphoric
Michalis – Honest, you know, being ourselves. We’re not trying to make more of what we are. We’re just trying to express how extreme we feel sometimes but keep it accessible.
IDOV – What would go on your signature pizza and what would it be called?
Rory – We were trying to think of this because Max is a vegetarian so there needs to be some fake meat as a bare minimum. Maybe some Greek stuff, like feta. It’d just be chaotic with loads of toppings and it wouldn’t really make any sense, maybe a guitar pedal on it.
Michalis – Maybe the signature would be “Pizza of the Day because It’s a Test Plan”. Every time we’re going to try something new like our sets, you know, we’re trying to play a different set every day. Every different night. Maybe a little bit spicy as well.
IDOV – I’d meant to ask earlier – how do you decide what goes on your setlist?
Michalis – That’s such a struggle to choose which songs you’re going to leave out. If we are going on late, we’re going full on from song one, or if we play earlier, we have to warm up people a bit. If it’s a long show we will try to have some variation but we always like to keep our sets as a whole piece. So depending on the night, there’s going to be variations.
Max – And we’ve written so much music together. There’s at least four or five songs which we know a lot, we’ve never recorded and we just kind of moved on from. And then we’ve got at least like an album’s worth of music, just in the void that we’re playing in our shows, you know.
Rory – We’re writing stuff all the time, like jamming. During the practice we had before playing this festival we came up with three jams that could be potential songs.
Michalis – Maybe we’re a bit sensitive on playing the same things over and over again so we’re always trying to add one new song to every gig.
IDOV – What’s next? What have you got left for 2025? Festivals? More shows? More music?
Michalis – So much stuff because we have just started working with a booking agent for the first time. He has already booked us a super amazing tour in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany.
Rory – This tour will be in May and we’re doing Outertown Festival in Bristol and we have the “Teeth” release show in London. After May, I don’t know, maybe some more festivals. We’ll definitely be working on recording some new material.
IDOV – Are you looking at an EP next, or an album?
Max – Definitely a bigger body of work. Not sure if it will be an EP or an album but we definitely want a proper chunky statement.
Rory – Yeah, maybe we find a record label we want to work with.
Michalis – We’re going to start recording and see what we have at the end of recording session and we’re going to package it accordingly.
You can get tickets here for the release show in London at The Shacklewell Arms on Wed 23rd April and you should follow the band on Instagram for all the news on new music and shows.
Image Credits: Max and Melody Wayfare
